At least in the States, the specialty record stores will often (despite it
being technically illegal in most cases) try to sell such a promo item by
placing it in the "New" section of the racks, putting a snazzy little
"RARE WHITE LABEL PROMO ONLY!" sticker on it, and usually marking the
price up.
There are other ways promo items and test pressings leak their way down to
the occasional fan. Having friends work at record labels or record stores
is pretty helpful. Then there's eBay, the bottom of the chain for
practically any hard-to-find wanted item.
As for why they are "special", that's a harder question to answer. I
mean, if something is a test pressing, then that literally means that this
pressing could have an inferior sound to the cheaper, subsequent, more
attractive official release to follow. Then again, sometimes the official
release never comes out.. therefore rendering the test pressing or promo
items as the *only* way to get a first generation copy of a hot track.
Of course, some folks are very concerned about being the *first* guy or
gal on the block to have the record... which is probably the main reason
for the white label frenzy. We all know how important it is to avoid
being seen as "like, soooooo six weeks ago... Shuh!" :) Shrug.
Otherwise.
=======================================================================
Brian MacDonald <brianm@kuci.org>
KUCI 88.9 fM in Irvine, CA -- Orange County
=======================================================================
On Wed, 2 Aug 2000, Medium Graham wrote:
quoted 13 lines Hey y'all,
> Hey y'all,
>
> I've been DJing for about a year now, and I have a question. Everyone's
> always talking about 'this white label' and 'that promo'...where do these
> disappear to? I spend more than I should on music, but the only place I see
> these things is on CD in this tiny second-hand shop near me. And then,
> they're not anything worth buying. Where / how do all you DJ-types on this
> list get your promo material? It's getting kinda hard to keep up with the
> scene without going too far into the red.
>
> G-love.
>
> http://www.gram.org.uk
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org
For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org