The Humble Mailer

I keep a box of used mailers around to re-use. A lot of music critics and radio-type do. It's a cheap way to get a package out the door. I was noticing recently that with digital delivery that my stash is running low. Fewer and fewer labels are servicing press and radio with physical media. Some albums are digital only even at retail. It was predicted in January that this would be the year that digital sales are projected to outstrip physical sales. [source here] Sales figures are apparently still on track for that to happen as of  May. [source here]



So music critics and programmers of the future won't be receiving quite so many mailers. So this bin beside my desk is quickly becoming a historical footnote. I have scanned several of them below as most readers have never been serviced by a label or promoter and 20 years from now this may be the only record of this simple tradition.

I've scanned a dozen or so mailers and made the slide show above so you can get a whiff of what Monday morning is like for the biz. The rest of you may never know the Christmas-Morning like fun of opening four dozen mailers full of new music. But like Christmas morning it's not all Squirt guns and Legos. There are some socks and underwear and very lame other sundries. Maybe it's more like a free scratch-off ticket. The odds are about 10-to-1 that you'll like what's inside.