1. Fire your entire sales staff, if you still have any. They’re quickly becoming obsolete, a floppy disk in an Internet world.

2. Accept that the CD is a dead format and plan now for a future without them. At best, CDs will end up as souvenirs for the hardest of the hardcore fans, much like vinyls are now.

3. Ditch your out-dated distribution deal with the major. Handle all physical item sales in-house through your webstore. Distro deals still have value, but it’s limited value, and that value won’t last long. Sign a new non-exclusive distribution deal for physical retail only to reap the remaining cash stream from that channel while it lasts (2-3 years max).

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These days a lot of metal record labels seem to be releasing “widgets” — those embeddable flash jobbies with streaming music, photos, tour dates, etc — to promote new albums. Three years ago when MySpace was all the rage this made sense since, hypothetically, fans would embed these widgets on their pages thus spreading the word at the low price of whatever it cost the label to develop the widget. But it’s 2009 now; MySpace is still plenty vibrant as a music delivery tool but virtually dead in terms of social networking; Facebook and Twitter don’t support embedding; and, as a blog proprietor, I can say I’d much rather link out to another site than embed a widget that takes time to load. Yet labels still seem to be pumping out widgets like Gene Simmons pumps out verbal diarrhea.

So, my questions to you, MetalSucks Minions: do you embed widget on your pages? If you see a widget on someone else’s page, do you bother to click/listen/explore it? Are widgets cool or are they lame? As usual, feel free to elaborate in the comments.

Record labels, you can thank me for the free market research later. I’ll accept payment in the form of beer at CMJ. Lots of it.

n