Pinecastle Records recently announced the upcoming release of four new projects during the first two months of 2009.

Promos are being sent to radio this week, despite the lag of as much as three months between now and the actual street dates for these new albums.

• Second Season – Kristin Scott Benson (1/13/09)
• Lord Bless This House – Nothin’ Fancy (1/27/09)
• The Hangman – Ernie Thacker & Route 23 (2/10/09)
• Three Silver Dollars – David Parmley & Continental Divide (2/10/09)

We asked Matt Hood, Pinecastle’s Director of Radio promotion, why they send promos out so early for new releases, and about their promotional download service for radio.

“For some time we have been using a new schedule for our mainstream releases. There are a few reasons why we send out CDs to radio so far in advance. The first one has to do with the production timelines of the major bluegrass print magazines. It takes a magazine a certain amount of time to prepare each issue for printing and it takes the printer a certain amount of time to print the magazine. There can be a lag time of a couple of months. In order to chart a single during the month of the release date the DJs have to have a CD in time to review it, put it in rotation, and (if the CD merits it) report it to the folks that publish these airplay charts. The same issue applies to album reviews.

Also, many folks in the media have such a backlog of CDs to review that it can take them several months to even review a CD. The point is to get as much exposure during the immediate timeframe of the street date as possible and we’ve found that shipping CDs several months in advance of the street date helps us do that.

Our first real proof of concept was with Special Consensus’ The Trail Of Aching Hearts, which appeared on the National Bluegrass Survey in Bluegrass Unlimited the month of the release date. Almost every album we’ve released since then has done the same. We’ve also had similar results with the chart in Bluegrass Music Profiles that they started in 2007.

All of the charts, reviews, and airplay provide invaluable information to sales reps from our distributor who then work to place Pinecastle product into stores.”

Hood also shared an update on the radio download service where show hosts, producers and music directors can get either MP3 or lossless WMA files from new Pinecastle projects as soon as they are announced.

“The download service is something that I have wanted to do for a couple of years and have finally been able to implement it into our website. We have had a very positive response to the download service. I have had some really good comments about it. We have a 10% adoption rate among all the DJs on our list, which I am very pleased with as it falls in line with my expectations.

Some folks have asked if we will stop sending CDs but we don’t have any plans to do that in the immediate future. At this point, if a DJ wants to voluntarily opt out of receiving a physical CD we will oblige as it saves us on cost, however, we will not automatically stop mailing to the downloaders.

The main idea behind this service is to allow DJs quick and easy access to Pinecastle material. All of our new releases are available to DJs in a CD quality lossless format as well as 320 Kbps MP3s. The artwork is available for download as well. We can also provide easy access to our catalog titles and possibly some titles that may currently be out of print.

As I’m writing this, we have several CDs in the queue to mail out and there are many DJs who have already downloaded the music to use on their programs.”

You can find out more about Pinecastle Records and their artists by visiting their web site.