How to lose listeners and alienate MD's...

This rant will be brief, but I'm warning you now, it's a rant.

Earlier today, I was going through the mail we receive twice daily here at UMFM. As a good-sized campus/community station we get a fair number of albums in the mail and sometimes to cut down on costs we'll get the liner and CD without a jewel case. This tends to piss me off a bit because it's not like we're flush with spare jewel cases around here. But I understand that it cuts down on weight for shipping, so I chalk it up as a peeve and get over it.

HOWEVER, today I received an album that just irritated the hell out of me. Ice Palace's Wonder Subtly Crushing Us wasn't sent without a jewel case - it was sent WITHOUT PACKAGING. Someone decided it would be a good idea to send us the album by simply sticking an address label on the front of the album and slapping down $1.42 for postage. Maybe there's an environmental impetus behind this decision as I noticed the "Offset with NativeEnergy.com" logo on the back, but if that's the case, why not go strictly digital? As you can see from the photo below, between the address label, the customs sticker and the postage 'stamp' it's virtually impossible to see the album underneath. And with the type of cardstock that was used for the album, it's virtually impossible to take these stickers off without tearing off the artwork.

So I'm not going to even attempt it.

This album is unusable in its present condition - none of our programmers are going to check it out on the New Release shelf when it looks like this, and if it's all torn up they're less likely to do so. I'm not sure how many industry types, promoters or label-reps read this here blog but if you do I'll say straight up this is not how you service a record.

Feel free to root through the U of M's recycling if you want to hear this record, 'cause that's where it's going after I post this.