So our most recent project involves a new record label in Paris, France. We hooked up with them through networking, an old fellow music maniac we used to be on a mailing list with in the early 90's. He's got a great first release and we're getting to do a 7" with a locked groove, a first for us!
What was amazing was that we mailed out CDRs with two versions of things, which he still hasn't received (French Post sucks, worse than Canada, U.K., Germany and Australia are amazing.)
So the artist will be in Paris on 12 April and wants to hear the results of the post-production (we ended up having him re-record two tracks, with a long explanation of how to properly use a compressor/limiter) and the CDRs aren't there. What to do?
We were going to mail out new copies, and we will, but things were urgent - so we set up an FTP site and uploaded images of the two versions of the CDs we'd mailed with cuesheets and info on burning them. Worse comes to worse, they'll be able to at least listen to all the tracks, which we uploaded individually, but hopefully they can burn the CDRs we sent them but seem to have gotten lost or more likely stolen.
Outsourcing and off-shoring sucks in a lot of ways. If it was going to bring up the standard of living and salaries of workers in Mexico, India, Russia, etc. that'd be grand, but we're convinced it's going to drag down the U.S. to at least Russian standards, which aren't bad, but hopefully not India.
But on the other hand, business is business, and it's great to help an old Internet pal get his label off the ground, and maybe we can swing an excuse to visit Paris as a business trip, and screw the French Post - Filezilla FTP utility to the rescue! And one very satisfied customer, albeit we're not making extra money going the extra mile, but the artist lives in Japan so it's unlikely he'll be back in France for at least six months.
Heck, this way he can download the images in Japan and burn his own copies! A big win for everyone. Provided we can start getting Indian workers paid a living wage or decent salary, and everyone does better rather than the U.S. doing worse.
As the ancient Chinese curse says: "May you live in interesting times."