Haven't been keeping up with this very well but there has been a lot to do here and time is a precious commodity these days.  But with 2009 winding to close it is a good time to have a look back at what has been achieved this year and a blog post is the perfect way to sum this up.
For 5th Estate Music 2009 wasn't so much a first year as it was a first few months.  Even though it went "online" in September, the first real action only started a few weeks before the Nov.2 release of the Fine Print Pariah debut album and the goal since then has been to keep the ball rolling.  Some of the promotional activities that were meant to do this were successful but this is admittedly an area that needs a lot more work in 2010.  However, Fine Print Pariah did get some radio play and podcast play so the effort was not completely for nothing.
The licensing shop was set up and some physical distribution of the CD was arranged with a local record store here in Berlin.  Not bad for a start and now that the infrastructure is set up the process for future releases should be much easier.
The task now for the next week or so before everything shuts down for the holidays is to evaluate all of this and make plans for 2010.  At the moment it looks like there will be a very significant change in strategy that will take things in a very different direction.  Part of the reason for this has been the unexpected difficulty in getting Fine Print Pariah into a form that can perform live and other artistic factors have come into play as well.  The Fine Print Pariah debut album was a fine achievement but things are evolving quickly on the creative side so expect a few surprises in 2010.
All in all 2009 was a great success but there is still a lot of room for improvement.  The "label" was established, the first album was released and - without giving too much away too early - there is plenty more to come very early in 2010 so be on the lookout!
Have a great holiday season and nice "slide" into the new year as they say here!