A long time ago, in a city far, far away, I was in a band.

We were named after a pub, that was named after a famous drinking song, and that should be a clue as to how seriously we took ourselves.

But we were good live and, at our home venue, the crowd broke the bar record every time we played.

At one point were even bold enough to get about 2000 12” EPs pressed (pictured).

It might not sound much but try loading and unloading that much vinyl into a transit van.

We sold around 1600 through gigging but it was just at the time when CDs players were becoming a household item so no doubt most were thrown away.

In fact I once had the ignominy of a rival band’s roadie joyfully reporting that he’d seen our EP in a second hand shop for 10p.

Well, this week the turntables were turned after I logged into our Tunecore account: in the past four months we’ve made $22 through digital downloads – here’s the widget…

by Eamon Nancarrow

Admittedly its on the back of the singer’s autobiography (Holywood Star by Eamon Nancarrow) but our music is now available around the world and, thanks to this service, we’re selling again.

Tunecore charge a small fee for uploading each song, and there is yearly a charge for storage, but you don’t sign your songs away and we’ve made our money back.

It’s an ideal way of getting your songs downloaded but you still have to let people know you exist. Find out more at www.tunecore.com

This article was published in the Daily Echo on Friday 18th June 2010