Bands Seek New Distribution Models
One obvious response to the challenge the Internet is posing to traditional music industry revenue models is for artists to try to disintermediate the record labels whose comparative advantages in distribution and promotion are less relevant in the contemporary world. Brad Stone’s article on the phenomenon happens to mention one of my favorite bands, Metric:
Bands that have taken this approach say it can be arduous. In 2007, after releasing three records with independent labels, Metric, an alternative band from Toronto, finally got several offers from the big record companies. But the band declined to sign after concluding that the labels were asking for too many rights and not offering enough in return.
With help from a grant from the Canadian government, the band cut its own album in April, “Fantasies,” and started selling it directly to fans on services like iTunes, where it has scaled the popularity charts.
A good excuse to embed the “Sick Muse” video:
Here’s a whole bunch of stuff for sale on their website.
21 Responses to “Bands Seek New Distribution Models”
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July 22nd, 2009 at 4:51 pm
A grant from the Canadian government? I’m as liberal as they come, but this struck me as not the right solution.
Although that might explain why so many of my favorite bands lately are Canadian.
July 22nd, 2009 at 4:51 pm
I think you can find a better example than a band who had to seek support from the “Canadian government” to launch their album. Bailing out Citibank isn’t bad enough, now we have to bailout Offspring? Heh.
July 22nd, 2009 at 4:59 pm
The physical distribution of the music is easy to solve. It’s the popularization of a band that labels excelled at. A band could poularize itself, but it might entail giving away almost all of their work for free.
What I suggest is multivenue, multiband live performances. You get a lot of mid-sized venues, like the 9:30 club, in different cities. They digitally link to eachother’s sound systems, and have the equivalent of Live-Aid for small bands. Each band plays one set. You put a bunch of big screen TVs around the club, and shoot the performing band from a few angles – no direction or editing necessary. People in 5 clubs in 5 different cities get to see 5 different up&coming bands in one night. None of the bands has to play their whole repetoire, so people are left wanting more. Each band is set to go the minute the previous band finishes – no breaks, no canned music. People who come for one band get exposed to the others.
July 22nd, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Providing public funding to painters, sculptors, playwrights, and other types of “high” artists is no more (nor less) justified than providing funds to musicians of any sort. Why shouldn’t the government fund indie bands if they’re going to fund people who install stacks of paper and dirty coffee cups in grand museum galleries?
One expense Matt does not mention (and that gets alluded to in the quotation) is the expense of recording. Bands that go the traditional studio route with recording end up deeply in debt to their labels. However, advances in home recording studios in the past 10 to 15 years have rendered recordings that bands make of themselves (so long as they’ve got someone at the controls who knows what he/she is doing) nearly indistinguishable from “professional” recordings–to most listeners anyway. Actually, DIY recordings are often superior to much “professional” product in being less over-produced, at least to my ear.
July 22nd, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Njorl, I don’t think that’s going to help. People will ignore the bands on TV and just drink and talk to their friends. Relentless touring is the only way for a band to gain any exposure. And for an independent band, that’s only likely to gain you a small to medium sized cult following, if you’re lucky.
July 22nd, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Amanda Palmer (of the Dresden Dolls) has been very outspoken about how the music industry is changing and how musicians now have the power to directly engage fans and distribute their music.
She has an interview about it this week in hypebot: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/07/interview-amanda-palmer.html
She also posted a letter on her blog a couple months back about how much money she has made from her album that she distributed through the label versus what she has done via twitter and other online activities. (Hint: the former amount is zero).
Her letter starts up after the pictures.
http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/128911225/ninja-beach-show-today-in-la-regina-video-pix
July 22nd, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Of course, the video that ought to go with the title, “Bands Seek New Distribution Models” is this
July 22nd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Hmmm–no link. Try :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXBba77U1_Y
July 22nd, 2009 at 5:22 pm
And yet it can still be difficult to make a living even as an indie, as some of the debunking of Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 True Fans” theory pointed out.
Still, I’d rather perish on my own terms…
July 22nd, 2009 at 5:27 pm
You’ve already posted this video. Couldn’t you have tried another Metric song? The Gimme Sympathy video is new and features lots of Emily Haines in a short skirt.
July 22nd, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Government backing semi-popular bands wouldn’t be such a terrible thing. People get lots of music for cheap, which is better than the pre-internet days. No profits go to executives and middle-men at the labels. And as a side benefit you have a good shot to better than the labels at funding talent worth listening to.
July 22nd, 2009 at 6:03 pm
The Dead figured this out 40-some years ago. It’s not rocket science.
July 22nd, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Sick Muse?
Ew. I officially boycott bands that use the lyric, “live my life.” Who else’s life ya gonna live? Maybe that of someone who can write lyrics?
July 22nd, 2009 at 6:29 pm
the only problem with government funding of music is what happens when some crank politician decides he doesn’t like some of the lyrics and kills the music industry, like Jesse Helms spent the 1980s doing to the NEA because Robert Maplethorpe showed some butts. Metric can write political stuff but it’s about US politics so the Canadians have no reason to stop the rock. Put the US Congress in charge of funding and the next thing you know Tom Coburn will pick a fight with a rapper and try to ban the whole program, then Ben Nelson will step in and engineer a compromise where US government dollars can only go to country singers who sound like Toby Keith.
Or, the RIAA lobbies Congress so that money can only go to bands on certain labels. I know the guys in Metric and they love the Canadian government deal, but that’s partly because the Canucks cut them a check and let them do their thing. (The only string attached is that you have to play x number of shows in Canada per year, which means that Metric ends up playing in lots of small Canadian cities like Saskatoon and Moose Jaw in addition to shows in Toronto/Vancouver/Montreal.)
July 22nd, 2009 at 7:19 pm
spokeytown, I agree. When you take money from the man, the man is going to have some control of what you do. This holds true for any artist, which is why I think government funding of “the arts” is actually a fairly dubious proposition. My point was that there is no reason that certain kinds of art or certain artists should receive funding and others should not.
And far be it from me to defend Jesse Helms, but Maplethorpe did a hell of more than “show some butts.” Not all of his photos are explicit, but those that are are VERY explicit, as in items being shoved into rectums. I make no judgement as to the artistic merit of his work, but having the US government fund stuff like that under Reagan was a pretty neat trick and was something that was very likely to explode.
July 22nd, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Record companies that destroy voices, and lead to excessive drug use among artists with those grueling tours are rapidly becoming gloriously unnecessary.
Support local music.
July 22nd, 2009 at 8:31 pm
This is a better way to think about Free. Its now possible to get a bunch of bloggers to advertise your products for you.
July 22nd, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Since “album” bands are now dead for good, I think it’s easy:
1. Don’t Suck
2. Be able to put on a live show that is more interesting than just you playing all the songs the same way they sound on the album (far too many bands do this.) If you can make your show interesting enough, or change it up enough, people will come to see you over an over again.
3. Tour relentlessly! Work like the rest of society
4. Free music! More free shit makes it more likely people will hear your music, and pony up for a show.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:06 am
Best music business advice anywhere, via Dick Dale:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AJxc3Lxn4o
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I do this for a living (try, anyway) so for once I feel qualified to contribute.
-Digital distribution, as far as it goes for indie bands, should be huge. Services like Snocap and CDBaby let you get on iTunes and Myspace, getting your music in the hands of people across the country. The rates you recieve on these sales are huge – in the neighborhood of 60-70%, compared to (at most) 15% for an up-and-coming band on a label. However, this doesn’t get you any marketing muscle, doesn’t book your tours, doesn’t send your stuff to licensing companies (the real money nowadays), and doesn’t cover the cost of recording. It’s a trade-off until somebody finds out how to get this industry working again.
-Home recording equipment has definitely gotten to the point where you can make a professional sounding recording on your own – “can” being the operative word. Like playing a musical instrument, production is a skill of its own. You get what you pay for, too, and even the cheap recordings will find themselves costing in the thousands when you add in mixing and mastering.
“3. Tour relentlessly! Work like the rest of society”
I do work like the rest of society. So does the rest of the band – at our day jobs. You would be surprised at how far you have to get in your career before you can give that up. Playing in a band is a second job. I’d resent the implication, but being as you referred to the job as easy – yes, in summer 2009, 18 months into a recession and 8 years into the death pangs of the current industry business model – I don’t think that’s worth haranguing over.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
So rather than government sponsorship of bands, why not fan sponsorship?
Buying a CD, a t-shirt, or a ticket to a show isn’t the appropriate way to support a band. All of those things require that large numbers of people do the same.
Now, it requires a much smaller number of people to support a band directly- by giving them x amount of cash per year. Is keeping your favorite band alive and happily making music worth $20 a year? Fine, then you and a few thousand fans can do that.
My studio runs on fan sponsorships- which helps answer the recording cost issue for musicians as well.
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