Virgil Dickerson has been running Suburban Home Records, a small, independent record label based in Denver, Colorado for the past 12 years. It started as a fanzine in September of 1995 and has become a label, a distributor, a vinyl imprint and store, a custom t-shirt company and this blog about the music industry. He remains optimistic about the future of music sales although it is tougher now than it has ever been trying to sell a product people actively get for free. Suburban Home's bands include Drag the River, Tim Barry, Love Me Destroyer, On Guard, Ghost Buffalo, Josh Small, Stereotyperider, Two Cow Garage and Adventures of Jet.
Sean Klassen has found his lot in life through playing guitar in struggling indie bands for over ten years now, currently playing in tongue-in-cheek heavy metal band Dartanian. Through playing music he discovered the art of graphic design and now spends much of his time designing various records, cds, posters and websites for a wide variety of clients ranging from local bands to international brands such as Universal Pictures and Audi. Sean currently pays his bills working as an Art Director at Factory Design Labs in Denver. He also enjoys wearing argyle socks and playing hockey. Feel free to direct any technical or website related comments or problems his way.
Bill Wilson founded the NY based indie, Blackout! Records while a college student at Fordham University in 1989. In it's 18 year history, the label (and sub-imprints) has released music from a diverse roster of bands, including Crime In Stereo, Deadguy, Ensign, Guided By Voices, H2O, Killing Time, Kill Your Idols, and Sheer Terror. He also has held positions as a Product Manager at RED; Distribution Marketing Manager at Caroline Distribution; and General Manager of Earache Records. Since 2001 he has worked in digital media and social networking, and is currently employed by a big ol' multinational media company in their mobile entertainment division.
Because you don’t have enough to read or listen to, I bring you some of the most interesting things I found going on this week:
The best podcast in indie music, Issue Oriented, just posted # 22 and it features Geoff Rickly (Thursday) and Jim Testa (Jersey Beat). Ronen, the show’s host is indie music’s most articulate voice. I haven’t tuned in yet, but I am sure Ronen asked Geoff about Thursday’s decision to put out a release back on Victory and their thoughts on being a free agent.
There are some great records out this week, but I just wanted everyone to check out the new Portugal the Man. I am a bit partial since I put out their vinyl, but this new album is incredible and I would love to see the band have a great first week. Although all of their other releases are on Emusic, this one isn’t yet.
Speaking of Emusic, they recently posted the 50 best Summer albums. Although, the Fresh Prince’s “Summer Time” isn’t on the list, there are some great albums by the Pixies, Spoon, White Stripes, Neko Case, Johnny Cash, and more. Check it out. I also recommend everyone listen to Adventures of Jet during the summer, it is essential summer listening!
The Sound Scene Revolution just posted a new podcast where they interview the fine, young men of the Lawrence Arms. They also have a contest where you can win a load of Asian Man Records’ releases.
Punknews.org starts a new feature, Vinyl File, where they discuss new and upcoming vinyl releases. The first one is posted here. Very cool!
Beggars Group (Matador, 4AD, XL) purchase 49% of Rough Trade. [Digital Music News]
Tim Barry and Josh Small (two Suburban Home artists) to tour this fall with William Elliott Whitmore! Fuck yeah! We announce our 12th anniversary celebrations!
London: July 24th, 2007 – EMI Music today announced a significant strategic partnership with Chicago-based digital agency VerveLife, under which EMI will open up its extensive digital music catalogue for VerveLife’s global brand promotions and loyalty experiences. The partnership gives VerveLife’s brand partners access to a significant portion of EMI Music’s catalogue in order to offer their consumers higher quality, DRM-free downloads via global promotional campaigns. EMI Music’s recent decision to offer DRM-free downloads has paved the way for brands to engage with and utilise digital music in their campaigns.
The opening up of new business models, such as the one offered by VerveLife, is the latest in a long line of positive effects already witnessed by EMI’s decision to offer DRM-free downloads to consumers. As well as creating a level playing field with online retailers, the move has also stimulated growth within the existing retail sector, while, crucially, the DRM-free element ensures full interoperability of digital music across all devices and platforms, including mobile phones.
Global brand Burger King is the first of VerveLife’s brand partners to take advantage of this opportunity, through a custom premium experience being tested by Burger King in the UK. Under the campaign, consumers will be able to search for, sample, and download a pre-paid EMI Music track from a specially created microsite after inputting a unique code. Codes are being distributed to Burger King consumers upon purchase, and there will be links from the microsite to an online retailer, allowing consumers to purchase further tracks by EMI artists featured on the microsite. EMI is the exclusive major music company offering content for this first-of-its-kind programme and will be featured as the exclusive provider of digital music in experiences being developed by VerveLife for several other global brands.
Barney Wragg, Global Head of Digital, EMI Music, comments “EMI’s recent decision to drop DRM has had a hugely positive impact on our potential to collaborate with brands in order to offer consumers downloads that they can play across all digital music players. We are very excited about this deal with VerveLife which provides the perfect platform for us to partner with a wide spectrum of high profile brand names such as Burger King.”
Justin Jarvinen, founder and CEO of VerveLife, comments, “This agreement significantly alters the landscape of the $500 billion per year promotion industry. Consumers are increasingly asking for digital rewards such as music, movies and games. With this partnership, VerveLife can now reward tens of millions of consumers worldwide with instant access to some of the hottest music on the planet, in MP3 format. We’re proud to be partnered with EMI and look forward to bringing the most innovative and successful digital promotions to market with them.”
Giles Harris, EMI Music UK’s Head of Business Development believes that “This programme illustrates perfectly how EMI continues to break the mould, by working with new partners in new ways to tap into fresh revenue streams and promotional opportunities for our artists.”
Barry O’Connell, VerveLife’s Director of Media Licensing, continues, “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to share EMI’s amazing catalogue of music with millions of consumers through the trusted brands that are part of their everyday lives.”
Just a quick note that if you get bored, you can read an interview Punknews did with me about Vinyl Collective, our vinyl-only online store and vinyl imprint. They are also helping out with a really cool contest for a $100 shopping spree in our store.
Our good buddy Jordan of Pastepunk was kind enough to put together the following post regarding band names and their trademarks. Very interesting. Thanks Jordan.
Here’s a good lesson for bands and their names - if you break up or change your band name and stop using the old name for a few years and some other band comes along many years later and uses the same name and then suddenly becomes famous, you better be prepared to show there are present active uses of the old band name in a commercial context before arguing that the latter band is infringing your trademark.
A defunct 80s band named Drowning Pool applied for a trademark in 2001 around the time the currently-active metal band Drowning Pool were exploding on the radio. At the time of filing, the metal band had not yet filed a trademark application. At an appropriate time in the proceeding, the metal band filed a petition opposing the earlier band’s application. After several years of litigation, the metal band recently won its Opposition on the basis that the earlier band abandoned use of the name Drowning Pool. The earlier band had only scant evidence that there was any activity with the band name after the year 1990, which was the year they changed their name to the Mumbles.
The decision on this is below and although it’s a bit of a dry read, there’s a lot of discussion of band name goodwill and how a band may be able to keep their common law rights in their name long after they break up or change their name (assuming they don’t have an active federal registration, which most don’t). One of the emerging themes was that if a band has its music readily available via digital distribution, it is much harder to say that the band has “abandoned” their name, even if they’re relatively obscure and do not play live. Drowning Pool LLC vs Drowning Pool
Just a quick one… Mashable! has an amazing post on podcast resources. It’s a must-have bookmark for any label or band. Just be careful, and watch out for Soundexchange!
I’ve always had a big problem with Soundscan. It tells you WHERE something was purchased, but not WHO purchased it. As stated in the comments on my previous post, labels often think of their main customers as the retailers, the press, and radio. Direct to sales with their customers is last on the list.
A few years ago (2003) I had a short lived customer-loyalty program at Blackout! that did pretty well. Due to financial reasons we didn’t keep it up, but I thought I’d share it with you all to see if this may help bridge the gap between the CD world and what will ulitmately become an exclusively digital world by creating that customer access.
A week or so ago at FoundRead, there was a great article about the singular goal for a startup company. According to Timothy Ferriss, the goal of any company should be “profit in the least time with the least effort. Not more customers, not more revenue, not more offices or more employees: more profit.” In the label terms, it shouldn’t mean more fans, a larger roster, a video on MTV or a major deal. All of that is bullshit and more or less only about the label or band ego.
I’ve taken his initial points and put my spin on the first 5 of his 11 points for the indie music biz.
I have been meaning to write this post for a while as I have been a very happy user of Music Arsenal. Music Arsenal is a web-based contact management tool with so many more features aimed for use by Bands and Labels. I really hope that everyone who reads IndieHQ considers checking out Music Arsenal as it is capable of being your band or label’s greatest asset.
I will explain briefly some of the many uses that could be of great help for you:
I purchased this book a while ago, but I kind of shelved it in favor of some other books. While waiting for the delivery of my copy of the IndieHQ book club book, The Dip, I decided to start reading Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day. The book is amazing. I did not want to suggest it for the book club, but I highly recommend everyone get this. Lifehacker is one of my favorite blogs and this book will become my handbook for using technology to simplify my life.
So far, this book has already given me helpful tips on reducing the distractions associated with email (it forced me to change my Thunderbird application from checking email every 5 minutes to every 30 minutes). I have also started to autostart certain applications upon startup and am learning to set my computer to automatically back up and defrag certain parts of my computer. And I have only read the first 3 chapters.
I imagine that many of you are like me where you jump at the opportunity to make your life easier through technology. To read more about the book, click the link, this book has my highest recommend.
Just a quick one… Mashable! has an amazing post on 
, I decided to start reading 
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