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.
It pains me to write this, as I’m a huge fan of Last.fm and what they’ve done (or could do) for indie labels, bands and music fans. However, it seems that their new media conglomerate sugar daddies are having an influence on their policies already. I was on their site today, doing some cleanup of my catalog that I offer for streaming and looking for some plugins to put on the upcoming revision of my label site. What I discovered should make anyone who is trying to build a career in indie music very concerned about their future.
This is why they didn’t participate in the whole web radio day of silence… because they changed their Terms Of Service to say that unaffiliated artists and labels waive their rights to be paid. Behold the juicy parts of the agreement for entities that control their own publishing:
I’ve stayed out of the whole argument over webcasters paying royalties issue because I believe the little blogger should be able to put up some streaming music that they like without having to jump through a million bureaucratic hoops or pay a fortune to do so. Although I feel somewhat betrayed by Last.fm’s sale to CBS, I still remain a fan of their model and recently re-upped with them as a paid listener.
While this argument has been raging between SoundExchange (the online and satellite royalty collection agency) and DiMA (Digital Media Association,) organizations like the A2IM (where I’m a member) are trying to sort out a fair solution to the matter.
This just came in… I’ll do some digging and check it out.
NEW YORK AND LOS ANGELES, July 11, 2007 – EMI Music has formed a joint venture record label with music industry veterans Bryan Coleman, John Greenberg and Tim Heyne, best known for working with multi-platinum rock group Nickelback via their Union Entertainment Group (UEG) management company. The new label, called Audionest, will take a full-service approach to supporting and promoting the careers of musical artists, focusing on all aspects of the artist’s career, in recording, and in other non-recording areas as well. EMI’s Caroline Music will work closely with UEG on promoting and distributing Audionest artists. (more…)
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.
From NPR: “Many fans of Internet radio will be tuning in to nothing on Tuesday, as many Webcasters participate in ‘A National Day of Silence.’ It is a protest against what Webcasters call excessive royalties on the music they stream. New royalty rates are set to take effect in little more than three weeks.”
The new royalty law that was passed could have a major effect on internet radio, most notably indie artists and companies. Looks like yet another blow to the industry as the new laws could put many of the internet radio companies out of business.
TuneCore is a digital aggregator with a twist. Instead of delivering music to a company that perpetually takes a percentage of your sales, for one flat price they’ll host and deliver your media to iTunes and a host of other ala-carte digital services. I recently talked to owner Jeff Price via IM.
Let’s talk about overall direction of new media and the music business. You were a “pioneer” in the biz going from SpinArt as a successful label… to eMusic. Explain the differences in the old model vs. the new model.
The old model is about generating revenue from the “exploitation” of the music. We need to “sell” music to make money, and artists gets a small % of the money (band royalty.) The food chain is artist creates music label, mass produces it onto and delivers some kind of finished product to a distribution company That company has a huge warehouse, a huge staff, insures the inventory,etc. The distribution company also has field staff that walks into stores to get shelf space, fronts money for co-ops. In return - the distributor takes a % of the money, so if you sell for $10 they take 25% and the rest goes to the label. The artist gets $1.35 - $1.75 from each sale
This is kind of old news, as I think it happened a few weeks ago, but Yahoo and others report (via Billboard/Reuters) that Victory and a few other labels have pulled out of the eMusic MP3 subscription service. “at least six eMusic partners — three of whom were listed among eMusic’s top 60 labels this week — that plan either to pull their catalog from the service entirely or to limit content to back-catalog tracks when their current licensing deals expire.”
Gerd Leonhard , noted music industry futurist, comments on his blog: “Bizarre! To the guys at those labels: it’s not eMusic ist’s the USERS who are demanding these prices per song, and therefore impacting how much you are making.”
Here are my thoughts on the matter. EMusic pricing encourages experimentation and allows music fans to make an affordable purchase of music that they might otherwise find too pricey. Fact is, if the music isn’t available on eMusic, they wouldn’t earn anything at all from them. In fact, instead of sending that fan who heard a song on a podcast to iTunes, it may actually send that customer with that impulse intent-to-acquire (vs. intent to purchase) to a file-sharing service.
Due to their overhead and burn rate, Labels like Victory are still married to the “fuck the customer” model, where the music is locked behind a big ticket gateway of a .$99 download or $16.98 Deluxe CD package. With music retail shrinking on a daily basis, and the rumblings about dropping DRM altogether, combined with the oversupply of music in the marketplace they have no choice but to try and strongarm eMusic into compliance. They’re all in revenue freefall and can’t accept that Music 1.0 is coming to a close at a increasingly rapid pace.
The only thing I really don’t like about eMusic as a label, is that they don’t pay for those “free” tracks downloaded with trials, and that could add up, especially for popular titles. But in the grand scheme, i believe their subscribe-to-own model should be embraced and labels should stick with ‘em.
Today at work, a co-worker commented to me “I don’t pay for music. It’s free. Maybe I’ll pay for a band live, but if it’s out there I’m taking it. Who cares if they make money. When they fail, someone else will be right there to take their place.” Being that both of us are in the content-for-sale biz, I was pretty surprised to hear that. So are artists destined for a life of poverty in this bold new area?
Some think so. According to an article at today’s Digital Music Wire, one attendee at the Millennials Conference felt that “In the future, musicians will make as much money as potters.” Article author Scott Goldberg then goes on to point out that, although he listens to more music now than ever before, he buys none of it. The simple reason ” music has dropped astronomically in value” due to oversupply.
A more rosy picture is painted by Jeff from SpinArt Records and Tunecore. I recently interviewed him about the model for his business (that will be posted in full shortly on IndieHQ.) He thinks that the democratization of distribution (for which he is the messenger) lays the foundation for artists to stand out without the need for labels. How will they rise above the unwashed masses? Through digital media exposure in an era where the collective hive mind of social media and networks is just as powerful as the MTV of the past. To demonstrate, he pointed out that this band’s HORRIBLE HORRIBLE cover of Europe’s Final Countdown is potentially better known than SpinArt artist Frank Black (of The Pixies), who’s had more traditional marketing dollars spent on his behalf over the years than that band ever will.
The third perspective on this was added during a recent Lefsetz series of posts concerning the band Cartel and their reality show marketing gimmick. One comment was that carreer artists are dead, and that all anyone can hope for now is a flashmob, courtesy of some hip-for-the-moment video.
Clearly I know that there’s simply too much out there, and the “middle class” of labels either have to step up into massive marketing, or return to the basements from whence they came. This inability to have a sustainable business by selling music is the reason my label hasn’t released any new stuff in almost a year. The adage of “paper not refusing ink” in the digital age is now at epidemic proportions and I don’t have the time to “do it for fun” or pockets deep enough to compete with the likes of a Trustkill, Ferret, or Victory.
Ongoing there will be two classes of artists. On the one side you’ll those who are funded heavily (through talent incubators a/k/a label-managers) and can perpetually dominate social media with tons of new free content. In an ironic twist, they’ll also be the ones who’ve sold their entire creative lives to that same talent incubator, who owns them lock, stock, and barrel. On the flipside there will be those that write good songs but are unable to keep up the rapid pace of a marketplace that changes at hyperspeed, those whose main sense of satisfaction will be those 5 days where their homemade video rises to the top.
By now, I imagine most of you have at least heard bits and pieces about the marketing for Nine Inch Nails latest record. Well, I just finished reading a great breakdown about the whole campaign and wanted to share the link. This is probably the most forward thinking idea I’ve seen by those trying to adapt to the extremely volatile music landscape and surprisingly enough was done by the same people who did the marketing for one of the biggest failed products of recent times, the Zune…
Just a quick one… Mashable! has an amazing post on 
TuneCore is a digital aggregator with a twist. Instead of delivering music to a company that perpetually takes a percentage of your sales, for one flat price they’ll host and deliver your media to iTunes and a host of other ala-carte digital services. I recently talked to owner Jeff Price via IM.
Previous Articles
