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.
I had been considering getting a new Myspace account for personal use as my current personal Myspace profile is a vessel for spammers all over the world and I don’t dare look at my bulletins as there are not enough days in a week to keep up with all of the bands that want you to vote for them to play warped or listen to their new tracks. I have gotten to the point where I just dread logging onto my Myspace account.
I logged in today and found the new (at least new to me) option to Block Users integrated into the Myspace inbox. I plan to take back my Myspace profile and block every one I don’t know and that will start with you Pastor Joe! This was a smart move on Myspace’s part as it has been getting absolutely ridiculous.
But with options like this, one must further question Myspace’s relevance into promoting your act. Sure, the site is great for fans to listen to your new tracks, but most casual Myspace users are certain to block all of the band spammers and having 1,000,000 friends really won’t matter anymore.
We had at one time advocated using programs like Eek Adder to add friends like crazy, but I no longer feel that this is worth your time. Sure, you can add lots of friends, but people are getting inundated with hundreds of messages from bands and your individual message just doesn’t carry the same weight.
As with everything, if you write good songs and offer something special, people will take notice. If you don’t offer something compelling, it doesn’t matter how many friends you have or how many bulletins you send.
I consider myself very fortunate that I became a passionate music fan during the early 90’s when Punk Rock ruled independent music. I would like to think that I would have steered clear of what is considered Emo these days if i was just now discovering it, but thank god I grew up with Punk Rock.
And if you ask me about Emo, I will tell you about bands like Sunny Day Real Estate, Braid, Get Up Kids, Promise Ring, Jets To Brazil, and definitely NOT Fall Out Boy, Panic at the Disco, AFI, or the Used.
Please make sure you watch the video at the link above and share it with your parents so they can be aware of the Emo Epidemic.
This may be a long shot, but I figured that some of the readers of IndieHQ might be able to help me with some contacts in publishing. A good friend of mine, Scott Kaplan, and myself have been working on a book and are ready to start sending out some sample chapters. The book is called “Talking Shit, the Number One Book About Number Two”. The idea behind the book is pretty simple. Everyone has experienced or heard a story of someone shitting their pants and the usual crazy stories that are involved when this happens. We have been compiling many of our favorite stories and have had the idea to write a book. Invariably when one of these stories come up, someone always has a story to share and at this point, we have yet to see another book like it.
I know very little about the publishing world, but I think we have a good idea. I just wanted to know if anyone has any contacts in publishing and if you do, would you mind sharing them? If you have any suggestions for sending out press packs, that would also be helpful. I am approaching it much like I would if I were in a band trying to get the attention of a record label, but any advice would be greatly appreciated. We had a meeting last night about our game plan and if we don’t get any interest from publishers, we will publish it on our own. Ideally, we will get hooked up with a publisher with a good distribution network and the marketing muscle to get this book out and about. I think this book would be a great title for a chain like Urban Outfitters.
For those of you not familiar with my State of the Unions, I use these posts as a forum to discuss the things going on with my label (Suburban Home), my Vinyl imprint (Vinyl Collective), my music industry blog-site (IndieHQ), and other happenings in my life. The posts are usually very long so make sure you have some time on your hands if you decide to read further. If you do, know that I usually discuss the inner workings of all of my endeavors for whatever that’s worth. (more…)
Every week, I write about the indie sales chart where artists are selling between 700 and 100,000 copies each week. Today, I want to share with you the numbers involved in one of my releases scanning 1,000 copies. The release is Tim Barry’s “Rivanna Junction”. Yes, I realize that 1,000 copies scanned is not worth mentioning for most labels. Given the market conditions and our very small marketing budget, scanning 1,000 copies actually means something to us at Suburban Home. I have worked out the numbers and would like to share them with you. To spare most of you the nerdy details, you don’t have to continue reading. Click the link though if you want to geek out over our numbers.
I just got a phone call from Eric LeMasters who handles label relations at Koch. He was phoning me on his cell phone while at a sales conference at Cancun. Eric is an avid IndieHQ reader and a nice guy to boot. He called to welcome me to Koch and explained that although there are still a lot of questions, Koch were committed to music and are excited to be working with us. If only Koch had bought Navarre a month earlier I would also be at the sales conference in Cancun this year drinking Corona’s by the beach.
I feel a lot better after the phone call, but I am still a bit nervous about how it will all shake out. Wish me luck.
I just spoke to a rep at Navarre who I deal with for Suburban Home and the conversation does little to put me at ease. The staff, in a meeting on Friday May 11th, were told that their entire music distribution division would be cut as of May 31st. As of May 31st, Koch will be handling the distribution of all of the Navarre titles which includes mine. The rep thought that I would have to negotiate my terms with someone at Koch. I currently have really favorable terms with Navarre and am afraid at the changes that will have to be made through Koch. My records are manufactured through Navarre, I have retained the handling of my digital distribution, and I currently sell to a number of smaller/mom and pop distros which are all terms I want to keep. Wish me luck and know that I will report my findings as they come.
The consolidation of Koch and Navarre and the cutting of staff is what is happening in the entire industry, but it really hits home for me in this situation. There are so many great folks at Navarre and I try to imagine what all of these people will end up doing for work. Where do you go if you have been working in this industry for 10 or 20 years? My heart goes out to all of them. Wish me luck that working with Koch will work out for me.
As reported in Punknews, California’s Mad Caddies have launched their own brand of hot sauce which is described as “slow delicious punch in the face.”
The sauce was produced with sauce maker Danny Cash and you can check out a bottle on the band’s merch page.
As music sales continue to go down the toilet, I think we will see bands doing some pretty off the wall things. Here is a perfect example of what a band might do if they were so inclined. Man, I would love to have a Suburban Home Hot Sauce and I have a slogan: “You don’t own Suburban Home hot sauce, you rent it.” And I would name it something like Fiarrhea.
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.
Every week, I write about the indie sales chart where artists are selling between 700 and 100,000 copies each week. Today, I want to share with you the numbers involved in one of my releases scanning 1,000 copies. The release is 
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