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Indie Artists Support Peer To Peer
dpilgrim writes "Alex Veiga at the Associated Press has a good story on indie artists voicing support for file sharing networks. While not a new topic on Slashdot, it's great to see musicians speaking out about the value of p2p as an alternative channel for reaching audiences. Choice quote from Veiga's article, on what it's like to pass muster before a mainstream media company: "For Sananda Maitreya... online music distribution gives him the freedom he says he lacked when he was signed with a major label in the 1980s under his former name, Terence Trent D'Arby. Back then, Maitreya recalled, committees had to sign off on any music released. 'The Beatles could not have faced that criteria and come up with anything other than the most mediocre, conservative music,' said Maitreya.""
If you look back, even major label artists get helped by P2P. Case in point: Radiohead. Their 2000 album Kid A wasn't promoted in any way, however a copy was leaked onto Napster before it was released. Millions downloaded it, and sales went right through the roof. The same thing happened a few years later with Hail To The Thief, which sold more copies than the previous two combined.
I personally own about $500/250GBP worth of music CDs, none of which I would have bought without P2P being there. It does help the record industry make money.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
The media distribution companies, whether music labels, movie producers, or stock photography corps, all understand that when communication becomes much easier among individuals their business model suffers. The only service they really offer is making media easy to find and get. The internet has done that for everyone now, and frankly, I'm surprised it is taking this long for individual artists to get on board. One of the problems that still is being worked out is open, well supported formats for sharing information. Look what RSS did for blogging and what it is doing to traditional journalism. Imagine what similar formats and application to support them can do for other individual producers of content.
Artists need money. Fortunately, audiences have money!
Artists don't need middlemen taking their money and screwing with their work. Fortunately, these days audiences don't need them either!
Peer to peer has a lot of potential, but up to now it has largely been disorganized. There is no easy way to go through a list of all the music, and no way to know which of the 1% of the songs are legitimate.
This means that the chance someone will download some indie music off kazaa is close to 0. There needs to be a way for artists to advertise their own, legal music on these networks. There are already websites that allow this, like http://www.garageband.coc. I think free download websites like this are a much better way for indie artists to spread their name.
Its these threats that's keeping indies like me down.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Yeah, that sounds just about like Terence Trent D'Arby.
I would agree that P2P helps the little artists. What is not as well known is that the label execs (many of whom I know and work with) rely on P2P statistics to decide which records to promote and which songs to shoot videos for.
A certain young artist from Sony just shot a $150,000 video, which will hit mtv2/vh1 next week. The original budget for the video was about $20,000, but after the song took off on the networks, the label delayed the album launch and put more money into the video.
Good point. The early Beatles were all about being managed. They started in Germany with the leathers, and came back and Brian put them in suits and made them mod.
They were as managed and as packaged as anything that comes from American or World Idol. The difference, of course, between them and Kelly Clarkson, is that they were brilliant musicians and songwriters.
The Beatles were steered by some sort of management comittee. Remember "Michelle"? The year it was released was 14 years after the year the name "Michelle" became the most popular name to give baby girls in Britain. Looking at the other Beatles albums, the pattern emerges. On the early albums, there is almost always a song using the most popular 14 or 15 year old girl's names in Britain, while on the latter ones, (basically after the Ed Sullivan appearance), there are songs using both these and the most popular US adolescent girl's names as well.
Anna, Julia, Lucy, Rita, Martha, Maggy (Mae), Penny, Pam, Honey, Sadie...
Beyond this, there's the required love song on every album, the required 3:22 long song for optimal AM play, and so on. Looking at when songs were actually recorded in studio, John and Paul uusually had to wait to record their favorites until someone in management was satisfied they had the required songs in the can.
Who is John Cabal?
the problem with music
by steve albini
excerpted from Baffler No. 5
Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end, holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed.
Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says, "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim it again, please. Backstroke."
And he does, of course.
I. A&R Scouts
Every major label involved in the hunt for new bands now has on staff a high-profile point man, an "A&R" rep who can present a comfortable face to any prospective band. The initials stand for "Artist and Repertoire," because historically, the A&R staff would select artists to record music that they had also selected, out of an available pool of each. This is still the case, though not openly.
These guys are universally young [about the same age as the bands being wooed], and nowadays they always have some obvious underground rock credibility flag they can wave. Lyle Preslar, former guitarist for Minor Threat, is one of them. Terry Tolkin, former NY independent booking agent and assistant manager at Touch and Go is one of them. Al Smith, former soundman at CBGB is one of them. Mike Gitter, former editor of XXX fanzine and contributor to Rip, Kerrang and other lowbrow rags is one of them. Many of the annoying turds who used to staff college radio stations are in their ranks as well.
There are several reasons A&R scouts are always young. The explanation usually copped-to is that the scout will be "hip" to the current musical "scene." A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer, and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences.
The A&R person is the first person to make contact with the band, and as such is the first person to promise them the moon. Who better to promise them the moon than an idealistic young turk who expects to be calling the shots in a few years, and who has had no previous experience with a big record company. Hell, he's as naive as the band he's duping. When he tells them no one will interfere in their creative process, he probably even believes it.
When he sits down with the band for the first time, over a plate of angel hair pasta, he can tell them with all sincerity that when they sign with company X, they're really signing with him and he's on their side. Remember that great, gig I saw you at in '85? Didn't we have a blast.
By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry scum. There is a pervasive caricature in popular culture of a portly, middle aged ex-hipster talking a mile-a-minute, using outdated jargon and calling everybody "baby." After meeting "their" A&R guy, the band will say to themselves and everyone else, "He's not like a record company guy at all! He's like one of us." And they will be right. That's one of the reasons he was hired.
These A&R guys are not allowed to write contracts. What they do is present the band with a letter of intent, or "deal memo," which loosely states some terms, and affirms that the band will sign with the label once a contract has been agreed on.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I directed a video recently for a band called The Decemberists who aren't on a major label. They have, however, drummed up a lot of mainstream press notice and attention and good sales for a true indie label band. Once the video was done, however, I got my obligatory MTV2 airings at weird times of the night. So how were we going to share it? There'd be a cruddy low res version which is barely what the band could afford to host. So we distributed via bittorrent directly. We literally gave their fans as high quality file as we could. In one week using only bittorrent and not including the low res Quicktime, we've had over 5000 downloads. This is in the same week that Universal Music Group (one of the titans) has declared that music videos will no longer be streamed for free. Wired ran an article with all the details here: Wired article on how to get around MTV And now? The band is at number 7 on the iTunes music store and 19 at amazon. That is with the marketing budget of a small indepdendent label. Rewards come to those artists who embrace and understand how to use this tech. BTW i kept trying to submit this story but to no avail.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.