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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. --
Now if only someone ever listened to what the artists said...
Or to indie artists in general.
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.
The Beatles have ripped off every single band after them. That's about as Conservative as anyone can get.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
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!
I'm not sure that the Beatles are a good example here. By the time they started doing really revolutionary stuff on Revolver, they'd already had 10 #1 singles. I'd suspect that any artist who reached that point would have a lot more freedom in what they did.
My userid is prime!
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.
That quote was seen on another article talking about the Grokster case. I read it the other day.
There are a few label artists that have filed amicus briefs with the court as well, the rock band Heart being one of them. They've been using p2p (the "weed" application) to distribute new material. Heart may not have any chart topping hits right now, but they've been around since the 1970's and have been a consistant solid touring act. Howard Leese (guitarist) still owns the "Bad Animals" recording studio up in Seattle.
Another 70's artist, Janis Ian, has also thrown her support behind p2p. After seeing older tracks winding up on p2p networks, they noticed that her older albums had in increase in sales.
p2p is great for indie artists, true, but it's also nice to see some longtime "major label" artists throwing their names behind it as well.
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.
This from the perspective of an "indie" musician:
P2P distribution + web advertising = no more requirement for RIAA to promote and sell your album for you.
ProTools = no more requirement for RIAA to supply you with a "professional" recording studio
ProTools + P2P distribution + web advertising = no more RIAA requirement PERIOD.
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
Most want some tracks shared, but others kept for CDs.
It's misleading to say that musicians favor P2P without considering what portion of their catalog they'd like to be shared.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Does this mean you feel guilty when you hear a song on the radio? The whole point of "indie artists support P2P" is to find better promotional distribution now that the musical community has outgrown the limits of clamped-down radio. Major labels have always had a stranglehold on radio distribution, but now we're in a world where smaller artists and labels have the power, technology and distribution to receive just as much attention as the artist who suckles at ClearChannel or MTV's teat. P2P is a way to get people to hear imperfect copies of songs - much like radio, but with more control. Does this create freeloaders? Sure, just as cassette tapes did in the 80's, but even if it's to a grander scale, the tape-to-purchase ratio of the 80's is nowhere near the mp3-to-purchase ratio of today - you can make some serious money from downloaders, oftentimes through ticket and merch sales even more so than album sales. "Most artists have not given their permission" - that's not the case, because if someone releases a CD, they want it promoted. They want to be heard so they can make some goddamn money. Consider P2P distribution a "marketing expense" and it makes complete sense. It costs less to seed a torrent and give away a few free copies of an album than it does to whip up a huge batch of flyers, for crying out loud!
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.
It is quite a bit cheaper to produce your own music now than it used to be:
$500 - 1.4 GHZ P4 computer w/24bit soundcard - parts built by myself - I was able to find some good deals - for example I spent $10 for the case.
$75 - 24bit compatible multitrack recording software (N-Track)
$99 - good quality condenser mic
$79 - good quality cardoid mic
$25 - two mic stands
$30 - enough DIN cable to choke a horse (for connecting the mics to the mixing board)
$50 - decent 6 channel mixing board
$30 - misc other gear (RCA cables etc...)
$60 - BOSE computer speakers (excellent sound quality and onboard amp and 2 inputs - for mixing down your stereo master).
----
$948 - Total (not including instruments - I assume if you are a musician you already have your instrument).
So, for about a grand you can have your own home recording studio that can produce as good sound quality as any professional studio out there. Of course, you have to spend the time to learn how to properly record sound - but there are books out there you can buy that take you through it in detail - from how to properly set up an acoustic environment to microphone placement to setting recording levels and how parametric equalization works etc...
Recording ain't cheap for those who can't or don't know how to do it themselves. Those who can do. They are doing it today and going indie, or even posting their tunes for free if they are not interested in the business side of music. http://music.myspace.com has a good selection - and there are other sites as well that allow users to post their MP3 recordings for download and/or streaming.
With the sorry state of pop music today, more and more people are finding a viable alternative online via free downloads and sales of independently produced music. With the closure of traditional outlets for advertising certain genres (Rolling Stone is reporting that Clear Channel is closing down a large number of Rock stations in favor of urban/hip hop formats - at the same time as we are seeing a renewal in interest in Rock! Where will Rock artists go to get exposure? I think it will be the web - and in a big way due to the lack of air-time in the traditional form).
Anyway, I believe the traditional big record labels are going to be around in the future, but they are not going to be as 'big' as they once were - and quality music that is not spoon-fed vanilla pop will be more and more a web phenomenon.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain