The bilious stew of the music business at the turn of the millennium – and hope for deliverance (V)

Continuing from last week’s article:

For his last CD, Friedman solicited advance sales from his coterie of fans worldwide on the World Wide Web. He used the funds to put together a studio and record the album. Fans that ordered it in advance got their names in the liner notes, a certificate of thanks, and a copy of the CD.

Certain movements in music, after a short time in the major label limelight as the next big thing, continue via artist-owned labels or independents. The poster children for these artists are the “jam bands” who tour incessantly, play to avid crowds in clubs and small auditoriums, and generally fly under the radar of the mainstream record business. Producer and label owner Vic Steffens said:

I still contend that if you watch the developments in the jam scene, you can see that there is plenty of support for high-quality live music. If you think groups like Widespread Panic and Moe don’t make money, you are mistaken. These groups are not going to tank because their last CD slipped below 500K. Not that I have ANY problem with 500K and up of CDs… . It’s just not the only way.

Many of these DIY artists have discovered that the best way to get the word out is one contact at a time. To that end, some have even started to eschew clubs in favor of house concerts, where they perform for 40 – 80 people in a living room or family room. “I know artists who make a living doing just that!” said singer/songwriter Jenny Bruce; some of her compatriots might play 100 of these kinds of dates a year. “Yes, a living. From $30,000 to $150,000.”

A circuit of some 300 of these “venues” has sprung up across North America, a genuine grassroots movement, linked via the internet (check out houseconcerts.com). The door charge is $10 or $15 per person, most of which goes to the artist (the host serves snacks and drinks for money). That $400 – $1,200 a night is a lot more than most artists could make in clubs. For the fans, this kind of concert offers something that music used to be the center of: community. Some of the homeowners who host these shows have repeat customers, and mostly these customers are people in their 30s to 50s that lost audience looking for an early night out close to home.

 Those who can’t host a concert can always host a listening party. These events take place in homes and dorms, as a means of getting people to preorder CDs. The host gets swag – T-shirts, CDs, concert tickets. The attendees get to hear some possibly cool music and hang out with friends in a party atmosphere. “The best promotion a band can ever get is for a fan to talk about them,” said one band manager who uses these events to promote his bands’ releases.

“If a hard-core fan will spread the word to their community of friends, that’s better than radio or MTV or anything.” Artists have begun finding nontraditional niches. Tim and Ryan O’Neil, from New Prague, Minnesota, call themselves the Piano Brothers. They have found a niche audience of women 35 years of age and older. They’ve sold these women over a million CDs on their own Shamrock-N-Roll label. Having nothing to do with the traditional means of distribution, they sell their records through gift shops, grocery stores, craft shows, and wedding boutiques.

As indie labels proliferate, they have begun to take advantage of new media as well. In addition to selling their wares via the traditional means to the best of their ability – hiring independent distributors to get them into the chains that have room for them – they also sell them directly through their websites, often offering downloads as enticements or providing special deals directly to their known customers via e-mail.

Note also that some predict that the record industry might not merely become marginalized, but disappear altogether, Wolff’s “quaintly anachronistic business, catering to an aging clientele, dying out as the clientele does.” Music would still exist, of course, but would be ancillary to things like advertisements and movies. Recordings might still exist as stand-alone items, but in this scenario they would more likely be part of marketing campaigns, like the current one Toyota uses to promote its “youth brand,” Scion. The company pays for the recording and production of young artists and distributes the records to club and college radio stations (where the DJ is still surviving, if not always thriving) and gives away compilations to potential customers. Companies will use music as branding and enticement.