AUSTIN, Texas – You’re a born rock star – you know it, your friends know it and your parents know it. One day you’re going to rule the charts, make millions of dollars, be featured on “MTV Cribs” and sell out sports arenas across the globe while thousands of fans worship your every move.
As wonderful as that lifestyle may seem, the fact is it’s nearly impossible to accomplish on hopes and dreams alone. However, if music really is your passion (and you want to actually make some money), consider going independent.
At this year’s South by Southwest festival in Austin, unsigned musicians from around the world gathered to listen to professionals involved in the music business talk about the many advantages to being an independent musician.
While it certainly helps to have talent, even the trumpet player outside the Metro can get his music out to the masses and make money by using new tools and technology recently created on the Internet for musicians.
As an example, let’s examine two fictional musicians, Steve and Beth. They both have a solid fan base from their colleges and hometowns, and both want to make some serious cash from doing what they love most: making music.
Steve is convinced that in order to do so, however, he must first spend a lot of money in order to make a convincing demo recording. He books a session at the Electric Ladyland recording studio in New York, because that’s where Hendrix and countless other greats mastered their craft, and he figures the ghost of Jimmy will make him sound better.
He then shops his demo around to several executives and audio and recording personnel at the major record labels – Sony, BMI, Warner and Universal – only to have them reply that his sound is not marketable and that he must fix not only his music, but also his overall image. Finally, after several years, recordings and tattoos, he signs a record deal with a major label.
Upon signing, the label gives Steve $1 million to record his new record with industry professionals, which he also uses to buy a new Hummer. Armed with a master album, the label distributes the CD to record stores around the world, as well as on digital stores such as iTunes. Unfortunately, Steve’s CD is released the same week as Kanye West’s new album, and after six months it only sells 50,000 copies. The label did not make any money from Steve’s record, and Steve will spend the rest of his life paying back the money to the label that they gave him to record the album. Steve is forced to sell back his Hummer. Oh, and Steve does not own the master tracks to any of his songs. They now belong to the label, even if that means they sit on a shelf somewhere for the next 20 years.
Beth, on the other hand, decides to take more of a proactive approach in marketing and selling her music – and here is your SXSW lesson. With the recording technology and computer software available today, she invests $500 in a sound interface that connects her guitar and microphones to her computer, which has one of several pieces of digital audio workstation (DAW) software on it such as Pro Tools LE, Apple Logic Express or even Apple’s Garage Band.
Beth makes a solid, convincing CD that sounds like it was recorded in a big, expensive studio rather than her small, one-bedroom apartment. She creates a MySpace page where anybody can listen to her new tracks, and then decides to sell her CD on the Internet through a service called CD Baby, an online music distributor that sells artists’ music through both CD sales and digital downloads from online stores such as iTunes and eMusic. Like Steve, Beth sells 50,000 copies of her album through a combination of CD sales and digital downloads. However, she charges $10 a copy, and actually gets to keep 60 to 70 percent of her sales after the distributor’s fees. Beth is now $300,000 richer – and that’s just the beginning.
Because Beth is an independent musician, she owns the rights to her own master tracks, and can therefore use them however she wants, including in television commercials, independent films and video games.
She submits her music to a company called Magnatune, an Internet record label that licenses her music to different people, splits sales 50/50 with its musicians and is also non-exclusive – so Beth still owns her master tracks. By now, Beth has made enough money through her own CD sales, touring and licensing that she can afford to buy more expensive recording equipment, new instruments and a new touring van. Oh, and she can afford to eat, too.
Other opportunities exist for independent musicians as well, including company sponsorships.
“Lots of different companies pay millions a year to sponsor bands,” said Panos Panay, CEO of Sonicbids.com and a panelist at this year’s SXSW conference. “These opportunities did not exist 10 or 15 years ago.”
Panay’s company, Sonicbids.com, is an online service consisting of more than 60,000 musicians that helps artists and bands create a digital press kit. The Web site serves as a tool for musicians to get tour opportunities and sponsors, connect with clubs and even link up with other bands from different states and countries to “gig swap.”
An example Panay gave of company sponsorship was the music CD that comes with every new Jeep.
“Ninety percent of Jeep’s CD was major label content, but they allocated one or two tracks to independent music – and it was really hard to tell the difference between a track that cost a million to produce and something that was produced in somebody’s bedroom,” he said.
Gray Gannaway, head of digital distribution and licensing at online music distributor CD Baby and also a panelist at SXSW, stressed the importance of digital sales for independent artists in the Internet era.
“Digital sales are a third of our revenue,” he said. It’s all the more reason for artists and bands with MySpace pages to begin selling their music online.
Panay added that it’s also important for musicians to “think outside of the narrow box of ‘record sales’ or just the ‘music business.'” If you have a musical idea or message, it’s imperative to “get people to listen to it. The Internet provides a great way to do that,” he said.
Many well-known artists such as Jack Johnson and OAR started off as independent musicians, using inexpensive tools such as CD Baby to help jump-start their careers and get noticed by the major labels.
The fact is, never before have so many people been listening to music at once – especially with the advent of the iPod generation. Because of new, inexpensive technology available in recording, CD distribution and countless tools on the Internet, there are many opportunities for artists and musicians with all different levels of seriousness to make it on their own.
