The Crimea release free album- Is this the future of music?

Good news for music fans, period. The industry has a tough time putting out no-talents that can perform live. Unless they go pure lip-synch, they're exposed. More room for genuine musicians to make it big.

Evan

 

Voxtrot is such a quality band. I'm so glad they got signed to a label and hopefully will start raking in the dough. I try not to miss a show if I can help it. Helps tremendously that they're Austin locals.

If they're publicly condoning filesharing then at least superficially they aren't all that much into the money aspect of what they do. Practically you'd have to question their motives (what would their label say?) but they make such quality music I'd believe they don't do it for the moolah.

I went to get their newest EP at Waterloo and it was like 17.99 for three freaking songs! That was when it first came out but OF COURSE I'll download it if they're not in town doing a show and it's $6 a song. Yikes!

 

I'm not sure where you get your Billboard numbers. All you have to do is read the sales for the week - there are several sites that have them. Nickelback has sold 4 million. Daughtery has sold 2.5 million. People still sell a lot including downloads.

Ultimately, artists have to get paid and concerts won't do it. One of the things that the WSJ failed to mention was that concerts include shows at little clubs like Walter's that hold fewer than 200 people. Even sold out at $15/per, that's $2500 before the promoter, the bar, the manager and the crew get their cut.

Bob Lefsetz publishes a rundown every month or so of tickets sold to shows. It's abyssmal. Yes, there are more shows, but shows are SIGNIFICANTLY smaller meaning bands either have to play 2 or 3 times as many to break even or limit their playing to big festivals, etc. Most bands that would've played large theater gigs in the 70's and 80's are playing small clubs today and that same ratio translates to most levels of popular music. Travelling around in a van 40 weeks out of the year is NOT conducive to artistry, no matter how good the band is live.

This is particularly true in an era where fans demand new material on an almost constant basis thanks to the internet. Bands are releasing singles and EP's as quickly as they can write and record them (another thing not terribly conducive to great music - many of the great songs ever written were done during long down times for artists lasting months, even years). They limit tours to a few weeks at a time with as much as a couple months in between other than big festivals. It's the only way they can continue to pay the bills AND still make music.

Most bands rely on the consistency of their fans and young music fans today are as fickle as ever. With the demand by labels for hit after hit and the indie scene a MASS of hip bands with little or no future because they rely more on gimmick than they do on great songs and quality performances, most of the bands left really struggle.

But this isn't the main problem with the touring-as-your-primary-revenue model. The main problem is that young artists RELY on CD sales, merchandise sales and other non-show revenue to get them started. They don't have the ability to command $1000, $2000 or $10,000 per night for shows on top of whatever the band sells at the show (tshirts, etc).

I've been working on booking gigs for my own band and I've done this before. As an unsigned, original rock band, you get virtually NO guarantee at any venue. If you are lucky, the club owner will feel sorry for you and throw you $200-$250. You have to make enough on merchandise, CD sales at the show and people showing up in order to even come close to breaking even.

Generally, when you are starting out and if you are REALLY lucky, your "tours" will break even. Mostly, you'll go in the hole just to travel and perform when, in reality, you can probably do just as much promotion without doing a show through radio (indie and otherwise) promotion, online promotion and various forms of word-of-mouth exercises that help move you along. Hell, OK Go were nobody until a stupid YouTube video.

Most bands would LOVE to go play on a regular basis and have it be their meal ticket, but they just can't afford to do it until they already have a following, which they generally can't acquire without playing in front of people.

Ultimately, that is not an efficient or particularly effective way to grow new great music. Like any other job, musicians have to make money and the last time it was profitable as a relative unknown to make money touring was in the 70's and early 80's. Since then, it is almost impossible to make money touring unless you are well-known and even that doesn't gaurantee a good payday.

 

It totally depends on the show. For the more popular independent or small signed acts, they usually have promoters bid on them. The promoter bids to put on the show and the band chooses based on what is the best deal. There are very few promoters in Houston that work with those types of bands, however, so a lot of them just book themselves.

Clubs negotiate deals based on the band. The larger venues get as much as 50% of the door plus, at times, a cut of merchandise. The smaller the venue, the less they take of the door expecting to get alcohol sales, unless it is an all ages show and then they take a big chunk of the door.

If there are ticket sales in advance, the ticket broker gets a cut as well.

Live music venues, particularly in Houston, are a losing proposition. A VERY small percentage survive - in fact, a much smaller percentage than restaurants. Your success rate climbs if you are also a restaurant and if you have cover bands, but not by much. It's a TOUGH business and I don't blame them for what they do with bands. It just sucks to try and get a venue to promise anything.

I've been doing some number crunching with our two weeks of touring. If we had to rent a VAN, we couldn't afford it. The cost of the van, hotels, food, fuel, etc, would be too much. We'd never come close to breaking even. As a result, we'll take one of my band member's mini van and rent a small trailer ($10/day). We still probably won't break even, but at least we won't go a couple thousand in the hole.

It is just hard to tour. I can understand why artists who go out for 6 or 8 months need to take 6 months off just to recover.

 

ive always wondered why there were so many more live music venues in austin compared to houston. while houston is tons larger then austin.

but what you wrote made me understand it i think a little bit more.

 

Didn't the Artic Monkeys do this same thing with massive success?

 

they have always attributed there success to myspace i think

 

Proof that people will buy crap shaped like a CD.

 

Just a quick note on the Arctic Monkeys...

Things are quite different in Great Britain. Bands there can develop a popular following in clubs and because the country is very small, word can spread quickly. It is VERY difficult for them to make the jump to America and usually requires a LOT of dilligent promotion by both the band and the record label/management company.

On Austin v. Houston...

Much of the reason why Austin has a much greater music scene is because the demographics are COMPLETELY different. Houston has a thriving jazz, r&b, rap and hip hop community because we are decidedly more urban. There are few if any from that genre in Austin where the demographic is mostly affulent college kids, who listen primarily to independent music, rock, roots, etc.

The other MAJOR factor is the overwhelming support for the Austin music scene by its government and citizens. They have no pro sports franchise and very few other cultural amenities. Sixth Street and area clubs ARE their primary source of culture. The city has done a lot to make the area far more hospitable to music. Houston has no zoning, no protection for clubs and musician, no real support on the whole despite the fact that we have some of the most successful and well-respected art organizations in the world.

Most of those labels are funded by majors who do their distribution. There are VERY few truly indie labels that can function without the aid of a benefactor label. Wilco was dropped by Reprise and picked up by Nonesuch a few years back. Even though Nonesuch is an "independent," all of its backing is from Warner Brothers, just like Reprise. Even though they switched labels, technically, the same conglomerate is writing their royalty checks.

The indies who do make money usually focus on representing a niche market like bluegrass, jazz, roots music, etc. There are fewer complications and a built in market for artists unlike rock and pop, where popularity is much more difficult to come by.

 

Jeff, 100% agree on all your points. How long have you been in the scene?

I like how you debunked the myth that bands make most of their money from shows.

I want to know your opinion on downloading. Do you think theres a happy medium for artist/consumer? I definitely see the net as a good way to cut out the middle man, but without a big somebody backing your band it seems way too difficult to get your music to people who actually wanna listen.

Take MySpace for example. It's beyond saturated with crappy, crappy, crappy bands. Prefab comments from bands on MySpace are a slight step below popup ads nowadays as far as I'm concerned. I wish there was a MySpace-like site that screened your music before you could post it up, with rules on spamming other's pages.

 

I too would like to see more the connection of downloaded music and how it contributes more struggles for startup musicians. Seen the business model described somewhat, and definitely see how it cuts away from profits. Still for some reason can't make a distinct connection of how dl'ed music affects a group's popularity. In a sense, don't they have to be popular to be downloaded?

 

Ultimately, that is not an efficient or particularly effective way to grow new great music. Like any other job, musicians have to make money and the last time it was profitable as a relative unknown to make money touring was in the 70's and early 80's. Since then, it is almost impossible to make money touring unless you are well-known and even that doesn't guarantee a good payday.

That period, 70 and early 80s (and probably late 60s could be added too), was the perfect storm for music. Kids took their music seriously, listened to college radio stations (which played a lot of indie music), and made a point to go to live shows (where a lot of local indie acts could get exposure). That time has come and gone.

The kids nowadays ...

 

I've been playing for 20+ years and, being a bass player, I had work almost from day 1.

My opinion has changed on downloading. When it first started, I was wholeheartedly against peer-to-peer networks because they were taking things that they would normally have to buy. I still don't care for the argument that it is the physical disc that you are paying for, not the music. I think that is not only a weak argument, but a bizarre justification for taking something. I also do believe in some form of copyrights though even my opinion of that has changed quite a bit.

The bottom line is you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Now that people CAN download things, they will. The RIAA in its utter idiocy has resorted to litigating the problem and that will fail just as their entire industry is failing. Of course, that's because they built their house on the sandy shores of quick-fix-pop-iconry, but that's for another time.

Ultimately, I think the best model will likely be some sort of low-cost, direct-to-the-artist model OR, recently suggested, a basic cost passed on to any service that provides downloads that will then provide tracking to Soundscan for the purposes of paying the artists - similar to how they are paid now for publishing royalties.

Right now there is a void in the industry because we're in between the industry glory days of the late 80's and early 90's and whatever is coming next - very likely a return to the small indie label of the 1960's. I really like the idea the Barenaked Ladies have used - producing their own material, selling it, making the TRACKS (i.e. the broken down individual tracks on each song in ProTools) available to anyone for re-mixing, etc, and having a single management company handle EVERYTHING from touring to promotion to distribution tracking.

The management company gets a flat fee of 10 or 15 percent on EVERYTHING. That's more of a traditional business model, something that has seemed to exist outside the music world for quite a while. Still not sure that will solve how to MAKE money, but it sure could re-structure the way bands do business.

I think that there will be a better MySpace. It's funny. Everyone is hopping on the social networking bandwagon. Clear Channel is doing a social networking site for its radio stations. They already have a music site. TV stations are building MySpace knock-offs. They don't realize that the popularity of MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other web 2.0 inventions is based on the organic nature of the internet. People built them for FUN and then found their business potential, not the other way around.

Because MySpace IS clunky and not a particularly great way to influence people, I think something else will come along. Hell, most of the cool kids prefer places like Facebook and even SecondLife for that matter as alternatives. LastFM is an interesting concept for music, but they still don't have interfaces easy for bands to use and I think musicians will do a better job driving a site like that than the average listener, who tends to be disengaged and mostly disinterested.

Personally, I think it's a great time to be a musician because there are so many more opportunities available. I'm an optimist though. I think the world will adjust and the people who only want to be pop stars will find other interests when the music business won't support them or they'll move onto commercial success with the mainstream industry.

As for the rest of us, I think we need to put away the notions of mega stardom and focus on making great music. I've always believed that if I could make a good income or second income from the thing that I love most, that would be great. Several magazines have written stories about the "part-time artist" who works a creative, flexible job that leaves time for the pursuit of music. "House Concerts" are beginning to take the place of standard venues, especially for jam bands, country and folk artists. It's just a changing world and we need to adapt.

 

I will disagree with you on one thing and that is that kids don't take music seriously today. I believe they do. I just don't believe that, like the 60's, 70's and 80's, music is the voice of the generation. Today, technology is that voice - the internet, video games, etc.

Kids still love music, but it doesn't speak FOR them like it did in previous eras. The result is that music is more background noise for a lifestyle instead of the predominant factor in that lifestyle.

To use an overly simplistic example, the music from film during the 70's and 80's in particular was incredibly important to the telling of the story. The other day I posted the original Star Wars trailer and one of the first things you notice is the absence of John Williams score. It's like the thing is naked. You can't hear "Don't You Forget About Me" and not think about The Breakfast Club. Even anti-hero films of the 70's like MASH had "Suicide is Painless."

We used music to help us better connect to other media. Today, it's just aural wallpaper that is used as a device to convey an emotion. A perfect example is the use of the classical composition "Carmina Burana" used in everything from Capital One ads to a million trailers. Most people don't realize that only a TINY segment of the composition - the movement "O Fortuna" - is used in these trailers, commercials, etc. Most of the composition is quiet and even happy.

But, some smart marketing guy out there probably heard this one part and though, "Oooo, that's scary sounding." Instant soundtrack.

In today's world, however, it is used over and over and over again because it is familiar and gives an instant feeling to what we are watching. Aural wallpaper.

Like you said, the days of music as the centerpiece for youth culture has come and gone.

 

Society has become far far too visual

Rocket River

 

I don't necessarily thing society is "too" anything. I think things are just different today for music than they used to be. Technology has altered a lot of the ways we do things as humans. Like any new invention, sometimes that's a great thing and sometimes, not so much.

The light bulb allowed us to have artificial light, but it also caused us to stay up later and work longer hours.

It's the nature of the beast.