Musician Coaching:

Tell me how Mom and Pop came about and what is it like to run a modern label?  Why did you opt for a new situation given that you were the President of Sire and working side by side with the label’s founder Seymour Stein?

MG:

I think the Sire experience was incredibly empowering and very satisfying. Previously, I had been thinking of starting my own label.  But when you’ve grown up listening to KROQ and Depeche Mode, Echo and the Bunnymen, and The Replacements, and somebody calls you up and says, “Hey, we want you to be the president of Sire Records,” well, I couldn’t resist!

Musician Coaching:

How was it working with Seymour Stein?

MG:

We both worked for Tom (Whalley), which allowed us to both thrive and build a relationship. I will forever look back on the experience with Seymour as being one of the most gratifying of my career. Anyone that has worked with Seymour knows how inspiring and amazing he can be. It was one factor that made it extremely difficult for me to leave.  With Sire, which had been so revered, we respected the history of the label. We were able to sign Regina Spektor, Tegan and Sara, and Against Me, building up a diverse roster. I remember at one point we did an Alternative Press ad with eight bands. To be able to do a two-page ad and have all eight bands on there and a) not get any calls from any of them saying, “I can’t believe you put me in an ad with this band or that band,” and b) to have it be diverse was a validation of our ambition.  That year, having three acts at Coachella and three acts at Bamboozle the very next weekend was really satisfying.

Musician Coaching:

Why Mom and Pop? What was the catalyst to make you start, and what’s different about your new label?

MG:

For major labels, deals revolving around the delivery of four to five albums, as well as access to 360 rights are important for sustaining that model.  A lot of the artists I was gravitating to were artists that were probably not pre-disposed to wanting to do those kinds of deals. When you’re in a bigger company, 180,000 units is often perceived to be a bit of a disappointment.  In a smaller label, however, 180,000 is a huge accomplishment.  That can make money for both the artist and the label.

I felt like I was sending a lot of artists down the street because we didn’t have the ability to do short-term deals or deals that didn’t have 360 components in them.  It was extremely limiting. I wanted to be in a situation where whatever we were able to build and grow, which would be satisfying and exciting to everyone. It just seemed like the time to try to be in a situation that allowed more flexibility.

I’m having a blast doing this, and we like the ability to interact with RED Distribution and make the decisions.  Not having to go through long, complicated meetings with large numbers of people is a welcome relief. The lack of politics is so incredibly liberating I cannot even tell you. I enjoy having the freedom, deal-wise, and support from Peter [Mensch] and Cliff [Burnstein](the founding partners of Q-Prime).

Musician Coaching:

Tell me how the company works. Tell me about what the process is and how the process has changed for you, not only since the landscape has changed, but since you’re at a new label. Is there a philosophy or is it case by case?

MG:

Developing and breaking acts is somewhat subjective.  The benchmarks that define a broken or developing act are different now.  Artists that are able to sustain their careers can do so through selling fewer records and building strong touring.  Lucrative careers can be built through publishing and sync deals.  The rules and criteria of success and breaking bands are changing as we speak.  Remaining flexible is of the utmost importance.

Musician Coaching:

What is the process of furthering an artist’s career in this age where artists have so many tools available to them?

MG:

The bones of Mom and Pop come from management DNA. The second you walk into a management company and you’re building out a recorded music division from it, the value and benefit of that management DNA is undeniable.  Sitting with Peter, Cliff and Craig Winkler is great.  I remember with Joshua Radin’s deal, I was thinking to myself, “This is the craziest and most user-friendly proposal I’ve ever done.”  It was interesting because I got most of it right.  Cliff marked off two or three things, completely in the artist’s favor.  With the history of looking at hundreds of record deals, he’s saying, “Okay, this is how we’re going to make it more fair.  This is how we’re going to make it more equitable.” I knew I was with the right people.  He ultimately inspired me when he said, “If we do great work for great artists, over time it will all come back.”  Cliff (and Peter) have allowed and pushed me to make decisions that are completely antithetical to what bigger companies do in certain situations.

Musician Coaching:

Is your company staffed, or are you hiring consultants case by case?

MG:

Where appropriate, we can utilize the QPrime staff.  Depending on the artist, there could be an additional three to twelve bodies. Everyone here is jumping in.  There’s a lot of opportunity that creates itself when people are making calls looking for Metallica, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Muse and Silversun Pickups. Our radio is powerful.  Cliff and Peter set up the promotion department ten years ago in order to have their own relationship with radio.  When other people are going in the other direction and getting smaller, they’ve been more aggressive with providing extra support for their artists. Look at Silversun Pickups on Dangerbird Records; they did a great job developing the band.  But Dangerbird would probably be the first to tell you that they would hit a ceiling at a certain number and that number would be far below the 300,000 records that they’d be able to sell at the time without good partnering. So when you’re sitting with bands and you have the infrastructure that can go compete and have the upside, and sell as many records as anyone else – it really helps.  Of course it’s dependent on finding the right acts and the right songs.

Musician Coaching:

How has A&R changed?  Are you finding you’re doing more deals based on who has existing movement, or are you doing deals purely out of love with kids just out of art school?

MG:

I think it’s somewhere in between. I would like to say it’s more of a mindset than it is a sales threshold. There’s a band we’re just signing right now that hasn’t put a record out yet, but they’ve done all the right things to move themselves along.  Even though they don’t have a sales base, we’re walking into a situation where there’s a lot of natural inertia. I think what we’re also focused on is finding really strong managers and bands that understand what we’re trying to do, and building on that.  In theory, the artists we sign, and their managers, are becoming part of the label. We’re making all the decisions together and we’re empowering them to build the team.  We find, sometimes, that a team of 10-12 people is far more effective than a team of 75-100, especially when you’re trying to get everyone on the same page. We’ve been working really well with RED, and we have a strong relationship with iTunes.

Musician Coaching:

What are you seeing that artists are doing that’s working? There is so much conversation about rising above the noise now that international distribution is only a couple mouse clicks and $50 away. Talent aside, are you seeing anything that is a reliable delivery source? Is it touring? How are you seeing artists build a business? You’ve clearly identified at Mom and Pop people who have built something. How are they building these things? Has it changed?

MG:

We think we’re dealing with a generation of musicians and managers who are more forward thinking, more resourceful, and willing to be pragmatic.  They are finding alternative ways of exposing music.  We think the ones that are truly committed to building a connection with their audiences are the ones that are building careers.

We think people are figuring out they don’t necessarily need to be flying Top 10 records in order to go build touring bases. We may be speaking specifically to the aesthetic of what we like and what we’re doing. You could be having a totally different conversation with somebody if they wanted to go make a pop record. They do need those drivers and big record companies with promotion and a willingness to go put the energy of 200 people behind it to go sell 150,000 records that first week. In terms of what we are trying to do, it’s a proof of concept. We took an artist off a bigger label that had sold 90,000 records and that wasn’t enough.  Whether it was creative or artistic reasons that they let him go, we were thrilled to get that opportunity, and we’ve done really well with it.  This is an artist that played enough shows, shook enough hands, signed enough CDs and got enough opportunities for himself.  He networked a lot of relationships for himself.  Joshua Radin is someone who works hard.

The 200,000+ units he sold between these two records did not come from having a hit. And now he’s starting to get into bigger rooms and build a career outside of America. I went to England to see him play Shepherd’s Bush Empire off TV syncs and word-of-mouth.  He drew 1300 people, and he didn’t even have a record out. The stories are all different, but the one thing they have in common is the ability to move themselves along.

—-

Check out Mom & Pop Records

Music Consultant:

You are the executive director of creative at BMI, tell me what the creative department at a performing rights organization is about. What does your job entail?

SC:

My job mainly consists of A&R, management/administration and events planning.  That means, first, maintaining relationships with the songwriters and publishers that we currently represent while acquiring new talent.  Secondly, putting together everything from showcases and panels at conferences and festivals to speaking at universities. And finally there’s management/administration which involves affiliating songwriters and publishers, registering their works, helping to put their team together, hooking up co-writes, working with attorneys, producers, booking agents and music supervisors and above all making sure the artists get paid.  I could go on and on but that’s the big picture gist of it.

Music Consultant:

Let’s talk about that. It’s not even just kids fresh out of art school who don’t do this correctly.  It is often musicians that have been playing for years and years and have never set up their corporation correctly. What do you need to do to be properly paid by your PRO?

SC:

The first thing to do is sign up as a writer and publisher at BMI.com.  It’s super easy and every songwriter should take the 20 minutes and do it.  Basically what everyone needs to know is that you need to sign up as a writer, sign up as a publisher and register your songs if you want to get paid.  Then when you start getting airplay – whether it’s radio, TV, the internet, whatever — you’re good to go.  I can’t tell you the number of really smart people who overlook this basic step and end up missing out on performance royalties.  Go to the website, click “join” and follow the instructions.  If you have questions, we’re here to help.  But the minute you’re done, you’re in the game.

Music Consultant:

Do you need to set up a formal corporation or can you do it under your social security number or…

SC:

It really depends on who you are.  For the vast majority of writers, I advise setting up individually owned companies using their social security numbers. If your career is farther along and you have a business manager or an entertainment attorney, they may advise you to set up a corporation or LLC.  But what’s important to remember is that the moment you write a song, you are the owner of that song and therefore the  publisher of that song.  Now what you want is to get paid for that song.  That’s where we come in.

Music Consultant:

So when people do deals with a large publishing company, they are basically doing a deal for the publisher’s share, and it was divided that way so artists wouldn’t get ripped off. Correct me if I’m wrong.

SC:

That’s absolutely right.

Music Consultant:

Just a few more basic questions about the way money moves to the artist.  BMI pays their artists and they collect this money by laying down a blanket fee on radio stations, TV channels and so on and so forth.  Companies have to pay to play music – live venues, different websites, etc., etc., and that’s where all the money comes from, correct?

SC:

Pretty much.  BMI collects license fees on behalf of our songwriters, composers and music publishers and distributes them as performance royalties.  I think it’s important to remember that BMI operates on a non-profit-making basis so we’re not out to make money like a record company or publishing company.  We don’t own the songs or recordings.  We just enter into an arrangement where we collect and distribute royalties on behalf of our songwriters and publisher.

Music Consultant: How is that enforced on the local level?

SC:

Basically there are a few different ways.  TV stations and internet sites provide us with detailed performance logs.  Radio stations, we use a complex sampling system that’s proven super accurate over time.  Concert venues are up to the artists to provide set lists.  And everything else – airlines, sporting arenas, etc. – pay blanket license fees.  On the really local level, we actually have people who walk into restaurants and sit there listening to music just to keep everybody honest.

Music Consultant:

There are really only three companies in the U.S. that do this; to my knowledge it’s ASCAP, BMI and SESAC.  As a result you must see and meet tons of people.  From your perspective, what are some of the mistakes that you see artists making?

SC:

I’d say the biggest one is that songwriters don’t really utilize us like they can.  Not only can we help administratively but we can help creatively. We do showcases and panels and seminars and they can get involved with all of these. Especially the educational seminars. They’re open to everyone. We do them about every other month, sometimes more often.  We just did one about production.  How do you produce a record?  How do you get a producer?  It was awesome and we got a ton of positive feedback.

Music Consultant:

That sounds great.

SC: It’s really exciting. That’s the great part about this job. When it comes to the creative side it’s a lot of fun.

Music Consultant:

I hear a very common gripe:  “I can’t get anyone on the phone at BMI or ASCAP.” Is the best way to make a relationship is to attend one of the things?

SC:

I think it’s a great way to do it. I have to admit it’s hard to get people on the phone at BMI or ASCAP. We operate on a non-profit basis so our staff is limited.  I do my best to return every phone call and email that comes in, but it can be overwhelming.  I could answer emails 24 hours a day, seven days a week and still not get to everyone. That’s why I encourage persistence and patience.  It may take a while, but eventually I, or someone else, will get back to you.

Music Consultant:

Now the tough question. Why BMI?

SC:

That’s a great question. The U.S. is unique in that we have three performing rights societies.  Everywhere else in the world, there’s one per territory.  I think it’s great that here in the United States you have a choice.  Basically, my answer is that it comes down to relationships.  You want to know that there’s someone inside the company who can not only walk you through the process of affiliating but can guide you creatively.  Someone to push you in the right direction.  Someone who believes in you and your music.  It’s extremely important to have an advocate. Everyone always asks me, “Does one pay out more than the other?”  Well, if one paid out more than the other, everyone would run to that society.  We all pay out pretty much the same.  So, again, it just reinforces what I’ve already said – relationships are key.  That’s why I spend so much time getting to know our writers, to learn what they want to do and figure out how to help them get there.

Music Consultant:

Here’s another question. All of the changes with the record business that are leaking into the publishing business and leaking into the touring business; how is the big shift in technology starting to affect BMI and performance royalties organizations? Are you starting to feel that shakiness? Does that really affect you, other than the fact that so many of our peers are now freelance?

SC:

I have to say we’ve been very fortunate in the business that we’re in.  In the past, we negotiated some very good radio and TV deals.  Our income has continued to go up steadily. We’re about to renegotiate another radio deal soon, which could affect some of that, but we feel we’re in a strong position and feel good about the future.

Music Consultant:

Is that a blanket negotiation or something specific within the radio industry? When you say you’re renegotiating a radio deal, is that with radio in general or just a large conglomerate?

SC:

It’s not just one specific radio station; it’s a conglomerate of radio stations.  Let’s face it, their advertisement dollars are shrinking and so their income is going down – and that’s where our income comes from.  We’ve taken that into consideration and have streamlined internally and cut back expenses so that our payments will continue to be strong no matter what happens.  Our goal is to have the best payments.  Yes, it’s affecting us, but I would say it’s more about the economy than technology. Technology has actually worked pretty well for us. We’re in the streaming business, not the downloading business, and the internet is becoming all about streaming.  Our internet income actually continues to get bigger each day and that’s the future.  So I’d say on that front, we’re looking pretty good.

————–

Check out BMI

I was once told a story about Bill Murray and Hunter S. Thompson.  I can’t verify the specifics of the story but I suppose for the purposes of this article it doesn’t much matter.  During the production of the 1980 Film “Where the Buffalo Roam”, in which Murray was to play a young Hunter Thompson, he met Hunter poolside so he could get a good idea of what the famously eccentric writer was really like.  In response to the question “What is it like to be you?” Thompson tied Murray up to a deckchair and threw him in the pool.

Such is the position of most artists in the music business – floundering in the water and trying their damndest not to drown in spite of overwhelming circumstances.

I run a music business consultancy which is what this blog helps me promote – not that I don’t enjoy content creation.  This business was something I put together after having been a musician on and off for twenty years and having done A&R at Major labels for almost a decade.  As a result of actively promoting this business I get contacted by several strangers every day who are looking to make it in the music industry.  It never ceases to amaze me that in this day and age with all of the tools now available to artists that people are still looking for that one person, that one opportunity or a chance encounter that is going to propel them to superstardom.  That’s not to say that I mind being contacted – far from it!  It’s just that the type of questions I get can be really disturbing.  “Can you get me a record deal?” or  “Hey – I just need a manager and I’m going to make millions!  You need to introduce me to great managers.”

Really?  Last I checked it was 2010.

Chances are if you are reading this – it doesn’t apply to you but from what I have seen this is still the prevailing mindset of many aspiring artists.  I believe those with this mindset won’t make it – period.

In my opinion if you are going to make a living making music – let alone “making it”- you have to own the following:

·         There is no help coming for you

·         The age of the “big break” is all but over.

·         The one person who will help your career more than anyone is you.

Harsh? Yes.  Hopeless?  Not at all.

Let this empower you.  You no longer need to spend a great deal of time chasing management, booking agents or labels.   I am not suggesting that any of these types of strategic partners aren’t helpful but I do find that many artists seek to engage partners far too early in the trajectory of their careers.  Before you seek out someone to partner with you ask yourself the following questions:

·         Have you played out locally on a regular basis for at least six months?

·         Do you have a corporate entity and an intra-band agreement?

·          Have you trademarked your name?

·         Are you registered with a Performance Royalties Organization? (ASCAP, BMI, SEASAC)

·         Do you have a professional looking website for your project and a presence on social networks?

·         Have you made “no apology” recordings of your songs that you think are representative of your ability?

·         Do you have a bio on your musical career that doesn’t peak when you were eight years old and taking piano lessons?

·         Do you maintain an ongoing online and offline positive relationship with a large group of people you could call fans without feeling funny about it or including your parents and extended family?

If you answered no then your business is not yet off the ground.  You don’t yet have a viable and fully formed product.  In any business it is very difficult to get an investment for a blueprint concept or an idea.  Getting funding for a start up business becomes much easier the more time and effort (and money) the entrepreneur puts into it.  You have to remember that seeking out management, agents or labels is asking someone to invest in you.  It might not be financial investment but the amount of time a partner like this would need to devote to developing an artist’s career is usually a full time job.  What do you bring to the table other than your talent?

It’s true – people who interact with artists a great deal are often jaded (Yes, me too.  Couldn’t you tell?)  The failure rate in music and the arts in general is astounding.  If you really want to get the attention of competent and experienced handlers you have to be the one to get your career moving on your own.  If you make enough noise long enough people will find you.  Overnight successes that are examined closely are very rarely (as in go by lotto tickets instead) a case of someone being struck by the thunderbolt of fame whilst daydreaming and smoking dope in the parent’s basement.

What’s the good news?  There are now plenty of sites that provide information and insight and dozens of tools to help you get your music heard for low or no cost.  This makes it harder to rise above all of the noise (because everyone with a mic can be a singer in this day and age) but it is still a viable way to start.

Go find other artists and build a community.  Relationships with your peers when starting out are usually more valuable than industry relationships.  If you are able to surround yourself with several developing artists who are in your situation and perhaps even endear yourself to people who have put in a bit more legwork than you this will help a great deal.  Being able to market yourself to the fans of similar acts is almost the whole name of the game in the beginning so along those lines – go make friends!

Long story short (too late?) – before you spend time and effort chasing big league help, make sure you have maxed out your ability to do everything within your reach to convert strangers to friends, friends to fans and fans to fans who will actually purchase your products.  If you do that long enough and well enough even in a small town – industry will find you.

Good luck out there…

Musician Coaching:

So give me a basic overview of your company and what you guys do.

RF:

Well, I deal a lot with the clients themselves in terms of getting all the assets together that we need to get out the door, like the masters and making sure everything is closed captioned, and that we have the proper photographs and bio information, one sheets prepared etc.  That in and of itself can be a hassle to people not familiar with the video.

Musician Coaching:

Mass mailing in multiple video formats has to be a nightmare for someone that doesn’t know the difference.

RF:

Exactly. And, well, it’s also really that technology has really changed the game a lot too. One of the things we have to keep up with is technology, because now we’re working a lot more with digital assets; things aren’t just coming in on beta tapes. There’s a lot of back and forth about how are we going to get the master delivered, how are we going to do this, get it dubbed properly, etc., etc. On that end, that’s a lot of what I do. And then we have another girl whose job is to make sure that the programmers are telling us what they’re doing with our videos. As a client, you certainly want to make sure that we’re sending the video out, but we need to be able to tell the clients who’s playing it. And if they’re not playing it, we need to know either why not or when they’re playing it. The thing with radio is, you have that centralized, universal chart that everyone reports to, whether it be CMJ, etc. You don’t really have that with video anymore. So it’s really up to the promoters to keep up with the individual programmers.

Musician Coaching:

Doesn’t Neilsen or someone one track this anymore? You have to figure out how many spins there are via word of mouth?

RF:

No. There’s no tracking service. There used to be the CVC Report, which did that. But that went under probably four or five years ago. Since then it’s really been up to the individual promoter to keep in touch with the programmers. With that being said, a lot of programmers we work with are very good at sending out their weekly tracking or their monthly or bi-monthly tracking. But there is definitely a certain element of being the heavy hand had that says, “We’re not going to be spending our clients’ money to make these dubs and send them to you if you’re not telling us what you’re using. We need to, aside from supply content to them, give information back to our clients. If we can’t do that, we can’t send you the video.”  Another member of our team is in charge of all the programmer intake and keeping track of address changes, what shows come on the air, what shows go off the air and also getting all the tracking into reports. And then we have a few other people on staff who prepare reports and ascertain all the playlists and get everything ready to go back to the client.

Musician Coaching:

I noticed you mention you’re including a bio in the package. Is this similar to radio promotion in that all these programmers are remarkably overwhelmed, and you really need to have some kind of story that’s interesting, in other words the biographical information for your artists and the product itself are going to do a lot of the sales work for you?

RF:

I think with any kind of promotion, one of the first questions a promoter is going to ask is, “What’s the story? What’s going on with this band?” So, yes, that’s a big part of it. We want to give them every reason, aside from, “Here’s a great video,” “Here’s what else is going on with this band. They’re doing really well with radio, they’re getting great press, they’re touring with so and so.” We also want to get them all that information. As far as them being overwhelmed, for some of them it is. What it is a lot – we were talking about technology before – technology has made it a much more affordable venture to make a music video. With digital and everything, you don’t need a film camera and you don’t need all this stuff to make a video. You can really edit it and shoot it. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be any good necessarily, but technology has made many more people of the opinion that they are music video directors.

Musician Coaching:

I have seen some videos that cost next to nothing that were better than some million dollar videos…

RF:

The thing we love, and one of the things we tell a lot of clients is, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to make a music video, but you have to have a good idea. That’s what kind of separates the men from the boys in music video world. No, you don’t have to spend a lot of money; but a lot of people don’t spend a lot of money and they’re trying to make their video look like they spent a lot of money. A good idea, a good concept, a good execution will embrace the fact that there wasn’t a lot of money spent on it. They’re not trying to make it look like they spent a lot of money on it; they’re trying to make it look like they have a cool concept. So, absolutely, you don’t have to spend a lot of money, but because you don’t, a lot of people that don’t have a good vision or the talent to make a good-looking video are still making videos. With the rise of something like YouTube, video has become a much more important component, whereas maybe six or seven years ago, people were saying, “Oh, MTV’s not playing as many videos. The video format is a dying breed.” Then all of a sudden you get your whole viral element, and video shoots back to the top of being a big priority for bands.

Musician Coaching:

Before we jump into digital, I notice that you guys are sending out a lot of physical different formats, but you’re actually sending something you can hold – a DVD or the various formats – to programmers across the board for terrestrial video outlets. Let’s say and artist made a video and they are looking to use this piece of their marketing toolkit to get them somewhere. Are there a lot of options for people like that to get test spins on different regional or niche video outlets offline?

AG:

I’ll take this one. I would have to say that going back to your question about bios and about presentation, we go to great lengths to present each artist in a way that is unlike a lot of other promotions companies where they might just take the band’s bio and maybe rehash it a little. For us it’s almost as if we’re the band’s team of lawyers and we’re going into the courtroom of indie rock music video opinion. We really have to give these people an intriguing, compelling reason to give these artists – of which many are very independent – programming consideration. What we’ve come to find is that whether it’s a bad like Spoon or Moby or the Gaslight Anthem, that you know are going to grab people’s attention because they are already a known quantity, we have hundreds of success stories of bands that were just flying under the radar but because the video was so incredibly outstanding, it more or less became the anchor of their marketing campaign moving forward.

These are the kinds of success stories that lead to tons of repeat business for us, because radio has really locked the indies out. Press is so expensive that even if you plunk down $5,000 or $8,000, who’s to say that anyone is going to actually write about you and write favorably? A compelling video and a video that really has an impact on viewers is going to definitely help an artist, especially independently, to really get to that next level so when they go out for the next record or the third record, they’re going to be in a situation where they’re a known quantity. There are so many stories like that where people are coming back because they got so much great feedback on the video that they realized, “Hey, people want to see it, they want to hear it.” The attention span of the normal American these days has become so small that they really want a full story, whether it be visual or audio or print so that they can make an informed decision.

RF:

One thing I’d add is that a lot of the programmers we service, on the terrestrial level, or even really on any level, have that independent mentality where they’re going to get the name bands, and obviously those are going to get on there because they’re established and well known but a lot of these guys are just looking for something they like.

Musician Coaching:

I guess my question is are there are still traditional terrestrial video outlets where a independent artist can get spun?

RF:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Musician Coaching:

Again, most people say, “Well, I want this on MTV,” but they don’t know. Fuse you get a little bit of a better shot. If you’re a gay artist, there’s Logo. If you’re a hard rock artist, I’m sure there are outlets like that. There’s Manhattan Neighborhood Network if you want to go really, really small. It’s just good to know that those are out there. Here’s a good question. Where should every artist, whether they can afford your services or not, be online? Is it going to YouTube or TubeMogul to kick it out to the major players? What would you say to someone that has no budget or blew their entire budget on making the video and now wants to get that video exposed?

RF:

The same thing I would say to a band that wants to do anything and doesn’t have the budget – do as much as you possibly can yourself. I’m sure you see it with A&R and stuff. The bands that get the furthest and accomplish the most are the ones that will never let anyone work harder for them than they will.

Musician Coaching:

I guess I meant specifically. Are there outlets where everyone should be? Who are the usual suspects?

RF:

Stuff like YouTube and a lot of those sites where you can upload it yourself and get it on there, there are tones of sties of that nature, whether it be YouTube, Yahoo, AOL etc. On our end, we don’t dive head-first into all the digital realms because that gets into a whole new world with viral marketing teams, and a lot of times when we get into a project with teams, we kind of overlap. They have someone that is more specific to the blogs and everything. We do work with places like AOL, Yahoo.

Musician Coaching:

Those services do have a programming staff is my understanding.

RF:

Right. And we work with sites like that where we feel that we can get them the video, and then we can also do more above and beyond just getting it on their site.

Musician Coaching:

And that’s a good question. Obviously relationships are always necessary, but are relationships the difference between getting spins on serious sites like that vs. maybe getting tested once?

RF:

I think first and foremost your product is the biggest thing. That’s the difference, which we try to stress a lot to bands: “Make sure you have something that you’re totally confident in.”

Musician Coaching:

I didn’t mean to make that sound so black and white. I guess, putting aside talent, and somebody who wrote a single as obvious as say Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” are relationships essential for getting regular rotation for something on those outlets in most cases?

RF:

I think in a lot of situations, it’s a huge benefit, because the guy who is giving your video to them can pick up the phone and get that guy on the phone and have a conversation about that, then your video has just gone to the top of that pile. He now has your video specifically written down on his to-do list for the day instead of it just blindly coming in and sitting in a pile of the other 50-some videos they got in that week.

AG:

One of the toughest parts of my job is, over nine years we’ve had to tell many, many potential clients, “My staff and I have watched your video. The song is good, the video is good, but we don’t feel comfortable moving forward with you.” Basically, I’m trying to say in the best possible way that, “You know what potential client? Don’t lead off with this video.” A lot of times they will say, “So you don’t think the video is that good?” I never tell them that the video isn’t that good. I say, “Look, in this world, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. And this video might not be the first impression. You might want to go back to the drawing board.” And sure enough in numerous instances we’ve had bands come back nine months or 14 months later and are really appreciative of us and say, “You saved us from ourselves. You didn’t just take our money.” I don’t want to take bands’ money if we don’t feel confident that the video is going to get them the exposure or the attention they deserve. With that being said, we’re selective on the videos that we promote to our programmers, but the programmer is always the first to say, “We appreciate that you guys always send us the best of the best.”

Musician Coaching:

It was the same for people who would pitch A&R executives – your reputation was everything. When somebody became known as a peddler of shit in the A&R community they couldn’t get a meeting or anybody on the phone.

AG:

You use that expression I use all the time here in the office. Nine years into this, and I still haven’t become a shit merchant. And there are a ton of them out there. Each year I travel the country and visit my programmers and I take them out to their favorite restaurant or we go out to their favorite night club, and I’ve done this tour every year. A month from now I’m going to start my eighth tour of the country visiting my programmers, and yes – the programmers love to be shown love. They’re the first ones to tell me, “Andy, when that Hip video package comes to us it always goes to the top of the pile because we know we’re going to get a ‘Place to Bury Strangers,’ we know we’re going to get ‘Smile, Smile,’ or we know we’re going to get the new Spoon video from you. Don’t you guys have the new Frightened Rabbit Coming up? I can’t wait to get that!” Of course, for a lot of these bands like Frightened Rabbit, when we first promoted them two years ago, nobody knew who the hell they were. The same thing happened with Grizzly Bear. The first time out with Grizzly Bear, it was “Grizzly who?” But when you come back a second time around, boy does it make your job a lot easier.

Musician Coaching:

Good to know.

RF:

Video is kind of like the weird, mysterious cousin in the promotion family. People don’t know how you do video. We definitely know there’s an element of uncertainty terms of what a video consists of.

Musician Coaching:

There’s a lot of this I certainly didn’t know.

AG:

Briefly, I wanted to mention that, whether it’s Jerry at JBTV in Chicago or Shirley at NY Noise in Manhattan or John Faulkner at Notes from the Underground in L.A., or Alternative Currents in Omaha, or Music Mix USA in Florida, these video shows have been around a long time and they really do have a rabid, loyal viewership. TV is a time-tested medium. People still want to sit in front of their TV and be fed it. Not everybody wants to go to the computer and search for it. With that being said, for  anyone that feels that terrestrial TV is going by the wayside, I beg to differ.

Musician Coaching:

Let me ask you this – of all the videos you get, is there a common mistake, either technically or quality wise or anything that you would have people avoid? You just mentioned your screening process is a bit intense. What are some mistakes you see from independent bands making videos? What are some things people should avoid when making a video.

RF:

Well, say they were going to send it to the local, regional channel the thing that a lot of people do – you know when you watch a video and you have your band name, the song title, the director and the label on the bottom left-hand corner? That’s called a Kyron.   That’s something that the programmer puts on and the channel puts on and the show puts on because a lot of times they have a custom-made thing. What we see a lot now is that the director will put it on themselves. So we get a video, and we can’t send a video as far up as an MTV or as low down as a local, regional show, because they want to put their own graphic on there. So if you send it out with s self made kyron (*** Note -no clue how to spell this but I’m sticking with my first attempt***) on there, nobody’s going to be able to touch it. That’s kind of a common thing. With urban videos, it’s a little more black and white, because more of the current trend in the hip hop world is to have the big, splashy graphic on top that says the band name and the song title. That’s okay, because that’s more a part of the video. That’s something that’s part of the video itself. But the white block letters in the bottom left-hand corner.

Musician Coaching:

The floating text in the first few seconds, yes.

RF:

A lot of times the programmer will get a video and they’ll like it, and they’ll say, “That’s great, but you need to send it to me without the kyron.” One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of programmers, if they do a regular show – a show that airs a couple times a week, maybe it’s an hour long – they want to be able to program a bunch of videos. Not that we ever want to compromise anybody’s musical or artistic integrity, but the longer the video is, the less of a chance you’re going to have at getting it programmed. Because if you send a video for a song that’s five-and-a-half minutes long, you might have a programmer say,  “Hey, I could get two videos in this span of time instead of this one video eating up five-and-a-half minutes of the programming.” Personally speaking, it seems too bad to me that there’s the mentality that every song or every single needs to be three-and-a-half minutes long because some of my favorite songs are four-and-one-half-minutes or five-minutes long, but again, I’m not making up the rules, I’m just going with the reality of what people are looking for and what gives the best chance of air play. And lastly, I’d say if you’re looking for television broadcast type airplay, don’t push your luck with potentially offensive material.  Even though the Internet has kind of desensitized people to what is acceptable and what is offensive and what is not, censors think differently. People like to push the envelope, and if you’re going viral with it, that’s great; but if you’re going to have bare breasts or gratuitous butt shots, a lot of people are not going to play it for that reason. And it’s not like I’m telling people what to do with their videos, but that is the feedback that comes back from censors.

Musician Coaching:

Suggestions for what not to do when trying to get your video aired are completely within the realm of the question. Andy, did you have something to add earlier?

AG:

We service over a dozen retail pools, better described as content providers. Whether it’s Club Com who gets the videos into fitness centers and gyms so that when you’re working out you can watch the cool new Spoon video, or if it’s Promo Only in Florida who provides their video reels to night clubs, night life locations, cruise ships, bowling alleys, or it’s DMX in Seattle, who hits all the major retailers in the malls you go to, or In-Store Sports Network who provide video content for Foot Locker and Foot Action …  they have to be cognizant of content, because they don’t want complaints coming back from customers saying, “Hey, I was in with my eleven-year old daughter, and that video had some salacious content.” Aside from the national outlets that will flag a video due to content, you’re also hurting yourself out there in content provider land, because you see videos everywhere you go. I go to my local oil change place, and they have videos playing in there. It’s all very much something bands should consider. If you want to get cute, like Rob says, or they want to get salacious, you’re going to be hurting your chances for exposure.

Musician Coaching:

Just one last question. Are there any parting words of advice for artists out there and their videos?

RF:

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, so if you’re going to send your video, make sure it’s something you’ve taken the time to be really proud of. That’s really the gist of it. You can understand that promotion and your team and your contacts can only go so far if you don’t have a good product to work with. Take the time to make it right.

Check out http://hipvideopromo.com for more info

Musician Coaching:

Fair enough. From the TuneCore stats it sounds like the unbundling of the album really has completely changed the playing field. You have people buying one track, five tracks, an EP; it’s all over the map I’m guessing.

JP: It is. The other thing I would stress is in defining if a musician is breaking or successful, I think it’s rather narrow for anyone outside of the artist to determine that on their behalf. I think each musician and each band has their own definition of success to a certain degree.

Musician Coaching:

Other than conducting a world-wide musician audit, I don’t think we’re ever going to have a metric that covers it anymore.

JP:

Exactly. And even if you did come around to some, there’s so many different income streams now, so to suggest that “breaking” or fame is predicated on album sales when you have record labels themselves doing 360 deals, because they’re doing deals where they get to participate in revenue that are outside of music sales because they now know when they make an artist famous, they don’t make money off the music the way they used to. So they have to partake of revenue that’s coming in from new income streams, like merch or gig.

Musician Coaching:

How does a former record guy like you feel about that? Do you think that’s a justifiable approach, that these record companies become music companies?

JP:

Honestly, I think a management company is a record label. There’s no difference anymore. The only difference that now exists is distribution, but with something like TuneCore, it levels the playing field. Managers used to take X% of an artist’s revenue across all income streams. Now granted, they used to like to try to get those big advances from the majors, because a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, and they could just take a big slice off the top. If the artist failed, they still made their money. But that’s the way they operate. It’s a manager’s job to go out and provide the artist opportunity that they couldn’t otherwise get on their own, or manage their affairs for them, or provide them new opportunities they couldn’t get. And they serve the musician, and they take a portion of that money for their services. The two are very similar.

Musician Coaching: Even towards the end of my label run I used to say,  “If you were doing any real work, you were doing some kind of management.”

JP:

Absolutely. That’s what we did at SpinART. And frankly, it excites the hell out of me, because what I see is an explosive growth in the music industry. I’m not a “doom and gloom” guy on this at all. What I see is more music being created, produced, released, shared, discovered and bought than at any other time in the history of the world. And more is better; more is healthier. No one’s suffering because there’s more music. No one’s getting hurt because there’s more music, and I don’t buy it for a second that because there’s more it means no one can find the quality. That’s the joy of social networking.

Musician Coaching:

The only thing I would say is it really does make somebody like a taste maker or a DJ much more special. It’s a much harder job now to be good in that role, because the amount of sifting can be overwhelming.

JP:

I agree with you to a certain degree. But on the flip side what you’re finding is the collective population is doing that sifting for us. What I mean by that is, the A&R source becomes society. You’ve got – I don’t know how many people tweet and how many people on MySpace and how many people on Facebook – over 100 million, and that’s a lot of people. What happens is, here I am, looking at a report, and I can tell you, the artist called Boyce Avenue at this point have sold over 1.2 million songs within the past twelve months, no record label. They now have management. In the month of November, they sold over 36,000 additional songs across their catalogue of nine different albums. Colt Ford sold over a quarter million songs over the past eight months. And here’s a funny one. Monsters Halloween Party, the Ultimate Scary Sounds or Music for Your Halloween Bash – it’s just spooky sounds – 1,700 albums, 10,000 singles. Never Shout Never – kid I mentioned before – 1.5 million songs in the past thirteen months, 32,000 songs sold across three EP’s in the month of November. Kim Zolciak, “Tardy for the Party” – I don’t know who she is yet, but maybe others do – 20,000 songs. This is just one month, by the way. This is the month of November I am describing right now. John LaJoie – a French Canadian comedian, uploads a video to YouTube for a song called “Show Me Your Genitals,” I kid you not, and another song called “Average Everyday White Guy.” He has now done over a quarter million songs in four months, and in the month of November, 1,000 albums and 12,000 songs. I’m looking at a list here that goes on for 3,000 artists. It’s every artist that earned over a certain dollar amount.

Musician Coaching:

As a guy who helps democratize this process, you have to have a pretty interesting vantage point on what those people at the top of the list you just referenced are doing. To have international distribution for under $50 is phenomenal. But I do think there is a certain point that the landscape has changed so much by pure volume. What do you see that people are doing to distinguish themselves from everybody else who it might be their first month with a guitar, and their stuff is up on MySpace? What are you seeing that’s working?

JP:

The answer isn’t one that anyone really likes. I wish I could give you the silver bullet. The reality is, there’s nothing you can do to cause your music to sell beyond making sure it’s out there. Out there means, MySpace page, Facebook page, a TuneCore media player that you post all over the place, making your music available to buy in digital stores. If you’ve got a video, upload that video to YouTube. Communicate that the media is out there. You have access now as an artist to get your music out to the media points. It used to be you couldn’t get to MTV without going through multiple gatekeepers to get programmed. Now anybody can go to YouTube and upload a video. The trick is, the art you create has to cause a reaction. If it doesn’t cause a reaction, it doesn’t matter how much exposure you get. It doesn’t matter how many people hear it, because no one’s reacting to it. I always use “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as an example. If “Smells Like Teen Spirit” wasn’t a song that caused reaction, it wouldn’t have mattered how many times you heard it on commercial radio, it wouldn’t have mattered how many times you saw the video, it wouldn’t have mattered how many hundreds of millions of dollars were pushed at shoving it down your throat. If it doesn’t resonate with the consumer, with the music fan, people aren’t going to buy it.

Musician Coaching:

Gone are the days of “spends double-platinum to get gold.” I remember those days not so fondly.

JP:

As you also probably remember, there was a 98% failure rate at the major labels. That’s the other point, which is sort of buzzing around the Internet, it used to be that you could only break if you had lots of money and connections. Bullshit. Even with lots of money and connections, you usually lost lots of money. 98% of the major record labels released failed. They didn’t take. And it wasn’t because of a lack of access. It was because the art didn’t cause a reaction. And the art has to cause a reaction. What’s so cool now is that with everyone having access to the media outlets – and I’m not trying to be vague, but upload a video to YouTube, go to iTunes and create an iMix, put in three of your own songs and nine songs by more popular artists in the same genre, because that’s how people discover music in iTunes. Name your song in a specific way to service the search engines, or do a cover version of somebody else’s song. People go to iTunes and look up songs they know. We have one band, as one example, to get sort of off the point, that uses us called “ACDB.” They sold 47,000 songs and over 1,000 albums in the month of November. The reason they sell so well is because ACDC isn’t in iTunes. So when someone looks up an ACDC song, they by default show up. That’s an extreme to make a point, the point being, keep in mind the way search engine technology works. If you call your song “Let It Be,” which you’re perfectly, legally allowed to do, your song “Let It Be” will show up next to other songs named “Let It Be.” You can also name your band in particular ways, or put “klezmer” in parentheses after song names. So there are ways to – I don’t want to say game the system – but there are ways to get yourself to surface or pop up using the fame of others or niches. The Internet is about niches. People are logging in usually because they want to hear Celtic or heavy metal dwarves doing opera songs, or whatever it is. If people are into that, you name your band, “Celtic Heavy Metal Dwarves Playing Opera Songs” and you’ll surface within the search engine.

Musician Coaching: Sorry, what?  I completely tuned out. I was half-way on my way to sending out e-mails to start the Celctic Heavy Metal Dwarves band…

JP:

iMixes are one thing, media in particular, putting it out into the world and video. Don’t be afraid of video. You can flip out your phone now and film Paris Hilton, if you happen to bump into her on the street, it doesn’t matter the quality of the video capture, you’ll still get a bazillion people looking at it. Make a flash animated video game set to your music. Use the game as way to get people around the music. We now do digital distribution into Rock Band, where your song becomes able to be played in Rock Band. There’s a lot of people that play Rock Band, and there’s not a lot of songs to buy. The probability is, you could probably sell a whole bunch there and gain some fame through that. By the way, all that is not tracked by Nielsen. There are some bands that play video game conferences where they have 5,000 screaming gamers come to see them play. But when they go out and play at a regular venue, maybe they’ll have 100 people paying for them. It’s kind of funny.

Musician Coaching:

Here’s a question for you. I also read in recent press that you guys partnered with Universal. How does that work?

JP:

Basically, we’re an A&R source for them, because the data we have – despite what others might suggest – on the musicians indicates those artists that are breaking.

Musician Coaching:

They used to do that with radio spins on indie artists.   I can see that working well.

JP:

It actually has. Since that deal has launched, there have been five signings by Republic in the last five months all coming from the top-selling TuneCore artists. Boyce Avenue, Jaron and the Long Road to Love (which I think that deal has closed), Colt Ford and there are a couple more. There are five of them that just happened. Prior to doing the deal with universal, there was Drake. Then before that, there was Soulja Boy and there was MGMT and Secondhand Serenade and Neveshoutnever and Medic Droid. The number of artists that have used TuneCore that chose to work with an outside company, primarily record labels or what used to be record labels is 20-25 bands in the last year and a half.

Musician Coaching:

How does that work being that you’re non-exclusive?

JP:

This is a stunning part of the Universal deal. There’s now a website called Interscope Digital Distribution. There’s a website called IDJ (Island Def Jam) First Look, there’s Republic Digital Distribution and UniMo Digital Distribution, which is Motown. And TuneCore hosts and serves those Websites for those major label imprints. And any artist on the planet can go to those sites if they want and get worldwide distribution of their music under the exact same terms and conditions as TuneCore. You keep all your rights and get all the money. But if you choose to go through that site, what you’re agreeing to is to allow Interscope Records to see how you’re doing. You increase your opportunity of being discovered by them, and then they have to work their asses off and present you a deal to sign you. There’s no first look and no catch.

Musician Coaching:

And it doesn’t cost any additional money to be a part of that?

JP:

No, it does not. And the reason I did the deal is because I feel that it’s not my place to tell an artist what they should or shouldn’t be doing. I want to provide options and opportunities and information. If you want to go and get signed to Interscope Records and strike a deal with them, and I can help you facilitate that, that’s my job. You want to get on iTunes? I’ll get you there. You want to get into Rock Band? I’ll get you there. You want to get into eMusic? I’ll get you there. You want to get paid for your streams on MySpace Music? I’ll get you there. You just hit the website, you upload a song, you click a button, and I get you there. So what this is, it gets you the worldwide distribution, but you have more direct access to the A&R people, who literally log in and troll through the data to see what’s going on with the artists that come through their site. And if there’s a band they want to reach out and contact, then they have to reach out and contact that band, or woo that band and provide the right deal that makes sense for that artist. And hopefully, with this empirical sales data under their belt, when you’re Nevershoutnever or Boyce Avenue and you can say, “Look, I sold over a million songs. What are you going to do for me?” It puts you in a better negotiating position.

———-

Check out Tunecore at http://tunecore.com

Musician Coaching:

Jeff, thanks for taking the time to speak with me.  Take me back to five years ago when you saw this need and created TuneCore.

JP:

While at SpinART I crossed paths with Frank Black. It’s the Pixies really that get credit for all this. The Pixies get credit for TuneCore! In 1995-96, I was trying to get a band that SpinART had released called Lotion on tour with Frank Black. Frank Black was going on a solo tour, and through the booking agent I got the name of the manager, a guy named Ken Goes. I called Ken Goes, and while we were on the phone, I was telling Ken why we should have the band Lotion open for Frank Black. Ken put me on hold, and came back and said, “Well, that deal just fell through.” And I said, “What deal?” He said, “Well, we have a new album called ‘Frank Black and the Catholics,’ and we were negotiating with Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam to put it out through his record label, but the deal just fell through.” I asked him why, and he said, “We had done a deal with a company called Good Noise, where they had the exclusive rights to the ‘Frank Black and the Catholics’ album in the digital format, and we only had the physical to offer them, and they wouldn’t do that unless they had all the rights.” Mind you, this was 1995-96.

Musician Coaching:

Digital rights didn’t mean too much in 1995-1996…

JP:

Yes, and there was dial-up, not a lot of broadband. And with mp3, people thought, “Huh?” So I told Ken, “Well, I can release it.” He said, “Well make me an offer,” and I did; and we ended up releasing the next seven Frank Black and the Catholics album, and the Pixies record, and the Frank Black/Francis double-disk DVD. More importantly what came out of it is a gentleman showed up at my office from a company named  Good Noise named John. John is now the chief financial officer of TuneCore, but John at the time was consulting for Good Noise, and he said, “You have the physical, we have the digital; we should talk.” And Good Noise is the company that became eMusic. I met John, and we hit it off, and I was involved in writing the business plan for eMusic. They also used me to help raise venture capital. That’s how I got into the whole digital distribution realm, was through this Frank Black album, and my introduction to Gene Hoffman and Bob Kohn, the founders and CEO and Chairmen of eMusic. Ultimately I was the interim vice president of content acquisition for eMusic, where I would pick up the phone and call other record labels to attempt to license their music for sale at eMusic.com. Then I got into the business development and intermittently ran the New York office. Then I moved out west for a year and lived in San Francisco during the whole Dot-Com boom. That was a treat. (That’s sarcasm in case that’s not picked up by readers.)

I really got immersed into the digital download culture, because that’s where it all began, with eMusic. Moving on from there, after being with eMusic from 1996-2000, I came back East, and I no longer worked for eMusic. They laid me off; they actually laid everybody off. I continued to focus on SpinART, my record label until around October 2005, where I literally was sitting around watching my label go under. I was trying to figure out, “How can I stay in business and be involved in the music industry? What can I do?” Record labels make people famous, and then they monetize that fame by selling the music, but so much music is being given away for free, and this whole thing is chaotic and confusing. I wanted to come up with a way to remain in the music industry which wasn’t predicated on whether or not the music sold, but would still be of value to the musicians. The second thing that occurred was my record label spinART got pitched by what’s called digital distributors, also known as aggregators, to do the digital distribution for the label. SpinART had a deal at that point through Warner to do the physical, but it didn’t have anybody to do the digital. We did all our own direct digital deals. These aggregation companies showed up and said, “We want to do spinART Record’s digital distribution.” I asked them what the deal terms were, and they said, “Well, we have to control the rights to your master recordings exclusively for a minimum of three years or five years, and every time the music sells, we want to take a percentage of the money just like a physical distributor and take anywhere between 15-30% of the revenue. And we’re going to account back to you quarterly, 45 days after the end of each quarter even though we get paid monthly and we’ll only pay you if we determine you’ve made enough money, and we’re going to do all the collection and administration.”

Musician Coaching:

So you basically said, “Where do I sign up for that abuse?”

JP:

That’s what I heard. That’s probably not the way they put it, but that’s what they were saying. To take a step back before I move forward, realize that up until digital distribution, if you wanted to have a career as an artist you had to get signed to a record label, because the record label had the deal with the physical distributor, and the physical distributor was the entity that could put your record onto the shelf of a store to allow it to be bought. If it wasn’t there, it couldn’t be bought. And to do physical distribution is tremendously expensive and has huge overhead and a huge knowledge base. You need a 500,000 square foot warehouse with 50-foot high ceilings; you need people running around picking and packing and shipping music. Everything in the music industry is on consignment, so all those CD’s that get shipped out to the 10,000-plus record stores across the 3,000 square miles of the United States can all come back for a full refund at any point. And when they come back, they can be broken or they could have stickers on them. They could need to be destroyed or refurbished or alternatively you need to deal with the billing cycles on them, so if someone has a 60-day credit term and return a portion of their inventory, you have to give them their credit back. This is a huge nightmare. And that’s just the warehouse and the invoicing and the returns processing.

Then you need the other 30 people running around the country walking into the record stores, going to the store buyers and trying to get the product in the store and putting it on their limited shelf space. You beg, you borrow, you plead, you pay the money to rent their real estate in the form of cooperative advertising like a listening station, or you take the guy out to dinner. You know the sort of things one would do in order to gain access to that shelf space. Some of it was unseemly, and some of it was very expensive. But the gatekeeper to the success of the sale of the artist in some way could be the buyer at the store; because if the buyer at the store didn’t put the record on the shelf, it couldn’t sell, and if it couldn’t sell, money wasn’t being made. The physical distributor made their money when the record sold. So, if Tower Records took it in and put it on its shelf, and they paid $10 back to the distributor and sold it for $15, the distributor would take 25% of that $10 — $2.50, give the other $7.50 to the label, and the label would then give the artist their share, which was anywhere from $1.35 – $1.75. That was the food chain.

What happened with digital distribution is you had two fundamental changes in the industry. You had unlimited shelf space, where everything could be in stock at no detriment to anything else. So for the first time there was no more fighting for shelf space. With iTunes, if you run out of room, you just plug in a new hard drive. So everything can be in there, and it doesn’t hurt anything else. So people that talk about, “All this other music in the world is causing other music not to sell,” with all due respect – bullshit. If your music isn’t selling, having half a million less tracks on iTunes isn’t going to cause it to sell.

The other thing that occurred had to do with inventory. It used to be that if you wanted to sell 100,000 copies of something, you had to manufacture 100,000 copies and then hope to God they sold. Now you don’t have to manufacture anything. There’s no upfront cost for inventory. You have infinite inventory that replicates on demand as a perfect digital copy. It’s always in stock, it’s always available, and it’s always ready to be bought and duplicate itself. So with unlimited shelf space and unlimited inventory being the new way record stores stocked music, you just circumvented and dis-intermediated the music distribution system. You don’t need that big warehouse with the pick, pack, ship and so-forth.

And it became much easier to become a music distributor, because all you needed to do now to become one was to get a contract with a store like iTunes. Once you got that contract, you could deliver the music to them via Internet, moving the digital file from Point A, to Point B. The contracts are hard to get, and they’re not given to just anybody, but distribution got wider as soon as digital stores popped up because for the first time you began to have music and artists and labels gain access to distribution and be available in stores to be shared or discovered or bought where they were never there before. But even that had a limit to it, because the digital distributors that popped up also made money when the music sold under that model that I previously described. And if the music didn’t sell, then they weren’t making any money, and if the music did sell, they made an unlimited amount of it off of other people’s hard work. If you’re a band, you go out, you play a gig. Someone sees you, and they go out and buy you. Well, if you went through a digital distributor that takes a percentage of the money, when your fan buys your music through your gig, you just paid 15%-30% of it to somebody else.

I had a real problem with that back-end model and with the distribution fee in the digital world. I didn’t think it made sense. I thought artists were getting screwed. I really did. And I got really pissed off. So when these people came in and told me how they would do spinART Records digital distribution and control our rights and take an unlimited amount of money, and control the collection of it and so forth, frankly, I told them to go f*ck themselves. It was wrong. We had just at that point released a band called The Dears, and I put $50,000 into tour support and $100,000 into cooperative advertising. The band was sleeping on floors and eating ramen, and we were all busting our asses. And I’m going to give this company over here 15% of the money from the sale of the music for moving a digital file from Point A, to Point B? They did claim they were going to market and promote our stuff, but that’s all smoke and mirrors. You can’t actively market and promote 10,000 releases per month, which is what they claimed to have. You can’t.

Musician Coaching:

Glad you said it out loud…

JP:

Not only that, but when I pointed that out to them, they said, “Well, no, we’re going to prioritize spinART’s releases.” And I said, “Really? So you’re going to f*ck everyone else and just promote me?” And they said, “No, no, that’s not what we meant.” And I said, “Well what did you mean?” And they said, “Well, we only get to market and promote those releases that are doing well.” So I said, “Oh, so you’re going to market and promote things that are already marketed and promoted?” So I thought, “Not to mention this is an unlimited amount of revenue coming in off the sale of this music for the entire five years, and you’re going to stop marketing and promoting – if you’re even doing that in the first place – within a couple weeks.” And marketing and promoting in the digital world, really, to be honest is, you pick up the phone and you call the guy – there’s one of them – at iTunes..

So that was that, and I got so incensed about it that I literally picked up the phone in October of 2005, and I called my friend Gary that I worked with at eMusic. He was a coding engineer there. I said, “I have this idea. Why don’t we create a website where anyone on the planet can go – anyone, with no filter – and they can just go there and sign themselves. They can have worldwide distribution, they upload their music, they upload their cover art, they pick the store they want to go to, and they pay a simple up-front, flat fee for the service. That’s it. They get 100% of the revenue when the music sells, it’s non-exclusive, they can cancel whenever they want, but we’ll help get them there. ‘Where do you want to go? You want to go to iTunes? Great. You click a button and go to iTunes and pay the up-front flat fee, and that is it.’” I almost say it’s analogous to Federal Express. You pay a postage fee to deliver a package. That is it. I am a service industry, and I’m serving the musician. Technology has made it possible to have infinite shelf space and infinite inventory, so let them all in! No more filter. Do it under a service model. Serve the musician.

That was the idea, and we launched January 26, 2006. Four years later – and this is kind of weird – TuneCore artists represent one of the highest revenue-generating music catalogues in the world. There were over $32 million in digital download revenue generated through TuneCore artists in 2009 alone.

Musician Coaching:

Put some kind of framework, because generally speaking I’m a guy who, $32 million and pretty much anything over $5 million is lottery winnings that I can’t even fathom. What is that compared to any of the big four labels?

JP:

TuneCore artists, or TuneCore as an entity by market share, is the fifth largest music entity in the world. It goes Universal, Sony, Warner, EMI, TuneCore, in regards to market share, in regards to number of releases and amount of revenue generated solely off digital sales. Within four years, this entity – which is sort of the democratization of an industry – represents everybody else, that long tail that apparently people claim has no value, or claim aren’t “breaking” on the Internet actually does and has become a monster force. It’s exciting, and it’s not just 50 million people selling one song. It is hundreds of thousands of artists selling tens of thousands of songs.

Musician Coaching:

While we’re here, and mind you Tommy (Tom Silverman) went out on a limb and set out a certain criteria of, of albums released in 2008, there were only twelve that sold 10,000 or more according to Nielsen. Now, Nielsen has never been 100% accurate, and I’m sure that as people like yourself have democratized the artist, getting their music everywhere, it’s become even less accurate. But, by whose criteria – whether you agree with it or not – how far off was he?

JP: I don’t know how to answer the question, because people don’t buy music by the album anymore. They buy music by the song across the artist’s catalogue. For example, Never Shout Never has three four-song EP’s. And across those three four-song EP’s released within four months of each other, they sold over a million songs. That’s not album sales. That’s song sales across a catalogue. It’s not even the right question anymore. I struggle with it because it’s like, “What does that have to do with the price of tea in China anymore?” It has nothing to do with it. Suggesting a band is or is not breaking because they did not sell an album is insane.

Musician Coaching:

I think the most interesting thing about what resulted in the debate was that the one criteria, which was in fact the standardized one doesn’t hold the water it used to for sure.

JP:

Nielsen is a great company. And SoundScan, which is now a Nielsen-owned property really was the litmus test. If Nielsen indicated through SoundScan sales – after 1992 when it actually became institutionalized and moved off the handwritten Billboard chart – it really did represent accurately those bands that were “it” and that were breaking and relevant. It reflected the popularity of an artist, because the popularity of an artist was reflected by album sales. The two were together. What’s happened now is you’ve had a decoupling between music sales and fame, or between album sales and fame. You can have people more famous and more popular than anybody, going back to – and let’s ignore the Beatles for a moment – Sponge, or The Bloodhound Gang, who were literally at the top of the Billboard Charts. Sponge if I remember correctly was one of the most played songs on commercial modern alternative rock radio, yet by today’s standards they were less popular and less famous than Nevershoutnever. The reason for that is specifically because the Internet has enabled people to get that fame, which is then monetizable on a global basis from their bedroom. And there is no editorial filter, and there is no gatekeeper from allowing people access, and then social networking picks it up from there. That’s what’s so cool.

I’m not trying to sidestep the question. I just don’t know how to answer it. I wouldn’t say an artist is or is not breaking predicated on album sales, because that’s just not what people do anymore.

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Part two of this interview will run in the next few days.  In the meantime

Check out Tunecore at http://tunecore.com