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Wednesday, November 2, 2011
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Monday, October 31, 2011
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Monday, May 16, 2011
Instant Gratification
Instant Gratification
Remember how contracts in the music business, actually in the entire business world used to be? You would discuss the details of the contract either in person or via the telephone and then you would run down to the mailbox and send two copies (at least) out. The other person would sign them both and then return one copy back to you via the United States
Yes, I know, those of you reading this that don’t remember those days and wonder how in the world anyone could EVER get business done with things being that darned slow. Back then it was status quo and no one thought about it because that was how it was done and everyone knew that.
That is one of the really cool and amazing things about technology today. You can set up the terms via phone or online, get the contract completed and converted into a PDF with a signature on it and email the cover letter, the contract, the riders and the promo posters all out and get a fully executed copy back in your email box within moments of the actual discussion.
This is one area where technology really shines. No more waiting for the mail to come back to make sure that the gig was done and accepted and that the contract was signed. You can literally know things are groovy in less time than it takes the average person to consume an adult beverage.
Things like this have revolutionized the way that things get done these days. It is no longer necessary to wait weeks to find out that you made a typo on the contract and that you have to re-submit it in order for it to be good and binding. In fact, in the world of electronics, you can even have the deposit electronically deposited into the account so that you know that even should something unforeseen happen like a double booking or the club burning down, you have gotten your fee.
Now when we get to the point that we can actually do a virtual concert to go along with those electronic contracts and E-Payments so we can actually do the show from out rehearsal hall and get paid for it, we’ll be happy. Maybe.
Provided by MMC
Monday, May 9, 2011
Locating Music Business Professionals
Locating Music Business Professionals
If you are a professional in your field, and I assume you are or you would not be here, the hardest part of your job might be locating and hooking up with other music business professionals in your particular field. If you are looking for work or if you are looking to hire someone, you need a good place to go and make that happen with a minimum of effort and time exerted.
Yellow pages have been the favorite of people for many years. I can recall stories of people that I knew who told me that whenever they went to Nashville or Los Angeles or New York or some other music business capitol, they would abscond with a recent copy of the local yellow pages so that they could then review it at their leisure when they got home.
Thank goodness for the advent of the Internet and social networking and business networking sites. Now instead of deciding if you could leave half of your clothes at the motel so that you could get that big multi-volume New York City phone book into your luggage and onto the plane you can just hit a Google search and leave the phone book in the hotel.
Places like myMusicCircle have also come about to help fill the need that many of us music business professionals have. This is the need to quickly and easily locate people that we need to hire or that need to hire us. This is one are of the technology revolution that has really been helpful to those of us that try to make our living in this crazy world and still manage to compete with the big dogs in the industry.
In order to compete in today’s market place you need to be ready, willing and able to move when the opportunity knocks. Those of you that are not ready to jump will find yourselves at the back of the line with no work.
So the best thing for anyone out there to do is to make sure that you are prepared to do your business electronically. The world is going electronic and things move a lot faster now than they did even just a few years ago. Today you will find people who find a need, post a job on a website and hire a professional to fill that job and complete that need. The amazing thing is that in today’s market, all of this can take only minutes to do.
How is that for instant gratification?
Provided by MMC
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The Digital Coma
The Digital Coma
One very huge downside of technology is what I call the digital coma. Let’s be realistic here. No one likes to do things before they actually have to be done. In life it is called procrastination. In business it is called suicide. And yet as human beings we all tend to do it. Yes, we have the best of intentions on getting it done well in advance of the deadline. And yet when that deadline arrives we are still often not done with it.
Part of this is because we know how much can be done with technology so we tent to think that we can get it done faster than we actually can so we budget our time elsewhere at the onset until it is too late and we are in a crunch.
This is a great example of how freelance or virtual assistance can come in handy. If we are smart we will take the job the minute the guidelines are known and we will outsource the different parts of it to different freelancers so that the various components arrive in our email boxes well in advance of the due date and we can leisurely assemble them into the project we have to do.
In reality what happens is that we put the project on the back burner to take care of moiré pressing things and when our Handheld device tells us the project is due in a week we freak and try to put everything together from scratch and we do a sub par job because we try and do it all ourselves and quickly.
This is another point where the freelance community can come to our aid. If you are at the wire and have more to get done than you actually can get done. Put a feeler out on the virtual job boards like myMusicCircle and get the best talent in the world piecing together the various parts of the puzzle. This will likely get things done on time and with a quality far above what you can do by yourself, That’s because you are looking at the whole picture and know you can’t complete it all on time where the freelancer is looking at one slice of the puzzle and knows he can do it.
Eight people working on eight tasks can do it faster and netter than one. So remember that next time you forget about that project.
Provided by MMC
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Rocking In A Virtual World
Rocking In A Virtual World
Today you can do everything from a computer. You can locate your long lost relatives or you can find a new love. You can order a pizza and have it delivered and you can do all your Christmas shopping. If it has to do with life, it can be done via your personal computer.
You can find the lyrics and tabs to your favorite songs and you can even download your favorite songs, legally or illegally. You can buy the instruments and other components needed to make your own live music. And what s very cool is that you can do all of this without hindrance.
You truly are able to rock the world virtually. If you have access to the Internet and you are looking to put together a world-class project you can hire people to virtually help your project rock.
You can set up the rhythm guitar and scratch vocal tracks in your home studio and then email them to a lead playing musician across the country in LA. He can overdub his part and send them to a bass player that lives in Nashville. Those tracks can then be sent off to a drummer from Jamaica and on to a piano player in England before they come back to you.
You can then lay on the final vocals and send the files to the producer in New York who can mix and master them and send them to our friends in France for Graphic work and then finally on to China for Manufacturing and packaging before coming back to you as a finished CD.
The point here is that each and every one of the people in this chain could have been gotten from contacts at places like myMusicCircle. You can find everyone that you need to do this project right from the same computer that you use to shop on Ebay or to check the weather. These are people that you may never meet but they are true virtual employees of your country coming together to help make that project a reality.
You are likely to save quite a little money by hiring professionals this way and the downside is that it is going to likely take a little longer to piece it all together unless you stay on top of the production schedule and make sure everyone stays on target and gets their portion of the project done in a timely manner.
Changes and Challenges
As humans we hate change. We get set in our ways and we like to be in a comfort zone. Musicians generally don’t like to get outside of a comfort zone because when things are familiar, it is easy to do them and present a consistent result. However, as anyone knows the only constant in life is change and with every change comes a new challenge. How well we end up at the end of the day is directly proportional to how well we meet and handle the change.
A case in point is, if thirty years ago you had told people that one day Hank Williams Jr. would do a video with his dead father as a duet of an old Hank Williams Sr. song they would have called you crazy and banished you to disco music forever. But it did happen.
If twenty years ago someone had said that rock and roll musicians would be the studio musicians in Nashville. You would have sent them to a funny farm. And yet today some of the most successful studio guys in Nashville are members of some old classic rock bands.
If Ten years ago someone, ok – I think you get the point.
Change is healthy and good for everyone if we let the changes challenge us to do better rather than becoming complacent and allowing those changes to dictate the end result.
Today the technology available to the world allows us to do things that were not even a pipe dream to our parents and that scenario will likely play out for our kids as well. Change is inevitable and change is generally good. We need to learn to adapt to that change and find a way to make that change work to our advantage rather than sitting back and letting it take us where it wants us to go.
The Internet and sites like myMusicCircle allow us to take control or our virtual destiny and steer our own futures by locating the people and the processes needed to make the things we want to happen actually happen. As long as we maintain an open mind and remember that we have to keep the end in sight and use the technology as the vessel and not the result, the next ten years and the things we will be able to do with the aid of technology is going to blow the last fifty away.
Provided by MMC
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Clone Yourself, Virtually
Clone Yourself, Virtually
Ok, you really can’t clone yourself or make little virtual Mini-Me people to help you get more done in less time. Technology has not progressed that far, at least not yet. However, what you can do is virtually seek out, locate and secure the help that you need to get things done.
Unless you are extremely diverse, there is little doubt that you are only one person and as one person it is impossible to think that you can handle your music distribution, online website signups, email marketing campaigns, website marketing and global marketing. There is just not enough time in anyone’s day to handle all of that work by your self.
So what are you going to do? You have all of this work that needs to happen and only so many hours in the day. Well, if you are lucky you might be able to get family and friends to pitch in and help you out. Once. And if you are even luckier, that help will actually be done correctly.
The better over all solution to this dilemma is to hire your self some extra bodies to handle the workload. That is what successful businesses have done now for, as long as there have been businesses. It’s the age-old law of supply and demand. When your demand is up you hire people to meet the demand with an increased supply.
The thing here is that if you are like most small land struggling businesses, you have a rather low cash flow and often run close to the budget line. The good news we have for you is that you don’t have to be a J. Paul Getty or Donald Trump to be able to solve this issue.
Today you can get on the Internet at any point in time, day or night and search out and find responsible freelance workers that will help you out on a project by project basis and often at a price that is very surprisingly affordable. You simply need to be honest about your needs, expectations and your budget and you can have a world of very talented folks trying to get you to hire them.
The crème of the crop will typically rise to the top and you can usually find the perfect candidate quickly. Places like myMusicCircle deal almost exclusively with the entertainment area and the people there know what you are after.
Friday, April 15, 2011
REFERRAL COMPENSATION
REFERRAL COMPENSATION
How would you like to sit there at home, on your backside eating Bon-Bons and listening to Jimi Hendirx wail on Electric Ladyland and make money? Ok, you might want to substitute low fat yogurt for the Bon-Bons and you could prefer Old Blue Eyes for music, but the point is, it would be great to get money for literally doing very little. Right?
If you are a member of myMusicCircle then you have the opportunity to do just exactly that. You can input a small amount of finger tapping and end up making a potentially large amount of cash. You are truly only limited by the amount of friends that you have. Ok, friends that actually like you are preferable in this case.
The secret to turning myMusicCircle into a cash cow, as they say is by using and working the referral compensation that is offered. If you have a huge network of musical friends, and who doesn’t! You can have a limitless source of income. Let’s look at how it works.
In a nutshell it goes like this. You contact your musical friends, be they an arranger, a dancer, a graphic designer, a musician, an expert beat maker, someone involved in the legalities of the business, a talent or booking agent, a remix artist, a producer, someone that is in the press or a web market specialist. In short, pretty much anyone.
You get them to come and join the myMusicCircle site and once they sign up with a paid membership, the person doing the referring gets a credit of $10.00 into the myMusicCircle account. So like I said it really is that simple to make money at it.
Do the math, if you know fifty people and they all sign up, at $10.00 each you just made yourself a quick and easy $500.00. That will get you a lot of candy and a new copy of that Hendrix CD with cash left over.
So are you starting to get the picture? You know how good this place is because you use it yourself. So share the good fortune with your friends. Let them get a piece of the good thing that you have found and get paid to do it. It might just be the easiest $10.00 you’ve gotten, in fact it might be the ONLY $10.00 you ever got from some of your friends. Musicians are notoriously broke you know!
Provided By MMC
How One-hit Wonders Work
How One-hit Wonders Work
The one-hit wonder. The very term conjures up images of red balloons, blinding science and burning beds -- images of Eileen and Mickey spinning right round like a record as they do the safety dance in Key Largo. You get the picture. Nobody is sure exactly which artist was first declared a one-hit wonder. The Web site phrases.org claims a writer from the Winnipeg Free Press first used the term in print in 1977, as a counter to the band Abba's success. But the Web site notes that it appeared to be a known phrase. |
For artists who carry the burden of this sobriquet, it's a tag that sticks. You hear band names like Men Without Hats and Timbuk 3, and those three words creep into your brain. Sadly, people like Thomas Dolby, Nina Hagen and Gary Numan are part of this select club. It's probably especially tough for someone like Numan, who had a successful recording career in England, but never placed more than one song, 1980's "Cars," on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. In fact, Numan continues to record and tour, which is more than can be said of many of his one-hit counterparts.
Although the term is typically associated with the recording industry, the one-hit stigma isn't reserved for just singers. History is rich with famous flame-outs, from painters and authors to inventors and athletes. In fact, many baseball players' major league careers consist of just one single hit, making them literal one-hit wonders. New York Mets player Chris Jelic had only one hit, but it was a home run. Not to be outdone, a St. Louis Cardinal catcher named Keith McDonald had only three career hits, also all home runs.
In baseball, just one hit means you failed in your career. In the music business, you're lucky to get a recording contract, much less chart even one bona fide hit. So being a one-hit wonder can't be as bad as it seems, right? We'll let you decide after you take a look at the following famous one-hit wonders.
Musical One-hit Wonders
Not many people consider Janis Joplin a one-hit wonder even though she only had one hit.
Although the term "one-hit wonder" has been used in many circles, from drug culture to boxing, when most people hear it, they think of bands or singers with only one hit. What does it take to be categorized as a one-hit wonder in the music biz?
Technically, a "hit" is a song that makes the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. For one-hit wonder status, this is usually narrowed down to the top 40. However, some legendary artists with huge followings have technically only had one Billboard hit. It's doubtful that many people think of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin or Rush as one-hit wonders, even though they each charted only once. Other popular musicians with only one hit include Beck, Garth Brooks, The Grateful Dead, The White Stripes and Devo. And then there are the artists who never had a top 40 hit, but their song was somehow firmly lodged in the zeitgeist of whatever decade it was released. Neither Wall of Voodoo's "Mexican Radio" nor Modern English's "I Melt with You" charted higher than 58, but they're both generally noted as classic 1980s one-hit wonders.
The examples above show that being a one-hit wonder is more about striking a chord with a generation of music fans with a lone song than it is about the chart position of that song. The 1980s were rife with one-hit wonders, but each decade can lay claim to its own batch of classics. The 1950s started with one-hit wonders like "Earth Angel" by The Penguins and "Sh-Boom" by The Chords, and wrapped up with "Rockin Robin" from Bobby Day. The heyday of classic rock, the late 1960s, had its share of one-hit wonders as well with songs like "Summertime Blues" from Blue Cheer and "Green Tambourine" by the Lemon Pipers. Nineteen-seventies disco was riddled with one-hit wonders, but before disco even hit, the following songs topped the charts:
· "Spirit in the Sky" -- Norman Greenbaum
· "Are You Ready" -- Pacific Gas & Electric
· "Mr. Big Stuff" -- Jean Knight
· "Hold Your Head Up" -- Argent
· "One Toke Over the Line" -- Brewer & Shipley
· "Seasons in the Sun" -- Terry Jacks
These are just a handful of the hundreds of one-hit-wonder examples from the music world. Entire Web sites and Internet radio stations are dedicated to keeping this music alive, ensuring that each one-hit wonder will remain a hit.
Literary and Film One-hit Wonders
Smile! The art world has its share of one-hit wonders as well, but none more famous than the creator of the yellow smiley face, Harvey Bell. Bell was a graphic artist in Massachusetts who created the iconic smiley face in 1963 as part of a company employee morale boosting campaign for State Mutual Life Assurance Company. The design took off and became a symbol of the 1960s, with more than 50 million smiley buttons alone selling that decade. Unfortunately for Bell, his one hit status only equaled fame; he was paid just $240 for the original design with no other profit attached. |
Perhaps because creative industries keep track of popularity as a benchmark of success, the creative world is full of one-hit wonders. (You won't find many one-hit wonder lists for what the average blue- or white-collar worker does for a living.) Although the music world has a corner on the market, there are plenty of examples from literary circles, as well. The most often mentioned literary one-hit wonder is Harper Lee's classic book "To Kill a Mockingbird." Lee never published another book. Neither did Ralph Ellison, during his lifetime at least, after his National Book Award winning "Invisible Man" in 1953. Other notable literary one hit wonders include:
· "Gone With the Wind" -- Margaret Mitchell
· "Wuthering Heights" -- Emily Bronte
· "The Bell Jar" -- Sylvia Plath
· "A Confederacy of Dunces" -- John Kennedy Toole
Both Plath and Toole committed suicide, which is why they didn't write follow-up hits. Plath killed herself months after the release of "The Bell Jar," and Toole took his life years before his hit published. It should be noted that Plath was already on the map as a successful poet, so her one-hit wonder status only applies to her novel writing success.
As with writing novels, making a hit movie is difficult to do, and there are quite a few film directors who've only had one hit. There's certainly no guarantee of future successes after attaining one. Just ask director Michael Cimino, who hit it big with his Vietnam Era epic "The Deer Hunter" in 1978. Though this movie scored five Academy Awards, including one for Best Picture, his follow up "Heaven's Gate" was a notorious disaster; none of his five films that followed amounted to much. And sadly, the life of writer/director Steve Gordon ended not long after he made his lone hit comedy "Arthur" in 1981.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
How Making It Works: Antigone Rising
How Making It Works: Antigone Rising
For the thousands of musicians who try, the elusive brass ring of stardom and success remains just out of reach. It seems that no amount of talent, good looks, street smarts, business savvy or "friends in high places" guarantees anything in the big bad music business. So what is the secret formula of success that separates the 'chosen' from the 'frozen'?
The truth is there are as many paths to the spotlight as there are musicians who've actually made it there. And each one has a unique story that combines elements of luck, innovation, heart and hard work.
In this article HowStuffWorks talks to Kristen Henderson, the guitarist of the recently signed band Antigone Rising, to hear the details of just such a story. We will learn from Kristen the steps of Antigone Risings path, speculate on their future, and discuss their formula for success to try and see what goes into "making it" in music.
Meet Antigone Rising
Antigone Rising is a five-piece, band from the New York/New Jersey area arrayed in the standard rock formation of two guitars, bass and drums fronted by a charismatic vocalist. In the days of shoe gazing pop, Antigone Rising carries the fallen flag of such classic rockers as Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, and Joan Jett.
With five years and nearly 1000 shows under their belts Antigone Rising has taken the "do it yourself" road warrior approach to cultivating a following -- Guerilla promotion, self-produced CDs, and night after night of playing clubs.
Finally their years of hard work and touring have paid off. It is the scenario touring bands dream about; Antigone Rising was backstage after a show when record company president Jason Flom came into the green room ...
Kristen tells the story:
It came together exactly the way you read about. He was at a show. He saw the band. He offered the band a deal backstage. It literally happened like that. Which sounds so cliché ... I was like, that is not how it happens. I've been doing this far too long to believe that.
In May 2003, Antigone Rising signed that deal with Lava Records, a division of Atlantic Records and a cog in the mammoth machine of the Warner Music Group. These days they are in the studio polishing their first commercial record. Having garnered the interest of famous producers like Tony Visconte (David Bowie's producer) and Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20, nods from publications like Rolling Stone and a coveted spot on stage at SXSW, Antigone Rising is standing in the doorway of dreamland. Now it's all potentiality -- here is that moment of critical mass.
Kristen explained, "When we started Antigone Rising the goal was to tour and build a grass roots following. You know that's all we cared about. We weren't really thinking bout anything else, but getting into a van and traveling -- touring. That's all we wanted to do."
Well, far from the days of simply just "wanting to tour" Antigone Rising is poised for success. But in the music business it's hard to define success.
What is Success?
The term "making it" is often thrown around by aspiring musicians without a clear idea of what "it" really is. Presumably the term refers to achieving a certain level of success in the music business -- but what is success? It seems to be this sort of nebulous idea that means different things to different people.
Some may say:
"I want fame."
"I want to live for art and beauty."
"I want money."
"I want to change music."
"I want to use my music as a platform to express myself to the world."
"I want to live for art and beauty."
"I want money."
"I want to change music."
"I want to use my music as a platform to express myself to the world."
These are only some of the motives, but they are probably the most common, and they all revolve around one fundamental principal: To truly succeed in these scenarios, the musician needs to be in a situation where he only has to worry about making music. This can be difficult if he has to deal with a day job to support himself financially. That being said, we can simplify these desires into a single, more practical definition of success:
"I want to make a living playing music."
There are tons of ways to make a living in music that have nothing to do with world tours or MTV. While they are not glamorous, lots of musicians make a living as music teachers, contract composers or studio musicians. In the performance realm, there are plenty of bands who make a living but are never heard on the radio or seen on MTV. On one end of that spectrum you have cover bands, and on the other end you have touring indie bands. They all make livings, even though they don't make headlines.
Cover bands make a living playing other people's music (often referred to as "covering" a song) at weddings and events. Indie bands ("indie" is short for "independent") tour, record and promote themselves and their original music all with the money they generate from the band. Since almost no band is born into a record contract, all original bands start out as "indie" (in the true definition of the word) until they are signed to a record label. The essence of the indie band is that they propel themselves without the backing of a record company. Antigone Rising started as such a band. And as Kristen explains, that was their idea of "making a living" in music: "The goal was to tour ... we just decided we didn't care about a record deal when we first got together."
The irony is that despite their grassroots desires, Antigone Rising has achieved what other musicians spend a lifetime trying to get. Antigone Rising's "build it and they will come" success has come from adhering to their own personal definition of success: "... to do it exactly how we want to do it."
According to Kristen, the band's formula for success was arrived at from years of experience, and it's about "just staying really true to ourselves. As totally cliché as that is ... That's the only way to do it. It's the only way it's ever worked for us."
While that defines Antigone Rising's idea of success as well as their approach, simply saying you're going to "do it your way" and actually doing it are two very different things. In the next sections, Kristen explains what it really took for Antigone Rising to do it "their way."
Road to Stardom
If you peruse the arts or music section of your local book store, you will find scads of books about the music business, self promotion and the key to "making it." They will all outline a path to cracking the music "biz" that looks something like this:
1. Start a band or solo project.
2. Write several two-to-three-minute, "radio friendly" songs.
3. Play shows in the appropriate local markets.
4. Cultivate a following, and grow that following on a regional level.
5. Make enough money to record a demo.
6. Shop that demo to managers, labels and showcases.
7. Use attorneys and managers to help you get signed to a major label record company.
8. Make a hit record.
9. Take a supermodel to the MTV music awards.
10. Count your money.
This sounds very logical, but in reality, there is no tried-and-true method to "making it". If there were, then everybody would do it. Still, many would-be rock stars use this "text book" method as if it were a treasure map that is meant to be followed step by step. The realization that the well-beaten path was not for them is what unified the members of Antigone Rising into one singular vision for how the band should work.
Kristen elaborates:
We had all done like, the typical ... we made a demo, we worked with this producer who helped us write all the songs, that producer shopped the demo, that demo got rejected by every major label ...
So, we sort of all got together and looked at each other and ... we all just decided, you know what, that doesn't work, at least not for the way we want to do things. And the artists who do get signed that way we sort of felt like ended up getting told how their careers are going to unfold. We wanted to have control. And so ... rather than doing what a lot of bands and artists do, the only thing we cared about was getting the business up and running on our own; making it so that we could make a living doing it our way. So that if and when the time comes to partner up with a bigger partner, we will have some say in how the business runs. And that's exactly what ended up happening. We thought that was the best approach.
This unified vision has always been the backbone of how Antigone Rising conducts their business. And no matter what artists may think, the music business is just that -- a business.
Strictly Business
If you look at the business model of a working band, the formula is simple: The band is brand that sells a product. The product is the music. The product can be sold in a variety of packages:
Package | Revenue |
Radio airplay | Royalties |
Album | Album Sales |
Live concerts | Ticket Sales |
Music videos | Broadcast royalties and DVD/home-video sales |
There is an old adage: It takes money to make money. Each one of these package types has a substantial cost associated with its production, and there is no guarantee that simply because you make an album or video people will buy it. To add to the risk, there are also the costs associated with making these products available to as many people as possible and selling it in a way that will make them want to buy it.
The risks associated with the music business boil down to four areas:
· Production - The process of recording, shooting or otherwise capturing the art form on some media
· Distribution - Getting the CD on the shelves of every possible record store, Web site and sales outlet
· Marketing - The flashier side of the business that involves the "look" and "feel" of the product -- how it's sold, how it's portrayed, and most important, how many eyes see that the product is available
All of these business elements have something in common: They are very expensive. Enter the record company. The reason the record contract is the brass ring of "making it" is because it means, in many cases, that a well-funded, well-connected company will now be handling these very important aspects of the business. The record company will pay to have the album recorded and manufactured. The record company will use its distribution muscle to put the product in stores. The record company will have its marketing people spin their magic to make sure everyone knows about the product. But it all comes at a cost, and anybody taking the risk of fronting the cash for manufacturing, distribution, and marketing is going to want some say in how the product is made.
Art vs. Commerce
The music business is a business; and like any business, the bottom line is king. Artistic gifts rarely translate into business savvy, but in order to survive in a multi-million dollar industry, that savvy is crucial. Any aspiring musician must weigh the pros and cons of the commercial versus independent music paths when navigating the world of professional music.
Antigone Rising started and perpetuated their success as independent artists. Independent artists enjoy a freedom that most label artists do not. The trade-off is that they tend to make less money and get little if any outside financial support. But that is not always true. Alterna-folk artist Ani DiFranco smashed the industry norm by achieving both artistic and commercial success completely outside of the industry system. Her secret: In addition to being a talented artist, she is an extraordinary business woman. DiFranco rakes in more revenue than most commercial artists and does it with no label control at all.
DiFranco's solid business model was an inspiration to the band. Before they were signed, Antigone Rising had a well-thought-out division of labor to share the burden of the business side of things. Kristen explains:
There're just natural roles that people take on, you know. Certain people are just naturally more inclined into a certain area of things. And then at some point you just have to say, "Alright, this is your job. This is my job. This job sucks so who's going to do it?" So, we have definitely worked it out so that there are pretty much four major areas. There's CFO, which is Cathy, our lead guitarist; she handles all the finances -- which is a horrible thing to have to handle. We have me, Kristen, who would be more Head of Public Relations department. We have Cassidy, our lead singer, and she is pretty much in charge of style, fashion, the way we appear, what we're going to do as far as the set list in front of an audience, things in that kind of that nature. And Dena, our drummer, is the Head of Fulfillment. She makes sure that we are stocked with merchandise ... So, that's sort of how we've fallen out.
When Lava or other labels approached, Antigone Rising was holding all of the cards. They had developed the entire infrastructure of their business on their own. They were a complete entity with albums, tours and a huge fan base they built from scratch -- they were in a position to not need label support in order to survive. So in reality, the Lava record deal was more like a small, successful company being bought by a larger successful company. Lava understands that Antigone was doing fine; the record label has only set out to offer greater strength to an already strong band.
In the battle of Art vs. Commerce, Antigone Rising won it all by being both dedicated artists and smart businesswomen.
Heck of a Deal!
With a developed band and a supportive label, the deal seems surefire. Both parties are in a good position to work together for the best chance of success. Kristen explains the relationship:
They're not spending a lot of money trying to teach us how to dance or how to, like, look onstage. There's input. They give us advice, you know, but we're self-contained in that regard. So, we sort of take care of that ourselves and we sort of show them [what we're doing] and then they say, "Well, you know you could step it up a notch. We can give you money, maybe, for a light show." Nobody's holding our hand and like tucking us in at night at the record label ... There are artists who have that, you know.
Antigone's relationship with Lava Records has so far been quite rewarding. They were lucky to be signed by a label that is truly interested in them and believe in their ability. Kristen describes the state of things:
[When Jason Flom] made an offer, we looked at each other in so much shock 'cause we had always been like, "Eh," you know, we weren't looking for it. We looked at each other, and we went, "Do we want to do this?" And we were, like, "Yeah." ... The funny thing is, at that point, when he made the offer, we didn't have a lawyer. Because we weren't looking for a deal and there's no reason to have a lawyer ... [But] we didn't f--- around with other labels. We didn't -- we just went with Jason. We loved him. You could tell he loved the band. He really believed in it and he got it ... So far Lava has been amazing.
But as with any record deal, challenges lie ahead.
One of the challenges that now face Antigone Rising is that by signing the deal, they are no longer truly independent artists. For years, this has been one of their greatest qualities and has been a strong point that has helped earn the respect of both fans and critics. No self-respecting independent artist can sign a record deal without trembling at the whispers of those dreaded words: "Sell-out."
Antigone Rising is now in a precarious position where one of the most important selling points of any band can be damaged: their image.
Image
Image is a crucial element of the modern music industry. It can make or break a band, and a well-crafted image can definitely help a band "make it." One of the greatest torpedoes to a band's image, especially an independent band, is if fans think they are "sell-outs."
"Selling out" is a stigma that can haunt artists and alienate fans. The idea is that the artist, seduced by money, creates an album that is geared for record sales and not for art. But fans can be brutal and fickle, often accusing artists of selling out simply because they suddenly have a smash hit song. But does selling well mean selling out? Even the completely independent Ani DiFranco has been accused of selling out by older fans, based on her growing fame and personal choices.
With their origins as a live touring band, Antigone Rising is a house that was built by fans, so the band has a tremendous loyalty to their fan base. The fans are considered in every aspect of what they do: "We think about our fans almost to the point where it might not be that healthy as artists. We're thinking about them all the time," explains Kristen.
After signing the deal, Lava set them up to do a Ford Mustang ad. Kristen explained, "They called us up and they said, 'Are you guys interested in doing this?' And we thought, this is such a strange thing, isn't it? -- do we really want to actually be, you know, promoting such a thing. It just seemed like an odd thing to get behind, you know, for us."
Antigone Rising was especially cautious about the decision because they had been burned earlier in their career by doing a Technics ad:
Funniest part about that, actually, was that when we did the [Technics] ad, we really didn't know ... So we did that ad and then the next thing you know it was running opposite the table of contents in Penthouse ... and you're like, wait a minute, you know, is that right for us?
We were a much younger band at that point and we were just excited to have the opportunity. So, that is the kind of thing, you know, you really learn. You live and learn, yeah ... And then you think, well, I can tell my grandkids, I was in Penthouse magazine. And that's kind of neat [laughing].
The Ford ad was meant to run in the much more accessible Elle magazine. Despite fears about what it may do to their image, the band decided to do the ad. Kristen explains what ultimately influenced their decision:
We thought about it and we said, you know, our van, which we consider our home, is a Ford Econoline van. Vanna White is a Ford van. She's been very good to us. So, out of respect to Vanna White, we thought, why not? And so, yes, we would love to do the ad [laughing]. And it actually ended up being a lot of fun because it was like a high, high fashion photo shoot. I mean, it was really done up and it was kind of fun for the day, we like -- we pretended we were supermodels. It was sort of unreal. That was really our thinking behind it -- Vanna ... Good thing Chevy didn't call.
Their pure intentions paid off, because the ad gave them crucial exposure in a well-known national magazine. And as far as the fans' take on the ad:
We always worry ... when we make decisions to do things that our fan base will take it the wrong way. But I think our fans get what we're like -- they know. When they open up Elle magazine and see us in a Ford Mustang ad and we're like dressed to the nines like fashion models, they just know that we were having a good time -- that it's not like some sort of 'Antigone has sold out.'
But Antigone Rising didn't always have exposure in national magazines. Like all fledgling bands, they started with a grassroots campaign of self-promotion. Their innovative approach is tied in to their success.
Self-promotion
Those who pursue music full-time quickly realize that playing music ends up becoming the thing you spend the least amount of time doing. For new bands, cutting your own path through the surfeit of struggling bands is imperative for getting your name out there. Relentless self-promotion becomes a full-time job. But how do you distinguish your band from the ocean of flyers, stickers and other bands duking it out for the same recognition? Kristen discussed Antigone's approach to grassroots marketing:
I realized early on, no one's going to do this for us, except us. And the truth of the matter is that if a day goes by where I haven't done something for the band, I can pretty much assume that nothing's been done for the band.
In the mid-nineties, when Antigone Rising was in an earlier incarnation, Kristen discovered an up-and-coming medium to spread the word:
I got on the Internet bandwagon really early on. Nobody even knew what the Internet was, but we had a Web site. So, early on we used to do a lot of guerilla Internet promotion. We would even e-mail, like, other fan Web sites, like, for example, we loved Pat Benetar. So, I literally e-mailed every person who ran a Pat Benetar fan page. I would e-mail them and say, "I'm in a band called Antigone Rising. If you would be willing to put our banner up on your Web site, I'll mail you our CD for free. And we'll put a link to your page on our site." So, I literally did that with, like, hundreds of artists' fans' Web sites.
These days, the Internet is part of standard operating procedure for bands; but Kristen's ability to see its potential early on helped the band to establish a digital presence before lots of other independent bands. Antigone also employed other innovative techniques:
Another thing that we did pretty early on before anybody else was creating street teams. We created our street team called the A.R. Force. And they really helped a lot in that. They would do flyering in markets. A lot of times we'd have kids on the street teams actually setting up radio interviews in markets for us. 'Cause the kids on the street team have no fear, I mean, they don't even think twice. They'll pick up the phone, "give me the manager of the radio station. I've got my band coming through" ... you know? They don't care.
And they did more to promote themselves:
You know, typical stuff, flyering, postcards, doing mailers, trying to meet other bands any way we could, you know. Anytime we played on a bill, especially with a band that was bigger than us, we always made a point of making friends. Being able to pick their brains, being able to get on other bills with them.
[And] when we lived in the city ... we would just play on street corners. We'd play in the subways. We would play until we'd get kicked off the corner.
This pioneering spirit of fearless innovation helped to rapidly grow Antigone Rising a loyal following in their fiercely competitive home market of New York City. But the one common denominator in all of their marketing approaches that propelled the band the farthest was attitude. Kristen shares the secret: "We always tried to appear bigger than maybe we were, you know? It's just one of those things, if you act like you are, then people assume you are. It works, it actually works."
So the early days were spent doggedly pursuing the exposure that is crucial to a band that hopes to "make it." But what good is exposure if you have nothing to sell? Antigone Rising had to figure out how to make albums.
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