You can stop making websites to promote unsigned bands now. There are far too many — and it’s getting to be a problem.
This week, we witnessed the first unsigned band to enter the UK top 40. We should pause to celebrate that fact, and then shake our heads in disbelief as they actively use that success as leverage to get themselves indentured to a record label, rather than create for themselves a sustainable career as independent artists.
When we first started putting music up on the Internet, back in the early 1990s, there was something liberating about the promise of the great level playing field the online world provided.
The old mp3.com was something of a revolution for artists who wanted to connect with a global audience. The site allowed you to upload your own music, gave you a page to direct people to, and even provided a way whereby you could sell CDs to order. They even did fulfilment.
The major record labels didn’t like it. It represented something of a threat to the business of making, selling, distributing and promoting a carefully selected roster of stars. But actually, it was pretty much untouchable, rights-wise.
And then mp3.com started to get competition. Serious competition. Other websites that promoted ‘unsigned’ artists started popping up. There was obviously a huge untapped market here just waiting to be divided up.
And divided up it was. Websites started springing up all over the world that supported the cause of the poor unsigned artist. Some were defined geographically. Some by genre. Some catered to particular kinds of community. Some tried to be all things to all people. But by the year 2000, the gap that mp3.com filled in its glory days simply did not exist anymore.
Let’s not forget there was no really viable economic model for this at the time. Selling downloads was still a good decade away from widespread uptake. Bandwidths just weren’t up to it. The online advertising market was a world of low-return banner ads and, later, infuriating pop-ups.
But clearly there was a massive client base and a globally configured audience. It was just a matter of getting as many of these talented artists in front of these willing consumers — and the economic model would work itself out.
Sadly, in an effort to compete, mp3.com made a serious tactical error that was pounced upon by the record industry, and a crippling court case put paid to what had been a shining beacon in an online music wasteland. The current site, incidentally, is a pale corporate shadow of its former glorious self and is not connected in any way with the old website.
As the years have gone on, sites have popped up that take an ever-smarter approach to the business of promoting unsigned acts. There have been download sites, music portals, social networking sites, recommendation sites, promotion and PR sites, sites that connect bands with online broadcasters.
There’s Garageband (who at least have the decency to use the word ‘independent’, rather than the vaguely derogatory ‘unsigned’), MySpace, Overplay, Unsigned Band Web, Unsigned.com… actually, the list is pretty much endless.
Every one of them has a driving passion to promote the criminally under-represented unsigned artist — and, the theory goes, the unsigned artist signs up because all the unsigned artist really needs is this magical thing called ‘exposure’. If they just had exposure, then they would be successful, rich, popular, on a level playing field… or some other such thing.
Only, everyone seems to have failed to notice that exposure is a problem of a much different order these days. If your band has difficulty getting exposure in 2007, then the problem is not access to ways in which you can get your music out there. The problem is Darwinism.
We need another new website that promotes unsigned bands like we need a hole in the head.
Come up with something clever, by all means — but if you plan to just build a community where unsigned bands can showcase their music to an audience hungry for new sounds, then forget it. The audience is full to bursting, thanks.
There is no longer a gap in this particular market, and if this is your great entrepreneurial idea, I wish you a swift and inexpensive failure — because the alternative is a slow and financially crippling one.
6 Comments
stop dave….
I forgot to thank you for this post. Along with a few other developments, your wishing us a “swift and inexpensive failure” has caused some radical rethinking over at Flukebox HQ.
I’ve just blogged about the new plan here: http://orangejon.com/blog/?p=44
Andrew has a good point here. I’ve had a similar feelings for some of these guys [companies] as very few of them:
a) actually make a healthy effort to promote the artists that register with them
b) bring anything new to the table in this field
And that, is just a waste.
Every week I have a friend or a client telling me about some new site that “lets you sell your mp3’s from your own storefront” etc. wowee.
oh another one, which celebrity is sitting on the board this time?
Again, the credibility issue – I’m gonna stick with derek because he’s got a reputation – and people say myspace looks ugly???
well, what about a site that promotes independent artists and lets YOU make the choice of who you want to support…. and finance their professional cd.
http://www.sellaband.com .
My wife is the #1 artist on there at the moment. It has taken her 6 months to get there. People have listened and voted with their wallets… put their money where their mouth is. She has made alot of friends in her time on there. Music can bring people together, and this is a perfect example.
Anyway, things are going really well, research on recording places are being done, and she should be starting work on pre-production in July/August. When the album is mastered and manufactured, the people who invested in it get a limited edition (numbered) cd for every part they put in, and share 50% of the profits on the normal cd sales. The cd’s will be sold online and in physical stores.
btw I hate MySpace… so ugly/slow/difficult.
Maybe the reason why we have all this music, that record labels are not interested in, because it does not sell (could it be a reason?), is that almost every song has been written with the chords we know today?
I turn on the radio, I’ve never heard the song before, yet I hear something I’ve heard in so many different ways many, many, times before. Or have we fallen into one way of making music and that is it?
The answer I do not know, I have, however, a few thoughts. Read my “press release” at http://www.newmusicchords.com/.
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