I have been writing a new post for a while now in ‘drips and drabs’ about music, and more specifically ‘the music biz’. I read it back yesterday and it was a big rambling mess of a rant so I decided to re-write it. Whilst distracting myself from the task in hand I stumbled upon a blog by unsigned songwriter Stuart Newman. As the band I am in (Left Hand Red) is currently going through the same process, this blog struck a chord (no pun intended!) and made a lot of sense.
To furnish you with some background information, Left Hand Red have been around for 4 or so years with the ultimate aim of getting signed to a record label, getting our music out to a wider audience, and hopefully being able to live off being a professional band.
After several years of sending out countless amounts of ‘press packs’ to record companies and not hearing a peep back, LHR front man and general organiser of the band, Dan Scully, decided enough was enough and with the way the music industry is currently evolving we should put all our energies into going it alone instead.
OK, so history lesson/shameless band promotion over and onto the main rant…
So, why have we heard nothing from any record company despite sending out CDs to 50+ companies? The answer is simple: haircuts and jeans. That’s right, haircuts and jeans. As a band, LHR don’t have one asymmetric fringe or pair of spandex-tight jeans between them. This means we are not currently in fashion and not what the record companies are spewing out to the lucrative young teen market. We don’t have what is needed right now to produce maximum profit, and squeezing every penny possible from their purchase is what record companies are about. Now don’t get me wrong, I know it’s a business and the point of that is to make money, but, there is so much variety in music from classical to techno and despite this all we hear is what the record companies see as the most profitable, tapping into a ‘lifestyle’ and exploiting it for all the money they can. And when the current fashion starts to become stale a new one will be pushed forth and you’ll never hear of the current crop of bands again. The record companies will cease to promote yesterdays bands, no longer throwing money into recordings, tours and merchandise, instead diverting all the attention to the new ‘toys’.
No passion for music, no loyalty to the bands.
The alternative to all this for emerging artists? Go it alone. The way music distribution and promotion is evolving it is becoming much easier for bands to look out for themselves. No longer do bands need big bucks to press a record or a team of promoters up and down the country to get themselves noticed. A few hundred quid for a professional recording session to get the ball rolling is all that’s needed, anyone can burn their own CDs, make their MP3s available for download, put together a website or MySpace page and get themselves seen and (more importantly) heard. When you can do all this yourself, what can a record company offer you? Sure, there’s the ‘up front’ money but with some luck and patients I don’t see why it isn’t possible to make your own – MP3 downloads, CD sales, gig fees etc. Sure, it won’t be as an attractive sum as a big label may offer if they want you enough but you get to keep what should be most important to a musician – control over what you are doing, write whatever you want, record whatever you feel like, whenever you feel like it, no pressured deadlines or record companies pushing you in a direction to make you more saleable. After all, if you’re making music, it should be because you have a passion for it and want to express yourself through it, have a good time making it and make it to please yourself, if other people like it too, that’s a bonus, but you need to be making what you want and have total belief in your work, doing it because you like it.
All of that said, I have to ask myself what would happen if a major label turned up at our next gig and offered us a deal? It’s impossible to say until that day happens but I would like to think we all love what we do enough to have a serious think about it and what it would mean for our music. If it meant 15 minutes of fame doing what we do, sure, what an experience that would be. If it meant being moulded by the company to fit with the current trend, then I’d like to think we would have the strength to keep the purity of our sound and carry on enjoying what we do over the lure of making fast money. Sitting here, typing this, I feel that I would rather continue with my current lifestyle and really enjoy making the music we do, carry on promoting ourselves, meeting new people and spending our wages on recordings because we believe in ourselves rather than ‘upgrade’ my lifestyle with money and have to make music I don’t enjoy playing or being associated with, but who knows what will happen if that day ever comes around…
