Indie Visible: Why Smaller Record Labels are
Making Bigger Waves
--
by Greg Hoy
Pittsburgh City Paper, February 17-24, 1999, pps. 17-18.
Selling art -- putting value on something like a song – has been and always will be a speculative crapshoot. In these turbulent times, major record labels care as much about bands and music as a bank cares of its dollar bills. And as far as quality product is concerned, with major labels that line keeps sinking lower and lower.
"Universal-Polygram restructuring starts with 500 job cuts," reads the headline in the Feb. 8 copy of music magazine CMJ. "As many as 3,000 people worldwide could lose their jobs in1999. The first cuts included 280 layoffs at A&M and Geffen Records. ... Hundreds of bands are also expected to be dropped as a result of the restructuring, although no specific announcements have been made at presstime. The Los Angeles Times reported that A&M will cut 45 of its 65 acts, while Geffen will drop 45 of its 70 artists. Interscope is expected to cut 20 of its 70 acts, and Mercury is expected to cut 110 of its 140 artists."
Ouch. What seems to be the problem here? Record labels used to be the backbone of music. Heck, major recording labels used to be synonymous with the style they released: the soul known as the Motown sound, Elvis and Sun Records, the avant-artiness of Verve. Labels such as these built legacies that procreated musically as the years went by.
So what happened?
"You start to see that A&R [artists and repertoire] people are more concerned with keeping their jobs than breaking new talent, so they're not going to take any chances on anything they don't feel is a guaranteed hit," says indie label Bandaloop's Bill Hutchison. He should know: His upstart record label Bandaloop, based in Columbus, Ohio, exists because, well, no one in the so-called music industry seems to care about the MUSIC. You know, that thing a record label is supposed to provide for the public.
"I'm looking for what's next," says Hutchison. "A band where all of a sudden you wake up some day and every label wants to sign somebody that SOUNDS like that. And I want them to be on my label " While Hutchison's feelings are valid, they're certainly not original. There are other labels -also "independent" of corporate money - already doing what Bandaloop is planning. Labels such as Dischord, Touch and Go and Merge are all highly respected, entirely self-run record companies, each with a distinct style and vision.
But the money always seems to win. While small labels offer musical freedom, they can't offer the funds supposedly necessary for the big splash. Examples are aplenty. Nirvana was on Seattle indie Sub Pop before major-label Geffen ate it up. Punk label Epitaph offered the Offspring to America - and lost it to Sony. Helmet signed to Interscope, earning one of the largest signing bonuses in history.
How did it affect the music? "Major labels deal with budgets," explains Hutchison. "They have a certain budget to spend on each artist. And that's money the artist has to recoup. With a small label, you look at it and say, 'How much money do we really need?'Not 'How big can we make this record with X amount of money?'"
As Public Enemy once said: Don't believe the hype. "What kind of weight would a major label put behind a band like us?" says Jesse Prentiss. Prentiss is the bass player for Ritual Space Travel Agency, a brilliant left-of-center rock band whose new CD will be Bandaloop's first release."I mean, listen to the radio. The only time you hear something a little different, a slightly new sound or catchy tune, the whole album sounds exactly like that first song you heard. There's no innovation."
Innovation is a word not usually associated with major-label acts. In the case of Bandaloop, the label has big plans instead of big budgets. Hutchison has learned about the industry by immersing himself in it. He's managed the heavy-handed band Coinmonster and worked as a regional label rep for the mega-major record label Virgin.
"After shopping Coinmonster, talking to labels, talking to attorneys, I realized these people don't know what they're doing," says Hutchison. "You get sick of hearing 'no' and one day you wake up and say, 'You're wrong. 'The major labels are wrong."
Other local bands, such as Don Caballero, Hurl and Karl Hendricks, have found success with smaller labels because of the uniqueness of their music. Finding a few people who believe in your art enough to spend their limited funds to get it to more ears is a beautiful concept. And it's something major labels can only envy.
"If you're trying to target a demographic, you're missing the point of creating music," says Prentiss. But a level of intimacy exists with a small independent label. For all intents and purposes, it HAS to.
Hutchison believes in his bands. And his bands believe in him. "I like his taste, the fact he wants to put us out, the stuff he's done with Coinmonster," says Prentiss. "I like the way he's trying to organize, trying to get a couple good bands from a couple of good cities and make something with integrity."
With Ritual Space Travel Agency, chances are good no major label would give it the time of day. The band's music isn't necessarily easy to digest. While its new album is a simply amazing slice of great music, you couldn't exactly hum along on an elevator as you can with so much of today's "modern rock."
Ask any band its goal and oftentimes the reply will be something along the lines of "to get signed." While two or three decades ago this may have been a valid goal, any band with the intention of "making it" should re-think the game plan. Does the thought of just getting out and playing show after show even occur to bands anymore?
"We've never had anybody behind us, pushing a CD," says Prentiss of RSTA's label release. "Younger bands get stuck with 500 or 1,000 CDs in their closet. They don't have the time to be on the phone, making calls, getting the CD heard. But anything that gives a band the look of professionalism - a professionalism it already has, being committed, performing - to give that to a larger audience is necessary to perpetuate the music."
Bandaloop's game plan is nothing new. But with limited funds, being frugal is key. "It's so grassroots that we can put out a CD, sell five or six hundred, and we make money: the label and the band," says Hutchison.
The indie advantage consists of "getting it out one CD at a time," he says. "You keep track of your money. Instead of sending out 500 pro- motional posters for one show, you make that amount for a whole tour. There's so much waste with a major label, it's ridiculous."
Hutchison should know. He's hung those posters and used his major-label experience to his own musical advantage. "All my Virgin checks go toward my own label," says Hutchison in a surprisingly un-ironic tone. "Anything I make doing this, I reinvest. I've been able to save enough through the course of the last year to get this going."
It harkens back to the days when bands sold their albums out of the trunks of their cars. It's a philosophy that hasn't really gone anywhere. In light of the crumbling regimes at the big labels, being DIY (Do It Yourself) may be the only way to make it anywhere.
Locally, bands that have made it to major labels have found insurmountable difficulties. If the contact person at a record label gets the ax or loses credibility, a band's career as a major- label artist is effectively over. The push is on numbers, units sold, dollar signs. That's why some struggling bands buy their own albums back through retailers, cashing in on Soundscan tracking to convince clueless people in expensive suits that their music sells.
But what about the music? To find it, it seems one must look beneath the Best Buy mentality. Like every other aspect of the life, the best isn't always the easiest to come by. It's a philosophical choice. And when it comes to the music industry, nine times out of ten it's wrong.
"It's an interesting time," Hutchison says of the music industry's current unpredictability. "There are bands, well-known bands, that are going to get dropped if they didn't sell, say, 200,000 units."
Bands with name recognition. Bands you've heard on the radio. Bands you think are making tons of cash. They're effectively getting fired from their job of making music.
The real question remains: Does anyone at a major label ever consider the quality of the music they are giving to the public?
"We want to be a label where if a band's on Bandaloop, you know it's going to sound different, unique, good," says Hutchison. With Coinmonster and RSTA as the first guinea pigs, Bandaloop has an uphill climb. Hutchison explains his choice of acts. "The thing that ties them together is their musicianship. They're talented writers and performers. They play with a lot of intensity and emotion. With Ritual, the band is to a point where name recognition is starting to take hold. Coinmonster has a new album coming out this fall which, after selling and charting on college radio with their last CD [Universal Solvent], should be ready to push on more of a national level."
So how does a small, poor label get its product out to the public? "It will depend on the band," says Hutchison. "Playing shows, selling CDs, following up with media and radio. The music industry is at a point where NOBODY KNOWS what's going to happen. The structure is changing at such a dramatic pace that stopping by a radio station and talking to the right people can actually get your songs in rotation."
The struggle of the artist continues. Look no further than the memoirs of the late composer and musician Frank Zappa for a true portrait of his music and the industry.
"It's like being a cook," Zappa wrote. "And if you were a really good cook and you had a lot of money for really excellent ingredients and really good equipment, then you could cook just about anything. But if you don't have all the gear...and you don't even own a cookbook, but you still want to eat, and nobody's going to cook it for you, then you better find some other way to improvise that dish. And that's kind of the way the stuff gets put together."
And that is what being an independent label is all about.