Almost Famous

So you've got a band and you live in L.A. You sound pretty good and have aspirations of making a living off of it. You've acquired a small but loyal following and play regularly at small clubs across the region. Money is made, but nowhere near enough to sustain a decent living. How does a band start to make legitimate money, especially in a city with thousands of aspiring musicians? The short answer: Get signed by a major label. Well my friends, the chances of succeeding at becoming signed to a major and then being successful on the label are very slim.

Enter the Internet.

As musician Sebu Simonian attested in a recent Los Angeles Times article, "Most musicians, when they start out, think you've got to get signed in order to succeed. But now that the Internet has developed to become a really powerful tool to sell yourself, it's not as necessary." How true it is. According to my professor Jerry Del Colliano, labels are spending less and less money on developing new artists and spending more and more on their already established acts, milking the most out of the artists they already have. This makes it even harder for an up-and-coming group or artist to stoke the interest of a financially capable record label.

So how can an unknown artist "make it"?

Obviously, as far as the Internet is concerned, MySpace is the instinctive choice. It has become absolutely necessary for bands big and small to sustain a MySpace page. Aside from marketing and promoting to find new fans, music can be sold on the site. It's an all-in-one paradise for musicians and music lovers alike. Along with MySpace, there are other social networking sites for music, like purevolume.com. According to its directory, there are at least 30,034 listings for artists in the state of California alone, not to mention every other state and country the site represents. Though not as popular as MySpace, it does possess at least 408,719 "listeners," or people who have created a profile (similar to MySpace but solely for music purposes). The website allows artists to post songs, announcements, blogs, photos, and upcoming shows on their page. Though the capability to sell music on PureVolume does not exist, there is ample room for artists to promote their music and where to buy it. For example, here is the profile for the band Underoath. PureVolume is a great site to promote music and garner support. But are there more options to sell music online besides iTunes and MySpace? Yes.

CD Baby, a small online record store based in Portland, Oregon, is an attractive alternative. According to cdbaby.com, artists can make $6 to $12 per CD sold. That is a substantial increase from the CD royalty rates on most record contracts. What is great about CD Baby is that it is geared to the independent-minded "Do-It-Yourself" artist, as it does not accept CDs from distributors, only directly from the artist. Of course the opportunity cost here is the price of pressing a significant amount of CDs and shipping them to the warehouse, but this can be recouped by the high return on sold CDs and the amount of CDs sold. Because this is an online record store, regional distribution is not a problem as literally anyone in the world can order a CD from the site and have it delivered. This is the beauty of the digital age.

So is the tide beginning to change, or has it finally changed? It is apparent that artists are aware that there are numerous ways to make money that doesn't involve being signed to a record label. Of course, however, it is next to impossible for an unsigned band to stage a cross-country tour in support of their recently released on CDBaby.com EP, but it is not impossible to make a decent amount of cash to use to record, make merchandise, and do small scale tours. While there are benefits that only the money of a major record label can provide, the ingredients exist for a serious power shift from the corporate business to the amateur entrepreneur.

It is an exciting time in the music world and it should be interesting to see how the labels will react when they realize they are not as needed as they used to be!