I am witnessing a disturbing trend among musicians: they are mindlessly joining the major label chorus and stigmatizing their own fans as criminals for gaining free access to their music.
The trend won’t last that long. If you’re one of these fan-chastising musicians, you will your bread and butter will be toast faster than you can say “filesharing is stealing”.
The approach for most artists is considerably more velvet-gloved than the RIAA, but the message is the same. The graphic pictured at right is a perfect example of the condescending tone some musicians are taking these days. Not surprisingly, I’ve noticed most of these complainers are those who profited from the old recording regime. This includes not only musicians but also producers and engineers, whom have suffered quietly for the most part.
Look, we’re all upset that fans buy $5 cups of coffee daily yet balk at spending the same amount on five songs a month. But guess what? As a Facebook commenter points out, “you can’t download coffee”. It is a scarce commodity. Music is not. Music is everywhere. If musicians suddenly stopped making music today, there would still be more music than anyone could listen to for centuries. But of course that won’t happen, because music will go on whether fans are paying $1 per song or not. In fact, all evidence suggests music will become more frequent, more diverse and more interesting as its price approaches zero.
These are the people who want to support you. Why are you suggesting they are thieves? Why do you think they’re freeloaders who are too lazy to drop you a buck?
Your fans know that the recording business model is broken. They know that when they buy the single for $1.29, a healthy chunk goes to iTunes, and the rest goes to the record label that’s still recouping on your marketing budget.
Your fans know the system of compulsory licensing is broken. They know it concentrates wealth at the top of the industry and creates a tall barrier of entry to those seeking a career as a professional musician.
Your fans know digital distribution costs practically nothing, yet you have to fork over $50/year or 9% annually just to get it on iTunes so they can take their 35% cut.
You’re not giving your fans a way to compensate you fairly. You’re not letting them contribute directly to your projects and to see that contribution reflected back on them and your fan community. You’re not engaging them on a personal level, at a level where you can communicate your financial needs and they can respond. You’re not providing incentives. Albums aren’t incentives any more. They’re advertisements for the experience of being a fan.
But even if you don’t believe any of that, guess what? Deterrence never works. It is a losing battle. Read Pop Song Piracy and learn about the technological arms race the record business has been losing for over a century. It’s not gonna work. All you’re going to do is make your fans not want to access your music for free anymore. I guess that’s what you want, right?
Let’s get a few things straight:
• The cost of access to music to fans is approaching free. In many ways it already is. Accept this and move on because it won’t change. Music is a utility, and you’re selling energy. Electrify the audience and they will power your career. Don’t extort them for loving you.
• Sitting back and collecting “mailbox money” no longer cuts it for a music career. Writing one hit and paying your rent for twenty years is a thing of the past. You and your business team are no longer selling a product, you’re selling a service. It’s time to get creative and forge new revenue streams because the old ones aren’t coming back.
• Fans sharing your music are the opposite of enemies — they’re your brand advocates. They’re out there doing unpaid marketing work, spreading your music virally among peer groups faster than you can fill out your ASCAP paperwork. You should be thanking them and listening to their advice.
• Finally, stop whining and go work on your music. You look like Lars Ulrich.
“We are probably entering a new ice age right now. However we’re not noticing it due to the effects of carbon dioxide.” — Lars Franzen, professor of physical geography at University of Gothenburg
In other words, man-made global warming is preventing us from entering a new ice age. That’s not to say climate change is a total boon to humanity, but it does suggest a silver lining. What does this intriguing theory, gaining traction in the scientific community as of late, have to do with music?
It’s the first thing that came to my mind when I read about the stabilization of record sales in 2011-2012 in Digital Music News. Metaphorically speaking, without the plummeting price of music, album sales would have continued its downward trend, crashing hard in the last two years.
In other words, with the ‘cultural warming’ of increased free or near-free access to music, we are staving off an ‘ice age’ of decimated album sales.
It’s quite clear to see how free music spurs album sales. Study after study after study confirmed that those who shared illegal downloads also purchased more music as a result.
Now we are awash in near-free music from Spotify, Pandora and the new school of streaming audio — aka the companies fighting to control the operating system of the “celestial jukebox”. Don’t you think it’s pretty astonishing that despite the growth of these services in the market, album sales remain flat?
Album sales have not been saved by music industry litigation, paywalling, DRM, or any attempt by those running the antiquated record album business model to protect it and stifle innovation. Album sales remain stable (or stagnant) because music is approaching free, and as a result, more people are listening to more music than ever before. No matter how hard the industry elite try to bring on a new ice age where they go back to controlling access to music, no one can stop the proliferation of free songs spurring a new generation to a deeper love of music than we have ever seen. But there is a limit to free music spurring album sales. When that limit is reached is as much up to content creators as consumers.
The album itself is anachronistic, we are moving into a world of singles. The album-based business model would melt in front of our eyes if not for the phalanxes of music industry lawyers erecting a stockade of copyright law to protect their walled gardens. Consumers never really wanted to have to buy songs they didn’t like in a bundle with songs they did — that was forced upon them artificially.
The album is also a die-hard tradition for musicians and fans. It’s kind of fascinating how the economic imperative of the album become part of the art of music. Bottom line, fans don’t demand quantity of songs, they demand quality. It is nearly impossible to write 10 consecutive songs of the kind of quality fans demand and deserve — think of how many “perfect” albums you can name. Therefore, the future of music will not necessarily see the disappearance of the album, but a transformation from 10-12 song collections to more varied numbers of songs, more mix tapes and compilations (collaborative albums) and some new concepts like curated licensing, app albums and status-based perk-bundling. (If you want to know more about these, sign my mailing list to get word on when my book will be out.)
Ultimately, the “cultural warming” I talk about transcends any particular revenue stream or business model. Free and near-free access to music also stimulates more music creation. As listening becomes more interactive and creative (music games, remixing stems, mood-based browsing), it will become harder to separate the “musician” from the “listener”. In the end, album sales will begin to decline again as music takes on a different role in society. There will still be “albums” because it’s useful to organize groups of songs under a single title to denote an era or concept, but the bundling of songs will entirely be in the consumer’s control. Increasingly, fans will opt for bundles of the songs they like, rather than being forced to buy songs they don’t, or blindly following tradition.
Your living room was made for music. Fran Snyder’s Concerts in Your Home website was made to do “nothing less than rebuild the touring infrastructure for small touring acts.”
The idea behind Snyder’s website is simple: Hosts sign up to welcome touring artists into their living room. Beneath that simple idea is a complex operation to cultivate a community of musicians and music lovers in a win-win value exchange.
I recently wrote about the living room show trend, and that’s how we got to talking about the triumphs and tribulations he experienced in his years setting up one of the most incredible independent networks of support and camaraderie for musicians and fans alike. I’m thankful to have Snyder’s input for the “living room show” section of my book, but the whole interview was so great I transcribed the best parts here so you could appreciate Snyder’s dedication to supporting music and musicians. Let’s look under the hood of this ambitious and successful operation:
How did Concerts in Your Home start out?
Fran Snyder.
I started as a performer in the early ’90s doing every kind of gig there was: the bars, the beaches, the restaurants, all that kind of stuff. I was continually frustrated by the fact that I was putting myself in situations playing music for people that weren’t really interested, and not liking the idea of having to fight for their attention or to be a human jukebox. Anyway, “woe is me”… that’s what every musician faces when they first start out.
After graduation, I played concert hall opening slots and did the college circuit for many years, traveling around the country. I finally tried a house show with one of my fans and instantly fell in love with it. I realized, “this is why I do music, it’s about connecting.” Obviously I need to make a living, but the idea of fame and fortune were never driving factors. For me, making money is not something you have to reject out of hand, but it’s important to know why you do what you do. House concerts really woke me up to the idea of being intimate with the crowd, talking to people, sharing stores, getting to elaborate a little bit about who I am, the history behind the songs, and the things that make me tick.
It was transformational for me, and at the time in 2006 there really wasn’t a good website to promote the idea of house concerts, so I set about fixing that. I asked myself “How can we inspire people to host shows? How can we help artists connect with these people?”
When I realized how much work it was going to be, I had to figure out a way for it to pay for itself, and that’s how we came up with our business model of helping the hosts for free — they help the artists, and the artists keep us going with a membership fee.
So it all started out with the living rooms you were playing and it spread virally from there?
Yes, there are a couple of cultural hotspots when it comes to house concerts: Texas, California, and places in the southeast and northeast where you have folk festivals. A lot of these folk artists really give access to their fans, and at some point word gets around at the festivals about the house concerts, and people start inviting people.
Part of the growth of our site was finding these people and showing them, “Here’s this resource…. we don’t want you to sign up just so you’re on our list, we want to help you, we want to provide tools and give you a community of like-minded people where you can share ideas and get to know each other. That’s how it has grown.
What motivates a host to put on one of these shows?
We’ve noticed that a lot of our hosts are empty-nesters, so they’ve got a house with space that feels a little empty. They love to entertain, and it’s easy for them to accommodate guests overnight, so they have this perfect space and they have all this new free time that they need to fill with a hobby.
The romantic notion is that a lot of these hosts play an instrument, and have at one time or another dreamed about being an artist. Maybe they got locked into a career too early, had kids too early, and made the decision to go for security instead of art. Now, 20 years later, they’re finding they can bring music back into their lives by supporting the artists that are out there doing it… and not just as a pass through guest. Many times, hosts develop friendships with the artists.
What are the unique challenges that a host faces to host a living room show?
It should come as no surprise the biggest challenge is getting people to show up, getting people to commit in a reasonable amount of time — that is, giving the host an RSVP instead of waiting until the night before to decide to come. People say they’re going to come and then cancel, or don’t show up and don’t even tell you. Those are the two pariahs of this business, and in that sense it is not unlike the clubs. Butts in seats is the most challenging thing.
What we try to do is set each host on an easy path to success, and the way we do that is to start small. We have what we call a “Dinner and Song” or “Dessert and Song” during the week, and just get seven or ten people to show up. Artists are dying for meaningful things to do during the week, and when you throw in the value of a free place to stay, a free meal, and a captive audience, that means they didn’t have to spend ten hours promoting the show. The musician just gets to show up and do what they do best, be friendly and make friends.
So if the host sets a limit and says, “We’re going to have a Dinner and Song and we’re only allowing in ten people, they can sell it out.” They can invite 150 people, and then 40 will respond, and 30 of them will be disappointed they didn’t RSVP soon enough. That’s how you train people that what you’re doing is valuable an in demand. That’s how you create a buzz, right? You can’t create a buzz if you’re not turning people away. That’s how you make someone feel they can be a part of something special before they even show up at the door.
Snyder performing at a house concert.
What motivates musicians to join the Concerts in Your Home community?
I think a lot of them are like me, I think they’re fed up with playing places where they’re not paid attention to, and they’ve got to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
One of the key things for me — even though it’s not explicitly stated — when you play in a bar, the value of what you do is measured by how much alcohol is sold. And I think that’s a shitty way to measure music. I don’t have a problem with people drinking, that doesn’t bother me at all. But if the value of what I deliver to people is measured in alcohol sales, I think it’s a pretty shitty way to measure what I do.
What does the music fan get out of it?
The big attraction both for hosts and fans of house concerts is the pin-drop atmosphere. You don’t have the drunk guy behind you talking while you’re trying to listen to music, so it’s movie theater etiquette. And when artists have everyone’s attention, magical things start to happen. It becomes spiritual, it becomes communal, it takes the show to another level. There’s a sort of unity, a “Kumbaya” thing where we’re all one — that starts to be tangible. I think that’s a big part of the appeal to fans, the house concert high: “We were all there, we were a part of something.”
I think a lot of shows inspire a looser atmosphere too, but anything that’s going on has to do with the show. So, even if you have the performer joking around with the people in the second row, or getting their shoe tied by someone in the front row because they’re so close — it all serves the show as opposed to being a distraction.
What is it about the music climate or the music industry right now that has encouraged this living room trend to gain so much traction and popularity?
There’s a couple ways to look at this. Demographically, kids don’t buy CDs. When I was first starting out, the hot market was the CDs you sold to kids. Everyone was trying to be half their age in terms of material and presentation so they could appeal to 16 year-olds and 19 year-olds because those were the people who bought the music.
Well, these people are now in their 40s and 50s — well, I’m not that old — but these empty-nesters are the ones who grew up with the culture of buying a souvenir after the show. So if you’re going to sell CDs, house concerts are one of the last markets left where there are people that still value taking the music home on an artistic medium rather than a hard drive or thumb drive.
When I play colleges, people come up and say, “You’re awesome!” and I say, “Thanks, do you want to buy a CD?” And they say, “No, we’ll just check you out online.” You hear that enough times, and you say, “Well, shit, why am I making all these CDs? Why am I playing for 22 year-olds who don’t want what I need to sell to live?” That is the demographic answer.
But I think with technology, community starts developing over the Internet — the idea of sharing spaces and sharing experiences is another thing that causes the upswing [in house concerts].
Even more important that that is the idea of embracing small — that’s probably the most important part of why house concerts are surging. Twenty years ago, you pretty much went out to a bar, drank, and listened to bands — that’s what you did on weekends. Now you have video games, groups for every interest under the sun. There are more sports on TV and on the field than ever before. There are so many distractions. So we can’t have 400-500 people at the club every weekend listing to original music. You have to figure out ways where if the shows are going to be smaller, how do you make that work? And house concerts are the best example I’ve seen of making it work.
When dealing with professional musicians who are used to professional venues, is there an attitude adjustment that needs to happen before they feel comfortable performing in a living room?
I think it depends. Ellis Paul, because of what he’s accomplished — because he can still sell out small- to medium-sized venues in 30 or 40 markets — he has a different standard. He’s not going to do a house concert for 30 people — you have to have big house. You have to seat 80-100 people at your house to have Ellis Paul play, and even then, it’s tough to get him. So part of that is just the economics of success. You’re going to go where you’re going to be the most productive.
There are artists that feel they should be at the level of Ellis Paul — or maybe once were and are no longer — that are facing the wake up call of, “Okay, I have to learn to make do with less, I have to learn to enjoy to play for smaller crowds.” Some take to it like a duck to water because of the atmosphere, and for some of them, the economics really still bugs them.
To put a finer point on it: Because we encourage so many hosts to start small, the idea of playing for 12 people in a cozy living room, even on a Wendesday night… there are a lot of artists that say, “I can’t do that, I won’t do that.” And that’s fine. They can go play a club and have 12 people there. And then they have to go find a place to stay. (laughs)
The prima donna stuff does not cut it in our market. Fortunately, there are a lot of really talented artists out there who are nice people with decent expectations, and even when they have odd experiences they can handle it gracefully and move on to the next opportunity and the next day.
This is not a perfect world. We have people who try to host concerts and fail. There are some who will schedule a show and cancel it a few weeks out. We have 20-30 new hosts each month that we train and coach to try and get them on the right foot, and not all of them succeed.
It sounds like you’re very hands-on with the hosts…
Oh yeah, we’re hands on with everybody. Everyone who joins the site has a conversation with us. We don’t have the money for background checks. We try to get a sense of why they’re doing it and make sure they know what they’re getting into and their responsibilities. That slows things down, but we think it’s a really important thing, especially when we have 22-year old women touring by themselves, we don’t want this site to be anonymous.
Where do you want to take living room concerts next?
We started a new website called BenefitArtists.com which basically allows us to tie artists together with charities. The charities help us build an audience and we help them raise money. We connect charities with artists who have an affinity for that cause, so it’s a win-win situation. An artist gets to support a cause they love, and they help the host build an audience.
Listening Room Network is becoming our fan portal. Within the next few months that’s going to really develop in terms of creating a house concert club. If you’re into this experience you’re going to be able to meet people with similar interests and connect with all the house concerts in your area.
Our goal here is to get our community to the point where we have all these hubs that develop organically, where artists can book a tour off of one conversation. They get connected with the right host, who’s connected with the other hosts, and the artist will book five or ten shows with one contact. To me, that’s where this needs to go, because booking is impossible. It’s ridiculously draining, and we have all these artists spending more time booking and doing social media than they are on their music. To me, that is a huge loss. We [musicians] are terrible at booking, we hate it. What I’m trying to do is create a system where the fans are enabled and empowered to make it happen and to do it through community. Everyone else out there is trying to do it through technology, we’re trying to do it through community.
Last night, veteran musician David Bazan, known for being the man behind the seminal indie/emo group Pedro the Lion, played for a few dozen people in someone’s living room in Lubbock, TX.
Bazan spent almost half the year playing exclusively for people in living rooms. It’s not like he had to — his music career is quite accomplished. Tickets for his November/December tour of real venues are going fast, in part because he’s embracing another recent trend of playing classic albums in their entirety — in this case, honoring the 10th anniversary of Pedro the Lion’s finest concept album, Control.
Bazan clearly is right at home in yours:
Certainly, not every musician has the kind of intimate, almost humble delivery that makes Bazan’s solo performances a perfect fit for living rooms across America. But he is actually part of a long tradition that dates back to the origins of much louder, more aggressive music than his — punk and indie rock in the 70s and 80s.
Most of today’s unsigned, independent bands that have toured the country with no booking agent and no management have played their share of living rooms. I know I have. But these living rooms are not often the kind of urbane, sitting-down affairs you see Bazan playing for 30-somethings. Rather, the hybrid living room/venue is rooted in “punk houses” where a bunch of high school and college-age music fans get together to hang out, party and host local and touring bands. I can honestly say from personal experience these house shows are some of the most fun and inspiring shows I’ve ever played. Our fans have crowdsurfed into ceiling fans more than once (pictured here). But the reason these shows are so memorable has just as much to do with the performance as it does with the camaraderie of being able to meet and entertain people in their homes.
The real convergence spurring the living room tour revival can be explained by a concept I often use describe the music economy in an era of free music. The record business is no longer about selling content, it’s about selling context.
What I mean by that is, we never really paid for music, we paid for access to it. Now that access is relatively free, we’re paying for the experience of listening to it in a particular context. Besides a heartfelt need to compensate the artist (a sentiment that record labels destroyed through exploitation), pretty much the only reason people pay for music anymore is to have the convenience of accessing it in whatever context they’d like. There are few technological hurdles left in making music freely available this way, but corporate interests in the content industry continue to do everything in their power to prevent us from moving forward culturally. These corporations aren’t protecting the welfare of artists, they’re protecting their own bottom line.
As far as context goes, you can’t beat a live performance. Remember, before the phonograph was invented just over 100 years ago, the entire music industry revolved around live performance. Playing a piece live was the only way to summon music for listening, whether it was a world-renowned opera singer in an ornate hall or a family gathered around the piano in — you guessed it — their living room. With the record, suddenly we could experience music in any context we wanted… provided we paid the price.
But music is going back to the living room, and it’s headed there from two different directions. From the bottom up, more listeners are becoming amateur musicians. When they venture out to perform, they enter a network of home venues ranging from punk squats to the kind of well-kept living rooms Bazan has toured so successfully. Bazan doesn’t come from the bottom up, but nor is it at all accurate to say his career took a dive, requiring him to play living rooms. Rather, Bazan and more professional musicians like him are evolving their touring strategy to embrace modern music listening and consumption habits. He’s essentially an early adopter of a new model for professional music tours, where the idea of crowd sourcing meets a post-recording music industry in which context is the new commodity.
The truth is there’s not a whole lot of difference between the crusty punk squats and their tidier counterparts, dwelled in by young professionals — except, that is, for the money involved. At $20 a head, Bazan is charging a fairly comparable amount to a cover charge at a real venue. But consider that there are no other costs to cover besides food, transportation and lodging (some of which the hosts even provide). The venue gets no cut. The fans don’t have to pay for drinks, and have more money to spend on merch. And Bazan is almost guaranteed to make a killing selling merch because his audiences have a much higher concentration of total fanatics. That he sells out the vast majority of his appearances is a testament to this (although admittedly living rooms fill up pretty quick).
Now, the back-of-the-napkin calculation I come up with is that they’re netting in the low four figures at a sold-out show. A show at a “real venue” might be more lucrative for Bazan, but by what degree? And as a musician, I can tell you there is a certain psychological value in playing for a room full of fanatics instead of the somewhat random lottery of attendees at a “real” venue, not to mention all the business baggage that comes with dealing with promoters.
Bazan has clearly made a decision that these living room shows are the shows he wants to play even if it means taking a slight pay cut. Real musicians make music to celebrate its true meaning and power to move us emotionally, physically and spiritually, and unite us socially. We don’t make music to make money. Most of us simply want a lifestyle in which we can make our music, connect with our fans, and have them support us modestly. As direct musician-to-fan connections become the currency of the music industry, don’t be surprised if more well-known musicians start showing up in your living room.
Do you think today’s living room tours are more of the same, or is there something more there?
Well, I’ve finally been dragged into the Pinterest milieu. Last week I posted my first “board”: Best Web Services for Bands and Musicians. I give the rundown on each of the web-based services I would recommend to musicians, and provide pricing info as well. Please check it out and comment if you’ve used any of these services.
Certainly, the list of worthwhile web services for bands has grown quite a bit. There are over 20 great services on my board, and more I’ve probably yet to discover or are about to launch.
So, which of these services should you enlist with? It depends on where you are in your musical career, but even professional musicians will find something that can boost their revenue. In terms of budget, there’s something for everyone — these services range from free with a standard 10-20% revenue share to flat subscription and submission fees. Ultimately, my advice is to take it one service at a time and build slowly and strategically, out from the core of a strong band website. As always, none of this will matter if your music is no good, so don’t squander your hard-earned money until you’re confident in your songwriting and production skills.
Band Website: It’s hard to beat Bandcamp for setting up a band website with your music, and allowing fans to buy it directly from you. Other honorable mentions include BandPage, Bandzoogle and CDBaby. CASH Music is an exciting new open-source band website project that should pique the interest of developers. For less development-inclined but somewhat tech-savvy website construction TopSpin is leading the industry with a suite of widgets for band websites and social pages that accomplish pretty much anything you’d want a band website to do, with a focus on generating revenue.
Band Marketing: There are a number of great marketing avenues for bands. MusicHype is a great way to identify and engage your top fans. FanBridge is an easy-to-use email and social marketing platform purpose-built for bands. These specialized tools are simple compared to ReverbNation, which basically does anything you could think of in terms of band marketing.
Band Booking: SonicBids has been around forever and is still very useful for the right band to land the right gig. Indaba Music is a newcomer that helps match bands with music industry opportunities, including shows.
Crowd Funding: Sellaband predates Kickstarter as a powerful fundraising platform for musicians primarily based in Europe looking to support large production and marketing efforts. Pledge Music is a fairly new crowd funding platform that deserves attention for being purpose-built for musicians.
Digital Distribution: There are a number of solutions here, and which is right for you depends on your projected sales. CDBaby.com is best for musicians who expect to sell a low volume over a long period of time, as their one-time fee of $50 for album setup and low 9% royalty rate. For those who want to target specific digital distributors, ONErpm features low submission fees and no annual recurring cost. Finally, if you expect to net at least $100 in revenue from album sales, you might want to check out TuneCore, which takes 0% of your revenue but charges a recurring $50 per year fee whether you’re selling or not.
Music Licensing / A&R: MusicXRay, SoundOut, Taxi.com and Pump Audio are great low-risk options to get your music licensed. Which one works best for you ultimately depends on the type of music you play, and your expectations for licensing fees and opportunities.
Music Lessons: Independent musicians teaching amateur musicians is a growing revenue stream, and Bandhappy helps connect teachers with students to make lessons happen across web video connections or even in person.
I am witnessing a disturbing trend among musicians: they are mindlessly joining the major label chorus and stigmatizing their own fans as criminals for gaining free access to their music.
Let’s get a few things straight:
Most of today’s unsigned, independent bands that have toured the country with no booking agent and no management have played their share of living rooms. I know I have. But these living rooms are not often the kind of urbane, sitting-down affairs you see Bazan playing for 30-somethings. Rather, the hybrid living room/venue is rooted in “punk houses” where a bunch of high school and college-age music fans get together to hang out, party and host local and touring bands. I can honestly say from personal experience these house shows are some of the most fun and inspiring shows I’ve ever played. Our fans have crowdsurfed into ceiling fans more than once (pictured here). But the reason these shows are so memorable has just as much to do with the performance as it does with the camaraderie of being able to meet and entertain people in their homes.
