In Honor of Record Store Day: As CDs Sales Plummet, Vinyl Finds Its Fifteen Minutes – New York News – Runnin’ Scared
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Interview with Danny Rose of Mini Tribe Records
As a record label owner, do you think a record label is necessary still to get your music out there?
1) We don’t really consider ourselves a record label really, and that’s because we think the label model is flawed. It’s too “corporate,” we prefer the ring of record collective. It reinforces a spirit of artists for artists, not CEOs for artists (but secretly for themselves). Getting music out to the people is easier than ever; all the labels have are radio and TV, both of which are great places to reach middle America or country fans, but to grab the youth and the hip young listeners, it’s all about the immediate accessibility to internet markets.
How does social media change the cost of PR? Do you think every band needs to be up on their Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr game to survive?
2) Social media frees up the game for promotion, however PR still requires a lot of financial power. You need money to print T-shirts or to get posters and other swag to the fans. Social marketing makes this easier to communicate, but the material costs are still there. The social media outlets you mentioned are absolutely essential, you need to have ready access to your fans on any and all of these platforms.
Have you noticed a difference or new trend in the way bands create their music?
3) They’re finally FREE!! It’s all about creating their content and making their mark, not about what will sell well or get more cash flow. To get noticed artists have to be unique; every artist knows that to be unique is to be themselves.
How has this all affected the general costs of starting a band in the modern era?
4) The general costs have definitely gone down due to open access to media outlets, but the alternative is an awkward comparison. Before, labels carelessly spent money trying to guess at how their artists would fare. Now we can directly access our fans and target the ones we want to target for free; this cuts upkeep by a lot. That’s why everyone’s jumping into the game!
Interview with Nick X Dierl of Life or Death PR/Management
1. As a record label owner, do you think a record label is necessary still to get your music out there?
As a publicist there are a handful of artists with whom I start working before they have a record label or have released a record commercially. Given the way bands come up now, which is through the blogs and then on to print media, it’s entirely unnecessary to have a label on board to get your foot in the door as a band. A few good songs getting into the hands of the right people can get you all over places like Pitchfork and The Fader etc. That being said, internet famous is still very different from having fame in real life. It’s entirely possible to be all over the internet and still be unable successfully draw audiences to a live show. More than ever, it’s really important for artists to be on the road winning over fans and having their albums in retail outlets where people who aren’t necessarily music-savvy can discover their music. Labels are really important in providing that distribution that gives you retail placement and often times the financial support for a first tour or two that might not be financially viable for the artist to do on their own.2. How does social media change the cost of PR? Do you think every band needs to be up on their Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr game to survive?Social media has definitely changed the landscape of the PR game. This is for the simple fact of how quickly information can be shared via a platform like Twitter – there’s no post to draft up and editing to be done. Often times we’ll have bigger artists of ours like Tyler, The Creator break news of a new video or song via his Twitter and that’s what credible publications like Spin will credit as their source in a news story. Obviously social media isn’t absolutely necessary to the success of the artist because there are people out there like Burial who hardly use it and definitely do fine for themselves but I think generally speaking it can be very effective when used strategically. A group like Odd Future built such an immense and rabid fanbase by completely dominating platforms like Tumblr, Twitter and Formspring and interacting with their fans through those networks. If you’ve ever seen an Odd Future show it’s pretty apparent how well that worked for them.3. Have you noticed a difference or new trend in the way bands create their music?I can’t say I’ve noticed a different way that artists create music, other than that I think a lot of artists are creating more music than they have done historically simply because of the immense volume of artists receiving press due to the more democratic nature of the internet. The access to listening to just about anyone you’d want at any time of the day has definitely made getting continued coverage more competitive because there’s just a ton of good music coming out daily. More than ever before, listeners have short attention spans and memories – if you go silent on people for a while I think they’re more prone than prior generations to lose interest.4. How has this all affected the general costs of starting a band in the modern era?This is an interesting question because the cost of starting a band is probably lower now than it ever has before. Most kids have access to a computer and that’s really all you need to start depending on what you want to do. That being said, the cost of being in a band is probably higher than ever because it’s tough to make much money on record sales. Most of the bands that I work with that are financially successful are able to do so because they play a lot of well-attended shows and get great licensing opportunities (ie. their song gets played on an episode of True Blood).
A Musician’s Guide to Twitter: Four Tips On Surviving The 140-Character Rapids – New York Music – Sound of the City
The final version of Story #2, published in the Village Voice’s Sound of the City blog. It transformed into a how-to guide on Twitter but features the ins and outs of the neurotic network we all know and love.
Interview with Guitarist Phillip Devries
Describe to me a day with the band. How do you guys record? How much do you pay?
It’s me, drummer Lucas Brown and bassist Dominic Chang in Broken Down Engine. Our old drummer, James Cleary, had to quit because of school. We pay virtually nothing, though. Our producer, Danny, whose also a student, put alot of money into our music and we use his studio for free. A friend put us in contact with his label, Mini Tribe Records, and they pay for all our recording and the equipment, which is a blessing in the sky. It definitely helps to have someone with connections; it’s the only resource you really need since the only obstacle nowadays is getting noticed. I sometimes record my music on my computer but, with the high-screeching guitar, it just sounds like shit.
How does Danny market your music?
When we finish recording, he pumps the material into music blogs and the Mini Tribes’ Facebook. We don’t really use YouTube because it’s more suited for live performances. There are some videos of us at the Yippee Cafe on Bleecker up there though. The problem with programs like SoundCloud on your Facebook is whose listening to them. You’re limited to your friends and they’ll compliment you but it’s the third party that gets your name out there. That’s where Danny is – he’s our sound engineer and the suit. Also, it’s the live shows where you play well and have people start talking about you.
See, the way Mini Tribe Records is very different then the norm. It is a decentralized collective – Danny sees it as a family. If one part of the label needs someone, another person fills in. There was no agreement; just the general notion that both of us would benefit. We would have our music played and Danny would get his name out as the producer. It’s symbiotic because we’re in the same boat of obscurity.
So do you think you need a record label to get people talking?
It’s all about generating hype; the band is making the music but the Internet is the new hype machine. A record company helps but you can still claw your way up in popularity and bypass it. Companies used to put out the advertising but now the technology erases that – you do the advertising yourself.
These days, a record label still wants to make money off of you even though they provide the connections. If you can bypass them, like Wiz Khalifa and Lil Wayne proved can be done, all power to you. With our generation, anyone can have access. You have these music blogs and social networks now instead of a fancy record label. Back in the day, you had individuals like Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn who had name recognition on circuits. Now, the Internet is the circuit so, in a way, the Internet has become the record label.
Is it hard to be a student and a band member at the same time?
It’s very hard to balance. You can’t play loud in these apartments and my interests just lie elsewhere: I’ll be up to 3am recording a song when I should be writing an essay. But it’s the only thing holding me back from really playing so when I graduate, I’ll probably find an odd job and concentrate all my time on the music.
Interview with Max Schieble, frontman of the Pharaohs
Describe to me a normal day of recording. How does it work? Where do you guys go?
We started the Pharaohs two years ago and have been working on the EP since then. I’m a perfectionist so it’s been back and forth over tracks. Well, with Danny [Lentz, a band co-member] in Paris, we have to do alot of our recording via e-mail. I’ll lay down vocals, send them to Danny and, since he knows all of his parts, he just lays down guitar and violins and sends it back. I mix it on Logic or ProTools [software mixing programs] and put it on iTunes. I got them for free, in the glory days of MegaUpload. But I don’t want things sounding too lo-fi; Pharaohs’ music loses its essence. We only have two mics and an audio recording box and, besides that, it’s more or less a cost-less process. Although I hate GarageBand and how lo-fi it sounds, now you can do this better-equipped studio sound for nothing. Converse just opened this studio in Brooklyn called Rubber Tracks that gives free studio time to anyone who applies.
Wait, free studio time? How does that work?
You basically apply and they just give it to you. We’re going to wait until Danny returns to start doing it because we have a bunch of songs. Brooklyn has been this beacon for bands like mine who want to do things differently. Like, for example, last Halloween, we played a show in free gallery space my friend knew of in Bushwick. It didn’t cost a thing, we just paid for the alcohol and made it a huge profit. It’s part of this whole anti-label thing: there’s only reason now not to go a label. It’s good that it’s happening; most people in rap are found on the Internet but now there’s just more stuff to listen to. It’s more democratic now; it’s the ideal American way of creating music. I don’t understand ‘signing’ onto a label anymore. All you get is a budget and PR, which are both helpful but your creative integrity is compromised and that’s what drives people away.
So how do you plan on marketing your music then?
Connections to blogs and DIY marketing at this point. I could post it on SoundCloud or Bandcamp and then throw it on Facebook. But, as Kanye West said, ‘it’s not cool if no one listens to your music.’ That’s the only problem with these social networks: they are extensive but they’re still limited. My plan now is to get a branding from a company like Mishka, which is a clothing company that created a record label.
How does that work?
It’s a completely different approach because the only money Mishka is for the physical promotions. They’ll put your music on their website, their SoundCloud and their Facebook and Twitter accounts for free. There’s no deal or agreement, they just want to brand it and have a mutual benefit off of it. You get airtime and Mishka’s name is seen. They did this with rapper Mr. Esquire, who had no buzz or hype, came to them, showed them their music, they liked it and started releasing music by him under their brand. Now, he’s signed to Universal. The thing that I’ve seen is having a PR-oriented group like this backing you and that’s it.
Interview with Neil Patel, founder of Back to Back Records
A history of Back to Back Records:
Back To Back was my co founder, Ned Russin’s (Title Fight, Disengage) idea. Title Fight stayed with me in March of 09 and that was the first time I met Ned. Me and him talked about hardcore all day and he just asked me if I wanted to do this label with him. It was just an idea at that point. I moved back up north August 2009 and we put out the Disengage 7″ later in 2010. We’re about to put out our 7th record and I’m proud! We work with our friends, we hook our friends up extra than most labels. Damn I don’t think I’ve ever given a mission statement, that’s so not punk haha. People can say music is their lives but hardcore and punk is a true lifestyle. You get back what you give. I booked shows super young in Atlanta, like from 15 till I moved. I wanted to do more! Naturally as a hardcore kid, if you truly love it, you feel like you can never do enough. So me and Ned decided to put out bands and put hardcore records out so we can put history into stone. I love hardcore, it saved my life and it is the coolest thing. I don’t want to grow up or be a normal 9 to 5 drone and that’s ok because I have hardcore, I want other kids who check us out that they can be the same.
The questions…
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Why the Old-School Music Snob Is the Least Cool Kid on Twitter – NYTimes.com
“Thanks to the Internet, cultural knowledge was now a collective resource. Which meant that being cool was no longer about what you knew and what other people didn’t. It was about what you had to say about the things that everyone already knew about.”
via Why the Old-School Music Snob Is the Least Cool Kid on Twitter – NYTimes.com.
Times music critic Alexandra Molotkow explains how Twitter has rendered obscurity invaluable – it’s all about what everyone is all about nowadays.
How To Chart in the Billboard Social 50 – Amp Music Marketing
How To Chart in the Billboard Social 50 – Amp Music Marketing.
Billboard’s Social 50 tracks the artists who are making the most commotion on the social networks. As of now, Rihanna is the Queen of the tweeting, posting and hashtagging craze.
Queens… Revisited | MishkaNYC
Queens… Revisited | MishkaNYC.
Nasty Nigel and COTN’s first official mixtape off of Mishka Records is up and ready to download. Their second single, “Kids from Queens,” has over 10,000 YouTube views already. So I guess they’re doing well.
Vinyl Tap 