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Ah, the glorious mystique of the starving, indie musician; it’s well worn into the threads of our culture. But the very definition of indie is changing. The playing field is being leveled, and the prospects for revenue are turning in the independent musician’s favor — due large in part to the Internet. The Web has democratized the music industry and has allowed smaller bands to gain more exposure through outlets other than the traditional routes of radio and TV. Both independent artists and those signed to labels who have yet to make a name for themselves can make use of these developments.
In order for a band to get its name out while circumventing those forms of media, bands use word of mouth to create a buzz, and before the Internet, this was a slow-moving, laborious process. Now the speed with which a fan in California can tell a friend in Wisconsin about a new group is almost instantaneous, providing a new element for indie exposure.
“Before if someone would come to see you play live, they’d go home and if they really liked the band they’d tell their friends and their immediate circle, which might be five or six people,” says Eugene Goreshter, vocalist for the Los Angeles band Autolux, which is playing a show at the Metro April 9. “Whereas now if someone loves the band, and they saw you live, they go home, they go online and they email hundreds of people. People who aren’t even their friends but just exist in this virtual universe, a network of people communicating.”
The ease with which word can spread across the nation can now be instantaneous, thanks to online communities and expedited communications, as well as technological advancements in recording and uploading. The Secret Machines drummer Josh Garza says communication between fans has been particularly helpful in creating a healthy market for the band across the nation, as well as overseas.
“Initially it was ‘We’re really big in New York,'” Garza says. As the band toured, fans began to connect worldwide. “Our fans are actually helping us because they’re getting on the Internet and the world is getting smaller. People in London can touch base with people in Chicago and trade set lists, or whatever the hell they want to talk about. In Brussels we packed the fucking place in and it’s like, ‘Wow how do these people know about us?'”
In addition to spreading the word, distribution was another limitation to indie bands. Finding indie music used to mean “bouncing around town” (as Goreshter calls it) and searching through record store bins, just to find a sacred album. Now with the Internet, artists are less difficult to find — even the most obscure of bands have a Web site. And whereas the music fan 10 years ago took chances on equivocal purchases, now that same fan can dabble with the sounds online before buying, lowering the risk of spending hard-earned cash on an overrated product. This increases the odds of lesser known bands finding an audience, Garza says.
“You know how it is nowadays, you hear about a band and you go to the Web site and maybe stream a song,” Garza says. “If you can at least get them to listen to it, shit, that’s half-way to being a fan.”
The question still surrounding the Internet is how to make money. The Secret Machines’ debut LP, “Now Here is Nowhere,” was released online before hitting stores, and Garza estimates around 2,000 copies were sold, a good amount for an unknown band. Aside from the slow burn exposure the pre-release created, Garza says it’s frustrating.
“We can get a man on the moon, but you can’t figure out how to sell shit on the Internet?” he says.
While it’s plausible to sell tracks online with services like iTunes, many consumers give indies a chance because their music is streamed or available to download for free. That’s where the newly launched Mperia.com comes in, a Web site with songs available for purchase, often at a lower price.
Rachel Gravengaard, Mperia’s marketing manager, says the lower costs are particularly helpful for smaller bands to draw listeners in. iTunes charges roughly a dollar per track, but Mperia can charge as low as 25 cents. Itunes can’t charge such a low price because the cost of transaction for credit card purchases would be more than the cost of the item. Mperia uses BitPass, a service that sells digital cards with an amount above three dollars to use over time on small purchases, which means only one transaction fee is charged to the company.
Mperia also combines everything students (and beyond) love about social networking sites with the needs of indie music — think of the Facebook, except all your friends are either artists or other users who have the same music tastes as you. The community provides a way for the 18,000 artists on Mperia to somehow get sifted through.
“(Independent artists) don’t have a name, so you’ve got to find them out through social networks,” Gravengaard says of the additional function to the Mperia site. “You get a little exposure to an artist you’ve never heard of that you might like because your friend likes them.”
The site has been available publicly since February, and already certain genres of music have exploded, particularly goth industrial, Gravengaard says. One artist, Curiosity, an industrial jazz pianist who is a third-year student at DePaul University, has enjoyed the success of finding new fans.
“It’s convenient because it’s someplace I can direct people to hear the music,” Curiosity says, although she relents not being active about promoting herself. “It’s a slow build sort of thing. I really like the idea of not having to go through typical channels to gain success, especially small time success.”
Curiosity aptly demonstrates the excitement people have about the prospects of the Internet; anyone who has something to say can find an audience. It doesn’t matter if an artist can’t tour or if he only has two songs, just about anyone can be heard with the outlets created online. This does not, though, mean anyone can get rich from Mperia, or any other download site catering to below-the-radar music. Despite this, Gravengaard says many Mperia artists are ecstatic with even a minimal profit.
“The independent artists that I’ve spoken with are thrilled if they’ve sold 50 tracks because they never had an outlet to sell at all before,” she says.
The Internet, in its current state, yields exposure more so than wealth for smaller bands, placing responsibility on the shoulders of the artists themselves to generate a successful career.
The members of Wine Poetry, an acoustic hip-hop band consisting of Northwestern students, understand the necessity for self-sustaining business acumen in the realm of independent music today.
Jason Rosenbaum, a Music junior, and Alex Thurston, a Weinberg senior, not only promote their Web site, www.winepoetry.net, but the two began a newspaper dedicated to underground Chicago hip-hop, titled The Seminal. Thurston says the paper is meant to highlight an underrepresented music community, but also to serve as a networking tool for Wine Poetry. The Web address for the paper is blatantly displayed on the front page of the April issue, which links back to its creators.
Both Rosenbaum and Thurston agree that music fans rarely search blindly on the Internet for new music, so The Seminal has been instrumental in guiding potential fans to their site.
“If an Internet community is going to start up, they’ve got to get their word out somehow,” Rosenbaum says. “People aren’t going to just somehow get (to the site). It’s a secondary source. The first time someone hears about us, it’s not from the Internet. The second time they hear about us, usually it’s on the Internet — getting more information, hearing us, seeing pictures,
reading bios, whatever.”
While promotion might be difficult without the massive resources of a record label, both Rosenbaum and Thurston say with the state they’re in, they’d be reluctant to sign any contracts.
“The more successful we are on our own, the less enticing that is,” Thurston says, comparing the duo to businessmen. “If somebody wanted to sign us in some way that seemed to severely limit our freedom, I think at this point we’d opt not to.”
With new technologies, it’s plausible that an artist can live, however humbly, without a record label. And with the many downsides to being signed to a label — lack of creative control, a dismal 12 to 15 percent cut of album sales, etc. — circumventing the traditional system might become a more popular choice now that it’s possible, says Josh Ellis, a Las Vegas musician and the creative lead behind Mperia, which gives 70 percent of sales to the artist.
“If you’re a band that can sell 100 albums a month, you just made rent,” Ellis says of the dilemma commonly associated with musicians. “A band on a label would need to sell around 1,000.”
According to Ellis, the business model for the music industry is changing, and if artists are proactive about their career, the middleman record label can be removed.
The revolution has yet to come out in full because of reservations consumers have with purchasing music online. Ellis says that once it becomes acceptable to buy albums digitally, indie artists can operate fulltime through the Internet.
While it couldn’t hurt to pay the bills, it’s not necessarily the money that fuels the creation, and perhaps the greatest result of increased indie freedom is the right to control one’s career.
“Indie is absolutely a mindset,” Goreshter of Autolux says. “It’s an extension of who you are and what your beliefs are. The Internet has helped a lot for people who do have that mindset that do want to still control what they’re doing and not let someone take over their vision and take them in a completely other direction than they want to be going.”
Increased exposure, the ability to make money (and make rent) and a successful career without the confines of a record label? Sounds like the definition of indie music might be changing. All this adds up to the independent being incredibly empowered, with prospects for even more opportunities in the future. While the pay might not afford a bottle of Kristal, a Corona after a packed show in a bar can be just as nice. Exposure through the Internet; that’s so indie. 4
Communication junior Lindsay Sakraida is the PLAY editor. She can be reached at [email protected].
