As their battered rv rolled up to the next gig, the sextet slid into their flip-flops and gulped down the last of their SpaghettiOs. The crowd in Manhattan—Manhattan, Kansas—flaunted a huge banner proclaiming “Ten Mile Tide, #1 Indie Band in the Country.” An “interesting” claim, says TMT’s lead singer, Marc Mazzoni. Nevertheless, it was a milestone for the Stanford-bred, folk-inspired rock group. “It’s pretty cool when you go someplace you’ve never been and people know your songs,” says Mazzoni, ’99. Especially when it’s happened without the help of the mainstream music industry.
Today’s musicians can produce and distribute their work using innovative software and the Internet. Caught off guard, America’s giant record companies are floundering. Most blame Internet piracy for the $4.6 billion industry loss last year. But others in the music biz argue that the problem is not that technology enables theft, but that the industry has failed to innovate in light of technological changes.
Howie Klein, former president of Reprise Records, developed the careers of such artists as Depeche Mode and Alanis Morissette. At a recent Graduate School of Business conference on entertainment, he said major record companies no longer offer value. Klein compared them to banks—providing money for artists to live on while they create—but says the record companies charge “a lot more than any bank.” Sooner or later, he says, artists will realize there is another way. “Why should an artist give the record companies a piece of the action?” he asked.
Jason Colton of Dionysian Productions handles marketing for the band Phish, which plans to break up in August. Colton, ’94, says the major labels do their best work selling blockbuster hits. “But that definition of success doesn’t apply to a good majority of bands in the business,” he says.
Musicians today see that record companies, looking for the likeliest hit, are interested in artists who already have done much of the legwork themselves. Many new artists—including a few homegrown on the Farm—have figured out they not only can do this on their own, probably they must. They are taking full advantage of modern technology and using their business savvy to make it in the new music scene. For them, there has been little guidance along the way. But their experience provides a sort of “how-to” guide for those who follow.
Step 1
KEEP AN EYE ON THE MAIN CHANCE.
One thing that hasn’t changed much is the role fate seems to play in the inception of a group. In the case of Ten Mile Tide, identical twins wound up with equally musical college roommates. Jason Munning, ’99, lead electric guitarist, and his brother Justin, ’99, an acoustic guitarist, jammed with fiddler Stephen Kessler, ’99, while at Stanford. After graduation, lead singer and keyboardist Mazzoni officially joined the band. Some of their first gigs were at Stanford’s Coffee House. TMT ran an online ad with craigslist and completed the roster with Jeff Clemetson on bass and John Morales on drums. The shaggy-haired six live in their RV, Sadie, while on tour and call the Bay Area home. They share business duties; all of them write songs; and they entertain themselves on their few days off by updating their weblog for fans and indulging in Cadbury Egg-eating contests.
For Ama Ofosu-Barko, ’98, MA ’00, priorities changed suddenly when she was struck by a car junior year. Although she had sung with Stanford’s a cappella group Talisman, she planned to become a doctor. After her accident, she dropped the premed lifestyle to pursue her wildest dream, and a singer/guitarist’s soulful rock career was born. Known professionally as Ama, the rising Bay Area star regularly hires local musicians for shows and recordings.
Rachael Sage (Karen Weitzman, ’93) was pointed toward artistry with childhood ballet lessons and a degree in drama. After graduation, she settled into a New York apartment with a boxful of copies of her first album. Sage’s music is along the lines of Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco, but in the early years she supplemented her income with commercial jingles: her first big break was a Crystal Light spot.
Step 2
PUT AWAY THE HOME KARAOKE MACHINE.
Lately, mid-range recording studios have dropped their prices to stay in business, but an artist doesn’t need to leave home to record an album anymore. Basic studio equipment costs a fraction of what it did years ago. A mixing board once priced up to $300,000 can now be purchased for $10,000. Software programs let artists record directly into their home computers and burn CDs on the spot.
Jay Kadis, who teaches Advanced Sound Recording Technology at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, says ease of recording has brought a boom of independent bands. “Whether they’ll be good or not is another story,” he adds. Record companies used to weed out much of the “rough” music out there; increasingly, discernment is left to the consumer. The proliferation of albums spreads music faster and wider and leads to more crossover in genres. “The world is a big place; U.S. bands might make it in Japan or the Philippines,” Kadis says. Sage, for example, has done four European tours.
Recording is still a considerable investment for the first-timer, though. According to Starpolish.com, an advice site for musicians, if an acoustic performer can record an entire set in about one hour (and only very accomplished singers can), a good-quality demo at a high-end studio costs about $1,700. And that’s just the master CD. A small run of duplicates can be burned on a personal computer, but more ambitious artists have 1,000 copies made for approximately $1,500.
Ama’s total cost for 1,000 CDs approached $4,000. But for her, the CD was well worth the credit card debt. She used the demo to apply for the New England Music Organization conference. Once accepted, she entered her album in the conference’s demo derby. “They listen to the first minute of everyone’s song and give you a critique,” she explains. “Even before the first minute was over, [mine] started skipping!” But the demo opened doors: Grammy-winning producer Jack Douglas liked it, and he keeps in touch with Ama. Sales from the two CDs she has put out aren’t her main revenue generator—ticket sales pay the musicians she hires—but they cover her production costs.
Step 3
TURN ON YOUR PC, UPLOAD YOUR CD AND MAKE AN MP3 SO FANS CAN P2P.
Shortly after they released their first album and it became available online, the members of Ten Mile Tide sat at their day jobs, where every 15 minutes they’d get another e-mail asking when the band would be touring. “And we’re like, man, we gotta get on the road,” says Jason Munning. E-mail is the least of it; indie artists have embraced technology to record, distribute, promote—in other words, run their entire business. Sage is a big believer in music sites MP3.com and iTunes and makes her work available online, “but not so much that [fans] wouldn’t buy an album.” She has sold 30,000 CDs at shows (she currently has 150 to 200 tour dates per year) and through independent online music stores like CD Baby.
In 2003, Ten Mile Tide was featured on CNN for its outspoken support of KaZaA, a software program that utilizes peer-to-peer (P2P) technology to let users download files directly from others’ computers. While many artists make a few of their songs or portions of many songs available for listening or downloading, TMT offers its entire repertoire free. Users have downloaded their songs more than 10 million times, and the band members say it was this exposure that enabled them to quit their jobs in 2003 and tour.
“Even in five to 10 years,” says Clemetson, “we plan on touring to make our money. It is proven that the success of most bands comes from live shows and not album sales, and we believe that downloading does not hinder sales at all.” TMT sells about 3,000 albums per year. “Unless you’re moving two million CDs or something like that,” Mazzoni says, “it seems like a pretty good idea to make your music as accessible as possible.”
Step 4
SAY GOODBYE TO THE 1040EZ.
“I was booking a gig,” Mazzoni says of a long-ago phone conversation, “and said, ‘Yeah, can I speak to the booking agent?’ He said, ‘You’re the booking agent. I’m called a talent buyer.’ It was a semantic argument that was just the stupidest thing ever.”
No doubt about it, this is a business, and it has a learning curve. Make an album, distribute it, plan the tour, and manage your accounting. “Everything from RV maintenance to booking gigs,” says Mazzoni, “to doing press to making sure everyone eats and doesn’t get scurvy to practicing and then actually the creative art of working on new stuff. You’re pulling from all these aspects of life I never thought I would need.”
Ten Mile Tide owns three businesses—the band, their own record label (Copper’s Dish Records) and a publishing company (JMOB). They have learned to focus their publicity tactics: rather than spend money on mass fliers, they utilize free e-mail advertising and through their website formed a “street team”—more than 250 fans from 42 states who help promote the band in local markets. Sage started her own label, MPress, in 1996 and targets niche markets like feminist and Jewish publications for promotion. Her media kits include tiny hard candies with a Rachael Sage logo.
Ama’s street team is managed by the web-based agent Streetlava, which rewards fans with free CDs and other merchandise when they help their favorite artists—for example, by calling in to Bay Area radio station KCNL 104.9 and requesting an Ama song. College stations are the usual outlets for independent artists, but Ama has broken into mainstream radio and that has led to major live appearances with other 104.9 artists. “It’s always a crazy thrill to be up there playing those shows,” says Ama. “There are people I don’t know who know my songs because they’ve been on the radio. It’s really neat.”
For artists who are accustomed to rallying their friends and anyone else they can think of for each show, having strangers know your songs and want your CD is the ultimate. Ama still makes ends meet by working as a family helper in Woodside, and the headlights shorting out on TMT’s touring RV might require some tight budgeting, but these musicians are doing on their own what used to be the province of multimillion-dollar companies. “We’re extremely competent at running this business,” Munning says. “We’re all overachievers and we’re all putting in 150 percent to make this work.” They’ve left cubicle land and are doing what they love, even if it means eating a lot of spaghetti.
Step 5
KEEP BUILDING THE RÉSUMÉ
Seven years ago, Sage contacted successful independent Ani DiFranco, who, like Sage, has turned down record label offers. “I had written a song for her, and I just sent it with a note and told her I hoped she enjoyed it.” A few months later, Sage received an invitation to go on tour with DiFranco. Every break like this, Sage says, has been “a little energy injection . . . another stepping-stone.”
While the rocker life occasionally means hanging backstage with Maroon 5 (Ama), touring with the Lilith Fair (Sage), or scoring a free lobster dinner from a fisherman in Maine (TMT), independent artists have to keep hustling.
Armed with her first CD, Sage walked into Tower Records in downtown New York pretending to be her own publicist—fake name and all. When that album became the store’s best-selling consignment CD, she asked, “Can I quote you on that?” It was the beginning of her approach to sending out press releases, signing up for contests (she was a grand prize winner in the 2003 John Lennon Songwriting Contest and winner in the Billboard Songwriting Contest) and generally using “whatever means I could to be creative and try to get to the next level.”
Ama entered the John Lennon Songwriting Contest in 2003 and was one of three finalists in the rock category. Her website spotlights many accolades, including a December 2002 feature from the San Jose Mercury News entertainment section. Her music was used in the independent movie 1. Still, Ama finds it hard to talk about herself. “You can’t be shy about it, which is just the hardest thing,” she says. “You have to promote, promote, promote, because you never know who knows someone in whatever arena that can help you.”
Step 6
REMEMBER, IT'S ABOUT THE MUSIC.
Both Ten Mile Tide and Ama acknowledge that at some point the business side of their jobs might crowd out their creative time. “And if I’m busy doing sales, radio promotion, all that stuff but I’m not writing music,” Ama says, “what’s the point?” Still, given their experience wearing all the hats of the music industry, they will consider a deal only when they find someone who meets their standards.
These musicians also figure that every success they garner increases their leverage with a record company in terms of financial arrangements and creative control. It’s a strategy that has worked for other bands. Phish, for example, was independent for eight years before signing with Elektra. Colton, their marketing man, thinks a band that attracts large live audiences may be able to craft a better deal with a label because a recording isn’t as critical to the band’s success. For Phish, already playing to arena-size crowds on the East Coast, the record contract was a chance to pursue a larger audience while maintaining artistic control. Since signing in 1991, Phish has released 34 albums, including eight golds and one platinum, selling more than 7 million worldwide. But even if they kept a full $15 profit on each CD, it would pale in comparison to their tour revenues. In 1999-2000 alone, Phish grossed more than $61 million in ticket sales.
Until they hit the cover of Rolling Stone, these Stanford artists will keep on keepin’ on. Ama plays to Bay Area crowds while her mom, Ama’s best sales rep, reports that she’s sold 300 CDs in the past two months. In May, TMT wrapped up a two-month tour with more than 50 shows at universities, clubs and, yes, a return to Manhattan. Is there any point at which they would give up music? “There seems like no reason to ever do that,” says Clemetson, “because we all love what we’re doing.”
Sage, whose sixth album comes out in August, now employs a full-time label manager and three part-time staff. She is looking for another independent artist to join her label and has no plans to accept a record company deal. “In the indie world, it’s such an evolution,” Sage says, describing what she has learned and the camaraderie she’s enjoyed in the New York music scene. “For me, so far, this has been the way.”
