Agent Jeremy Holgersen shares what he sees piloting bands' live careers at the NYC offices of the Agency Group.

An agent is an integral asset in a budding artist’s career now more than ever before. With record labels playing less of a role early on, often times an agent is discovering and signing talent before labels do.

If unsigned artists are able to establish themselves through a Website, release their own tracks, obtain great reviews, and build a strong fan base, it’s more likely that those artists will catch the eye of an agent.  Agents are constantly reading, researching and surveying all of the resources available to them online and offline, in an effort to identify prospective new talent.

Success in this business ultimately depends on the artist. One of the best ways for an artist to break into the music scene today is through touring. For certain artists, the best option may be to tour immediately, especially if their music is already well-known on the Internet. In other instances, it’s more effective for artists to start by building recognition through social networking, and subsequently, touring.

Years ago it was common for artists to utilize other channels of promotion to reach a new fan base such as MTV. The record label would then promote its artists and their music videos.  While those channels are still important, they’re not as influential today as they once were, and artists aren’t waiting around and relying on those mediums to have careers.

An artist will always get to a point where they need to reach a new audience, and with the Internet and access to social media at their fingertips, an artist has a pretty good chance of developing an independent fan base on its own.

For example, Ok Go was one of the first bands that were recognized from their 2007 music video for “Here it Goes Again.” The video instantly went viral on the Internet and it really had people talking.  It set a new precedent because the buzz was about the video first, and the popularity of the song became secondary, but nonetheless, audiences eventually realized it was a really good song which wound up climbing to the top of many music charts.

You have the power as an artist these days to think of the right angle in order to garner the attention you want.  As an example, the Brooklyn band Atomic Tom, despite being signed to a major label, took it upon themselves to create their own video to call attention to themselves.  And it worked.  Their self-made video for the song, “Take Me Out”, filmed with a phone camera on a NYC subway in October, 2010 – went on to have over 5 million YouTube views.

As agents, we don’t rely heavily on record labels, but rather Websites, blogs and the way a band or an artist has developed their social media and their online brand using tools such as Nextbigsound.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

I definitely recommend that developing artists create strong social networking sites and use the tools available to them online because it will help an agent take notice — and may eventually jump-start their career.

Est. in 1999

“Frenchkiss is definitely my baby,” label owner and Les Savy Fav bassist Syd Butler told us in an interview yesterday. “I’ve had people ask to invest in it, and all I can say is ‘well, maybe we can invest in other things, but Frenchkiss – that’s mine’.”

None of this, however, means that the label is against expanding. Last year, Frenchkiss started its own publishing company. Last month, it announced it would leave the RED distribution network completely in favor of its longtime digital distributor, The Orchard. And just yesterday, Butler confirmed that Frenchkiss would start its very own label group in an effort to help “developing labels transform into developed labels.”

How To Grow Your Own Label From Home (Or The Road)

Since Syd Butler’s day job as bass player for the NYC indie rock band Les Savy Fav keeps him on the road much of the time, he conducts a good portion of his official Frenchkiss duties from a Blackberry. He started the label to release his band’s second record back in 1999, and has refused to treat either role as secondary.

“When we first started, expectations were different,” Butler says. “Back then, the bands we signed were happy to sell 500 copies of their records.” Frenchkiss has grown significantly since, and the label places its goal for new bands at about 5,000 copies. “We budget all of our records on that number, so if we can sell more than 5,000, it’s a huge success for all of us. Anything less and we know we have some work to do.”

After blowing up on Frenchkiss, Passion Pit signed to Columbia for UK distribution

Of course, some Frenchkiss bands do much more than that, often selling 5,000 copies in vinyl alone. Butler cites Passion Pit, who went from playing shows in front of friends at small clubs to filling 2,000 seat venues and selling more than 20,000 records in 2 weeks.

Other label mates, from straight-ahead rockers like The Hold Steady to no-wave infused experimentalists like Ex Models have become critics’ darlings and major names in their circles after joining the label. Same goes for newer signees like The Antlers, Local Natives, and Freelance Whales.

But then again, the term “signee” may be a little misleading. According to Butler, The Hold Steady’s contract was “a handshake over a burrito.” He says that’s business as usual at Frenchkiss: “We basically give the bands some money, and tell them they can use it to go make a record… or not.”

“Sure, we expect them to deliver an album, but they can pretty much use [the advance] on whatever they want. Some of the bands are pretty good on Pro Tools and end up doing a lot of that at home, and some of them use that money to help pay a producer and a studio.

“Then, there are sometimes bands who’ve completed everything themselves and don’t want us to own the masters, but they’ll license it to us instead. In that case, we’ll basically rent the rights to sell the album for ten years. There are a lot of ways it can work.”

An Artist’s Biggest Threat

Since Frenchkiss grew substantially when the major labels were crying foul on file sharing, Butler can be dismissive about most of the negative side effects of a free and unfettered web. “If you put out a good record, people are going to buy it,” he says. “The days of selling 50 million copies of one album – that’s what’s long gone.

Les Savy Fav with Syd Butler, center

“The weird thing, though, is that the songs you give away, the ones that people share the most – those are the ones they buy the most too. Those are the ones they come out to concerts to hear.”

What Butler does see as potentially dangerous are album leaks. He’s  had to deal with them in his own band: “The last Les Savy Fav record leaked about 2 months before its release date. People were downloading it and ripping it before we even had a chance to promote it or to offer it up for sale.”

“It was strange, because when we went on tour, our audience was growing, and people were singing along to the new songs. Yeah, we were getting paid more money to play live, but people stopped buying our merch, and that really effected us.

“If you release a record and then people some people download it or whatever, that’s one thing. But at least you were allowed to do what you needed to do to set it up and sell some copies. A promotional campaign starts 4 or 5 months out. It takes a long time to get all those ducks in a row, and if the album leaks right in the middle of meeting – well, the whole ship falls apart, and that’s when a band has trouble selling its record.”

Keeping It In The Family

Frenchkiss is rare for a small indie in that there appears to be little tying their bands together as far as genre is concerned. Although there are sure to be some crossover fans, it’s often hard to hear a stylistic thread running between the electropop of Passion Pit, the cacophony of Ex Models, the homespun charm of Freelance Whales and the jittery art-punk of Les Savy Fav.

Butler (right) + Frenchkiss staffers

Butler says that Frenchkiss only has two rules for signing new bands: they have to love and believe in the music, and they have to love and believe in the people. One is not sufficient, and there are no rules as to style. (“If the next thing we all love is a hip hop band, we’re going to sign a hip hop band,” Butler says.)

“We only put out about 8 records each year, so we really get behind all of the bands we sign.” The bands have to get behind Frenchkiss, too. “There are some bands who pass on us because they’re offered a ton of money to sign at a major label instead, and that’s fine.”

“I think the bands who sign with us see the advantage of being on an artist-run label. I’ve been in that van, I’ve done that drive, and it means we can all relate when we’re hanging out having beers or getting dinner together. It adds this level of trust and connection that’s not there with a manager and an A&R guy.  They know that our survival depends on growing each of the bands we sign. We can’t afford to throw any of them away.

“I know too many bands who’ve signed to a major and then find that their A&R guy gets fired and they have no idea what’s happened. With us, when a band calls they’re going to get me on the phone. At the end of the day, I’m the boss, and no one is going to fire me from under them.”

Justin Colletti is a Brooklyn recording engineer and studio journalist. He is a regular contributor to SonicScoop and edits the music blog Trust Me, I’m A Scientist.

Dozens of websites went dark yesterday to protest the SOPA and Protect IP (PIPA) bills.

If you’re still confused as to what the fuss is about and need a balanced look at the arguments, I recommend my December primer, “SOPA & PIPA: Can We Stop Online Piracy Without Censoring The Internet?”.

But if you don’t feel confused, chances are that you’ve already picked a side in this increasingly polarized debate. If you ask me, that’s a dangerous trap.

Meet The New Boss.

In the battle for hearts and minds, it’s clear that at least for today, the web lobby is winning.

It’s not hard to see why. For starters, the initial version of SOPA had serious flaws that made for ominous headlines. Its worst facets threatened the integrity of the internet, recommended needlessly harsh penalties for petty transgressions, and gave the government power to shut down websites – even bypassing due process in some cases.

On top of these gripes, the web sector showed PR mastery in an age when the entertainment industry has consistently failed to win over public opinion. A new, powerful tech lobby has arrived, and they’ve been able to easily cast their opponents as Orwellian control-freaks.

For their part, the major record labels have made that pretty easy for the tech sector. The 2000s were a notoriously bad time at the major labels. An early anti-piracy campaign focused on slapping average Americans with excessive lawsuits didn’t help them win many fans, and their chronic failure to innovate helped accelerate an already rapidly-shrinking market share.

But in today’s fight for fairness, we shouldn’t be too eager to abandon one lobby’s propaganda in favor of another’s. The truth is that today’s web companies make tremendous amounts of money by selling advertising on the work of content creators – often without paying them a dime.

If yesterday proved anything, it’s that Universal Music Group and the entertainment sector aren’t the fearsome, well-monied, and most effective lobbying machine in the room anymore. Today, that distinction goes to Google and the new technologies sector.

Web Rights vs. Artists’ Rights

It’s easy to get caught up in the anti-SOPA fervor that spread on Wednesday. So easy, that many sympathizers seemed to forget that the majority of prominent companies who have come out against pro-copyright protections are large corporations that have their own bottom-line at stake.

Although raising awareness about SOPA’s most nefarious shortcomings is a noble cause, there’s more than a fair chance that corporate web giants like Google, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Gawker Media, and The Huffington Post won’t stop their crusade once that battle is won. It’s just not in their financial interest to do so.

Right now, I can go to YouTube and dig up clips from many of the most popular television shows ever created. I can listen to most of the rare songs I’d ever want to track down, and I can even watch entire movies. Google makes a fortune in revenue from this kind of YouTube traffic, but in many cases, ad revenues can go to Google and even opportunistic third parties – but not to the content’s creators.

True, there are ways for copyright holders to claim content uploaded without their consent, but the status-quo puts the greatest burden for finding stolen material on to creators rather than on the web publishers and aggregators who make money on the traffic. If stolen content is found and reported by the owner, it is eventually taken down, but lost revenue may be lost forever.

If a record label pulled the same kind of stunt, we’d crucify them.

Infringement Creep

At times, this debate has gone to show just how insidiously copyright infringement has become part of our daily lives.

Yesterday morning, I noticed that the Gawker Media’s Gizmodo website used a drawing of Simpsons character Monty Burns as a central image in their protest of SOPA.  It got me wondering if anyone asked the show’s creator, Matt Groening, whether it we be alright to re-purpose his artwork to support a political cause he may or may not believe in.

(A moderator on the site rationalizes the move by saying “A change in original artistic intent is sufficient to circumvent copyright. Basically he’s not representing Mr. Burns but instead is being used a a graphical representation of politicians/MPAA/Rupert Murdoch.” A mealy-mouthed claim, and a far stretch for the satirical provisions of fair use if I ever heard one.

It begs the question: What if Mitt Romney changed the lyrics to “Imagine” and started using it as his campaign song? Would that be okay too?

Ethically and legally, I think the answer there is a clear no. But on today’s web, things like that happen every day – even  in article headlines and in moderated comments on Gawker Media, a network of professionally staffed news sites that receives over 300 million page views each month and stands as one of the biggest money makers in online news.

There are certainly professional applications where including trademarked images does constitute fair use. When The Daily Show briefly sprinkles branded images into a 30-minute satirical program, that’s a yes. When Gizmodo uses an unpaid artist’s work as the central image on their home page, and uses it to push their own specific political agenda? That should be a big honking NO.

Ask The Right Questions

My point here isn’t to cast internet companies as the villains. If anything, I believe that the most dangerous mistake we can make is to get sucked into a comforting fantasy that there are clear-cut sides for the good guys and the bad guys on this issue.

In the past 24 hours, I’ve seen polarized pro-copyright proponents close their ears to legitimate concerns over SOPA, and I’ve heard charged-up pro-web sympathizers deny that copyright infringement is even a meaningful problem.

But a divisive debate like this one is the last thing we need. The only way to come to a workable solution is to start with the right question. Namely: “How can we rewrite our IP legislation to protect intellectual property rights without destroying the integrity of the web?”

To an objective observer, it should be clear that the original version of SOPA was flawed. It’s unlikely to pass as is, and due to the high-profile campaign against it, the bill stands a poor chance of passing even once revisions are finished.

Unfortunately, when a revised version or a strong alternative does come up for review, there’s a good chance we’ll continue to hear complaints from the web sector. Many of them will be far less noble than the arguments we’ve seen so far. I’ve already noticed, when I talking to technologists with a vested interest in loose copyright laws, that when I explain that I agree with the central arguments against SOPA, I’m welcomed by an entire back pocket full of questionable and self-interested arguments against the broader concept of protecting copyrights on the web. Such questionable arguments include: :

1)“Ugh. We can’t police ourselves for content. That would be so hard!”

I think you’ll find that once we put in place real incentives for online publishers to monitor their content, sites will find creative ways to clean up, faster than you ever imagined. Google is one of the most profitable companies on the web and it rakes in millions in revenue on YouTube traffic alone. If they have to hire a new team of employees to help keep their sites from infringing on the rights and freedoms of others, then so be it.

2) “But stronger copyright laws will hurt startups.”

Only new technology startups that aim to make money off of free content. What about the startups that don’t have a chance under the current system? What about the startup labels and studios and ethical digital distributors that can’t compete with the monopoly of “Hey look! Everything’s free all the time!”  If new regulations prevent the formation of an army of baby YouTubes with even less interest in due diligence than the original, that doesn’t sound so bad at all.

3) “Copyright infringement isn’t actually, you know, a problem.”

Don’t tell me. Tell the thousands upon thousands of diligent craftspeople and creative professionals who’ve lost good, fulfilling jobs to media downsizing over the past decade.

There’s no denying that we need to respect the integrity of the internet.. But we also need to start making some compromises to save jobs and to save new art. After all these years of neglect, we need a real legislative strategy to protect the artists, musicians, authors and other creative professionals who have taken a merciless beating for a full decade at the hands of a completely free and unfettered web.

The status quo on the web is broken. An entirely unregulated internet has offered full free reign to big online publishers, while denying the basic rights and freedoms of the content creators they rely on for traffic. In any other part of our lives, we wouldn’t let that kind of imbalance stand. So why should we accept it on the web?

SOPA is flawed, yes. At the very least it should be (and has been) rewritten.

But today, the larger issue of online copyright protection is in danger of being swept up into the well-intentioned anti-SOPA tide. This larger issue of protecting jobs, art and artists is not one of right vs. left, Republican vs Democrat, freedom vs. censorship, or big business vs. everyday people. To imagine it is would be the most dangerous mistake of all.

Justin Colletti is a Brooklyn recording engineer and studio journalist. He is a regular contributor to SonicScoop and edits the music blog Trust Me, I’m A Scientist.

Philip Loeb and Gloria Pitagorsky have departed Sound Lounge to start a new studio -- they are joined by Sound Lounge alum Keith Reynaud (not pictured).

The new facility, founded by Mixer Phil Loeb, Mixer Keith Reynaud, and Managing Director Gloria Pitagorsky, will be located on the 5th Floor of 16 West 22nd Street. Construction is currently under way at the site, but Loeb and Reynaud have already completed inaugural sessions by working out of two studios elsewhere in the building.

The new company is yet to be named, but for now can be visited at the temporary Website have-you-heard.co. Presumably an audio-post centric entity, the founders are looking to create “an exciting next-generation studio that will work on commercial as well as entertainment projects.”

Loeb has been a part of Sound Lounge since that company’s inception in 1998, building an extremely deep portfolio of blue-chip credits that includes Google, Heineken, Canon, Land Rover, the NFL, Mercedes Benz, and AT&T. He departs Sound Lounge as a Partner/Mixer.

Reynaud joined Sound Lounge in 2002, building up mix credits that include Puma Social, ESPN, Dell, and Cablevision.

Prior to Sound Lounge, Pitagorsky worked with several of NYC’s other audio post giants, including audioEngine, Nutmeg, and the now-shuttered HSR.

In a joint statement, Loeb and Reynaud said, “These past years at the Lounge have been wonderful and we are very proud of what we’ve accomplished. Tom Jucarone, Peter Holcomb and Marshal Grupp have been instrumental to our careers and we will always be grateful. However, having the chance to build something from scratch is a once-in-a-career opportunity. “

As NYC’s audio post industry deals with an overall climate of downward pressure on pricing, the timing of the new studio is intriguing. The view of the 5th floor space on the company’s Website gives the impression of a sizable space, indicating that the trio intends to provide some healthy new competition to the city’s established sound-for-picture mix facilities.

Jungle City's Studio A made it clear that NYC would be off to a strong start in 2011.

Like any battle worth fighting, there was a constant sense of two-steps-forward one-step-back pervading the action for most. Those who successfully navigated the music-to-picture minefield, shot straight with their startup, made a name in video games or were allied right in publishing may have had a banner year.

But just as often for NYC producers, engineers, mixers, studios, labels, and businesses of all levels, this year felt like a nonstop guessing game. Would Spotify and the Amazon Cloud help business, hurt it, or none of the above? Does a hit record matter anymore? Advance with reckless abandon – or retreat while there’s still time?

As we did in 2010, we review the year’s primary news and trends, filtered through the fog of war that was 2011.

On the recording, mixing and mastering front, studio openings far outnumbered closings, as facilities large and small showed their confidence in NYC by starting up, building out, or renovating.

Ann Mincieli elevated world-class studio expectations with the opening of Jungle City Studios on Manhattan’s West Side.

Downtown Music made a big statement with the addition of a vintage Neve 8014 console.

NYC mastering cornerstone Howie Weinberg departed Scott Hull’s Masterdisk for Los Angeles.

The door revolved back into Masterdisk, as another legend – Vlado Meller – exited the suddenly defunct Universal East (closed down on April 1st) and set up shop at the West Side complex.

RIP Gil Scott Heron: 1949-2011

Studios and the social scene intermingled in a new way at the first “Inside Sessions”, presented by Avid and SonicScoop at Stratosphere Sound.

NYC recording icons whose musical presence loomed large here and worldwide passed on. RIP Nick Ashford and Gil Scott Heron.

The upstate studio scene got yet another addition with the opening of the WSDG-designed World Harmony Studios, built into a 3-story 4500 sq. ft. redwood lodge.

The intense success of a Broadway smash still held sway, as evidenced by the groundbreaking work that went into Frank Filipetti’s recording of The Book of Mormon cast album.

Brooklyn remained fertile ground for new spaces, as the multiroom studio The End debuted in Greenpoint.

The End was one of a crop of next-gen large-format Brooklyn facilities opening or about to come fully online, including the bigger-better Studio G, a sizable new two-room home for The Bunker, Strange Weather, and The Motherbrain.

Facilities supporting classical music were full speed ahead, as plugged-in new mega-rehearsal space The Dimenna Center came online on West 37th Street.

Electric Lady upped the ante by installing a Neve 8078 (from Clinton Recording) into Studio A, while a vintage API 3288 starred in a new mix suite on the second floor.

The much buzzed-about branding exercise that was Converse Rubber Tracks arrived in Williamsburg – reports of the demise of the rest of the NYC recording industry prove greatly exaggerated.

723 7th Avenue became the loudest location in Times Square when Quad Studios launched Studio Q1, with three different analog summing mixers, a pair of custom Augspurger Dual 15” main monitors, and two subwoofers.

Small studios showed they were more than willing to reinvest in themselves, as seen at busy facilities like Galuminum Foil which dramatically upgraded their control room.

Smaller studios still rolled the dice and introduced themselves. Greenpoint’s Tiny Thunder Audio was emblematic of producers banking on the growing number of Brooklyn artists needing a professional space to track vocals, or otherwise focus on one aspect of the production chain.

Mobile audio remained a niche in motion, giving birth to spirited outfits like Equal Sonics.

All about the music in mastering, as at The Lodge and their treatment of Neutral Milk Hotel's boxset.

Experimentation between artist and studio ran rampant, such as with La Dispute’s “no reverb allowed” adventure at Stadium Red.

NYC mastering stretched its own technical and creative legs, with ambitious projects like the Neutral Milk Hotel box set being finished by Joe LaPorta of The Lodge.

Ears of experience convinced Anthony “Rocky” Gallo (Cutting Room Studios) to open his own production/tracking/mixing facility in Greenpoint.

Ten years to the day after starting the world-class Bennett Studios in a converted Englewood, NJ railroad station, Dae Bennett closed its doors.

As one door closed, another opened across the river in Garrison, NY, as the prolific singer/songwriter Duncan Sheik made his residential destination, Sneaky Studios, available to the outside world.

Recordists and artists alike took a momentary break from sessions to converge at AES 2011 in NYC. Although the base of operations was the Javits Center, the real heart – as usual – beat under cover of darkness at unforgettable parties ranging from Brooklyn’s raw new Studio G space  to the East Village environs of Flux Studios.

And tracking/mixing sessions just flat-out abounded, with our best-of-2011 “Sezzion Buzz”, showing the world’s top artists and producers working nonstop throughout NYC and the tri-state area.

**

With Madison Avenue, film production  and TV series abounding – and a NY tax incentive for them to work in state – audio post activity remained fast-paced. Even as facilities dealt with constant downward pressure on pricing, there still seemed to be plenty of players in the game.

Audio post mixers and sound designers with followings remained a hot commodity, as suite-switches flew thick and fast.

Howie Schwartz closed HSRNY after a 36-year run.

The Audio Branding Congress moved from Europe to New York City in its 3rd year, attracting some of the brightest minds in the business to the Columbia campus in November.

Gotham bid adieu to HSRNY, the city’s flagship audio post facility since 1975.

Just as quickly, composer Andrew Hollander helped launch the full-service post boutique Goodpenny.

And multiroom midtown facilities like Pomann Sound demonstrated that they had staying power.

New amalgamations of synch licensing and music composition emerged at innovative places like Brooklyn’s Melody Robot.

The studio-in-studio trend continued, as video editorial house FLUID gave birth to audio post room Mr. Bronx – headed up by former audioEngine mixer David Wolfe.

Longtime musical thought leaders like Philip Glass kept NYC in the global spotlight, powering opera from Austria to BAM via his East Village HQ.

And film scoring quietly thrived, with leaders like Carter Burwell splitting his time between TriBeCa and the Hamptons to complete the hotly anticipated score for Twilight.

**

From manufacturing to music licensing, inspiration sprang eternal for the business-minded in the five boroughs.

Hardware proved it could still be born and bred in Manhattan, as Origin Point Audio introduced itself with the Senator non-linear compressor.

Original music/music supervision specialists Search Party were of many in the field that expanded, adding reach (to Oregon) and roster (Chris Funk of the Decemberists). Labels like Decon Records sharpened their internal focus on licensing with new hires. Streamlined new music supervision ventures of every stripe continued to arrive, like Synchtank, JuxMusic, and The SongHunters.

Boutique publishers saw their chance, such as the newly-opened 401k initiative from Veronica Gretton.

Forward thinking for the five boroughs and beyond: LegitMix.

Creative online businesses enabling previously untenable levels of creativity launched. Brooklyn’s LegitMix, for example, vastly streamlined the clearance process for the fast release of 100% licensed remixes.

Venture capital and funding rounds were still the name of the game for many, as seen by the $6 million cash infusion received by audio fingerprinting technology company Tunesat.

Experienced professionals recognized NYC service voids yet to be filled, founding niche-but-necessary businesses such as Dr. Julie Glick’s Musicians Hearing Solutions.

No less than Sir Elton John invested in the area, as a co-founder of Rocket Music Entertainment Group. Located within Beat360 Studios, the NYC offices join its London and Tokyo brethren in managing producers, mixers and elite songwriters.

“NYC is still the greatest city in the world. It always will be. It doesn’t matter the genre, beyond NYC and into the tri-state area, it’s still the place to be. People move here for a reason: There’s an energy about being a band in NYC that’s unmatched anywhere,” Matt Pinfield told us. This on the heels of the loss of the rock radio format at WRXP, and the triumphant return of his “120 Minutes” series for MTV.

Matt Pinfield returned with "120 Minutes" on the LES, but was stymied in his crusade to advance NYC rock radio. (Photo: Mike-Stypulkoski)

Live gatherings kept on multiplying, as examined in the 2nd year of Brooklyn’s Tinderbox Music Festival.

Digital streaming/mechanical royalty players – like upstart Rightsflow and seasoned veteran Harry Fox Agency (HFA) – competed for position.

Some NYC record labels, like savvy survivalists Razor & Tie, grew by connecting solid talent with a broadening range of media possibilities.

Established digitally-based innovators like TuneCore, took advantage of M&A activity in the music publishing sector, pouncing on experienced pros to form new ventures like its Songwriter Service, providing a slate of global copyright/licensing/royalty collection services. Other startups in the sector came of age, as Downtown Music’s SongTrust celebrated its first full year in business.

Retail got the gear into the people’s hands, providing equipment of course, but also NYC-elite levels of support. Top sellers like Alto Music NYC continually kept its customers informed with live group sessions, while B&H re-examined the microphone purchase process.

Talent buying for live venues, events and festivals remained a solid pillar of the industry, as evidenced by the launch of Blue Note Entertainment Group, and the busy agent/artist rosters of longtime midtown talent agencies like The Agency Group.

NYC-based virtual instrument developers Heavyocity and SampleLogic are in it to win it, with increasingly popular music creation tools for scoring and original music production.

Leading area studio design firms saw sufficient demand to expand overseas operations. John Storyk’s WSDG implemented German and Spanish offices, and Troy Germano’s Studio Design Group teamed up with Mexico’s Jose Reyes to form RG Germano Studios Tampico.

Avid made near-simultaneous announcements of a landmark product release and corporate restructuring.

The passing of Steve Jobs caused the audio industry – and many, many more – to pause and reflect.

On the night before AES, Avid announced Pro Tools 10 and the new Pro Tools HDX DAW systems, which the company called a “gigantic leap in sound and speed”.

Exactly seven days later, Avid announced its latest restructuring, eliminating 10% of its workforce.

The AES welcomed its new Executive Director, Firewire audio pioneer Bob Moses, who assumes his new role on January 1st, 2012.

Special thanks to SonicScoop’s  many talented bloggers, reviewers and contributors who helped make all of the above possible in 2011. Equal thanks to all to our great visitors who are coming along for the journey. Happy New Year, from all of us at SonicScoop!

– Janice Brown & David Weiss

Online tools for indie artists evolve yet again with Songtrust.

When NYC-based Songtrust launched in December, 2010, its adept founders had surveyed the artist empowerment landscape and saw something important was missing: an automated solution for music publishing. Although other critical aspects of a music creator’s aspect were being handled – distribution, promotion, merchandising, touring – all had an army of online support, the potentially mind-bending world of music publishing had yet to be suitably simplified.

A year into business and with the member list fast reaching the 1,000 mark, it’s no wonder that Songtrust is taking off. The parent is Downtown Music, a forward-thinking concern which operates one of the top 10 US publishing companies, and seems to bang out big new ideas like NASA launches rockets. With billions of dollars in worldwide performance and mechanical royalties paid out yearly, but only a relatively few artists backed by a pro team to fully collect them, Downtown’s brain trust saw an opportunity to expand the DIY universe yet again.

With a vast amount of digital streaming and download possibilities available to the consumer, and an equally tantalizing spread of synch opportunities potentially bolstering artists’ revenue streams, Songtrust appears to do something even more useful than demystify the process of cashing in – for an affordable fee, they simply take care of it for their users.

SonicScoop went in-depth with Jeremy Yohai, Director of Writer Relations for Downtown Music Publishing/Songtrust, to learn more about how this New York startup is assisting indie music creators.

When you meet someone for the first time, how do you describe what Songtrust does?

Songtrust is the first online music publishing administration company for DIY/ Indie songwriters. We are the easiest way to collect royalties. Our songwriters maintain 100% ownership over their songs, they can leave Songtrust at any time and get paid 100% of their royalties.

Personally, I contributed to the building and development of the site. Currently I’m working on Songtrust’s writer relations, operations and partnership opportunities.

SongTrust has its roots in an experienced and successful group of music industry pros via Downtown Music. What made SongTrust’s founders feel like this was an essential venture to build out?

Songtrust was co-founded by Justin Kalifowitz and Josh Deutsch. Justin is the President of Downtown Music Publishing, one of the top 10 music publishers in the United States. Josh is the Chairman/CEO of Downtown Music LLC, Co-Founder of RCRD LBL, and an established songwriter and producer.

With Josh and Justin having long successful careers in music publishing, songwriting and in the digital music world, they realized that there was a need and now a way to help independent songwriters get what is owed to them. Both of them are very involved in the day-to-day business of Songtrust, since the company is based in the same SoHo office as the other Downtown Music properties — Downtown Records, Downtown Music Publishing and RCRD LBL.

Songtrust's Jeremy Yohai understands the direction of music publishing.

That’s a solid brain trust to start with! Songtrust says that its major goal is to “level the field” for songwriters. In what ways is the field currently not level when it comes to music publishing, and how will songwriters benefit when it is leveled for them via Songtrust?

Before Songtrust the only way a songwriter was able to get all their publishing royalties was to enter into a deal with a traditional publishing company. If a writer couldn’t get a deal, they were left out in the cold, and most likely would miss out on some of their royalties. Well, now Songtrust empowers all songwriters to take control of their music publishing.

Anyone can join, whether you’re a songwriter that earns $50 a year in royalties or $5,000, you can now get what’s yours.  Traditionally writers that earned less than five digits in royalties wouldn’t get a deal. So that left a lot of songwriters unable to get their royalties — this was a main premise for the building of Songtrust.

So beyond royalty collection, what are some of the other ways you help songwriters?

There are certain steps that someone should take after writing a song, regardless of what their ambitions are, whether it’s just playing at the local club or at Madison Square Garden. We can assist with these very first steps.

We’ll help get a writer affiliated with a Performance Right Organization (PRO) (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC), and we’ll register the songs correctly with all the collection agencies in the US , including Harry Fox and Music Reports, since the PRO’s only collect performance royalties.

There’s also an educational aspect to the site. We post useful info everyday on music publishing, songwriting and the music business in general. The world of music publishing can be very confusing. We break it down and speak to songwriters in a language they understand.

We also offer some creative services — Songtrust is a partner with DMS.FM, the premier synch licensing company, which helps create synch opportunities for our bands and songwriters.

With that kind of 360 offering, what kind of membership are you currently attracting? Is Songtrust just for songwriters, or also for indie labels, publishers and other entities?  

Basically Songtrust is right for any songwriter that wants to take control of their music publishing regardless of income.

We have some great indie bands that have been gigging around locally, producers and songwriters who have had cuts with rappers and pop artists, and emerging film/TV composers. We also have some established artists that were signed to major publishers in the past.

Aside from working with artists/writers directly, there are managers, lawyers, and indie publishers using our site to as a royalty administration tool to manage the songs written by artists/songwriters that they look after.

Who are some artists who are using Songtrust, and what’s an example of what their “signal flow” would be?

Like I said before, we have a bunch of indie artists/songwriters that are with us. Some of the bigger writers are Kenna, who released albums on Interscope and Columbia, and Sam Jayne who was signed to Sub Pop and has written songs for Beck. We recently started working with this great indie band from Hawaii called The Green, that were charting a few weeks ago on the iTunes charts, and one of our younger songwriters Sarah Solovayhas had numerous placements on TV shows.

Kenna is online with Songtrust.

Each one of these writers was at a different point in their career when they came to Songtrust. For some of the guys in The Green, we had to help them with the very first steps in getting their publishing sorted. With an artist like Kenna, we basically step in and make sure that everything that was previously set up was done correctly.

Like any traditional music publisher, the key information we need is song title and writer information and then we get to work.

It sounds like a good start. Have you had some challenges in growing a startup like Songtrust?

The main challenge for us is stressing to songwriters that there could be royalties out there for them, it might be $50, but it’s theirs and they now have the ability to get it. If you are touring, selling your music, have music played on TV/radio or streaming on the Internet you could be owed royalties.

The US royalty collection agencies are collecting more money now than ever before and it’s not all owed to the artists/writers that are on top of the charts. There are indie artists/songwriters that could be earning a few hundred dollars a year, but they’re just not aware of it.

On the flipside, what’s made this a rewarding effort to be a part of?

What makes this rewarding is that our site empowers songwriters to take control of something that in the past was not available to them. Music publishing was only for the few lucky and some talented songwriters that had publishing deals.

We have conversations everyday with our writers and they feel like they’ve been invited into the private party now. Maybe they haven’t written a #1 song yet but at least they’re in the game, so if they do have a YouTube or Spotify stream they can get what could be owed to them.

You’re operating all this from the heart of SoHo. Why is NYC the right HQ for you?

All of our staff is based in NYC. The whole project, from the very first discussions on to our launch, was worked on from our office in SoHo.  NYC is a great place to be based — not only is the music industry here, but there are tons of creative songwriters/artists running around these streets.

– David Weiss

Epic Records reinforces its A&R brain trust again.

Stewart is the hit songwriter and producer behind many huge chart-topping singles, such as Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”, Britney Spears‘ “Me Against the Music”, Mýa’s “Case of the Ex”, Rihanna’s “Umbrella”, Mary J. Blige’s “Just Fine”, Mariah Carey’s “Touch My Body” and “Obsessed”, Jesse McCartney’s “Leavin’”, Justin Bieber’s “Baby”, Ciara’s“Ride” and many others.

In addition, Mark Shimmel is also joining Epic from Turner Broadcasting, in a Sr. Executive capacity.  Shimmel was formally COO of LaFace Records as well as Sr. VP Marketing & Artist Relations at Arista Records.

Ritch Esra is Co-Publisher of the A&R Registry, which is published every eight weeks.d

See CCR for the powerhouse that it is.

• Has won three GRAMMY awards and been nominated for five more in the last five years,
• Has had 11 albums by five different artists certified RIAA Platinum or Gold since 2002,
• Signs its artists based on their talent, not the size of their YouTube following?

If you guessed Epic Records, well, you may be right — frankly, we haven’t done that much research for this article. What we’re actually talking about here is Comedy Central Records (CCR), the label arm of the Viacom/MTV Networks channel of the same name. And it turns out that by studying the evolution of this indie within a mega-major communications company, you can get a serious tutorial on record business success.

Before CCR’s Founder/Vice President in Charge Jack Vaughn, became a magnate responsible for signing elite funnypeeps like Mitch Hedberg, Daniel Tosh, Jim Gaffigan, Dane Cook, Lewis Black, Demetri Martin, Bo Burnham, Aziz Ansari, and Nick Swardson, he was overseeing another indie-label-on-the-rise story – one that quickly fell flat as a pancake. But he was blessed with resiliency, drive, and a genuine talent for niche marketing, and he would need all three to bring CCR into existence, and then deliver on the big promises he made to Viacom.

Run – don’t walk – to the sharp insights available as Vaughn deconstructs CCR’s rise, its adaptation from a physical to a digital market, what they really look for in an artist recording, the shockingly simply A&R philosophy employed by him and CCR Label Manager Ian Stearns, why specializing is a dual-edge sword, and more.

Comedy Central Records has an interesting story of how it came into being. How did you get the idea to start the label in the first place?

In the mid-to-late 1990s, I was running a label called Slimstyle that was the independent label of the modern swing movement.  In many respects, swing at the time was a reaction to grunge and the tired alternative rock scene.  It was a cool underground movement, with a distinct dance style and dress code and great music, and it happened to be so good that it was irresistible to the press.

The media got ahold of it and it exploded, then went supernova, and burned out in under three years.  In fact, by the time it went mainstream, the burnout took less than 18 months.  In mid-1999, the phone stopped ringing and we couldn’t sell another swing record.  For the next couple of years I was at loose ends and couldn’t figure out what to do next.

I had been a huge fan of comedy for years, and as I was growing up, amassed a large collection of comedy albums that I played over and over.  I had also been a fan of Comedy Central and had watched it basically since its inception.  The clincher, though, was around 1998 when I saw a clip of Mitch Hedberg doing a few minutes on television.  I was blown away and tracked down his self-released CD, Strategic Grill Locations.

After memorizing it, it hit me that it was crazy that something this good wasn’t being properly released and marketed.  That was when the idea crystallized that it was time to start a comedy label, and instead of trying to raise funding for it, the obvious home would be Comedy Central.

That is what we call an A HA moment! So how did you get Comedy Central on board to back it from there?

It may seem like a no-brainer, but back at the time — 2001 — it was a little out there.  Every so often you’d see a comedy album released by a big star, but there were almost no small-to-mid-level comics releasing CDs, there was no comedy section in record stores, and comedy albums really hadn’t sold since the late seventies or early eighties.

The CCR team, L-R: Ian Stearns, Miro Terrell, and Jack Vaughn

I had a friend who knew how to get in touch with the head of Comedy Central and I flew out and pitched them the idea for the label.  They had already been in talks to license the Comedy Central brand to majors, but my take on it was to do it all internally- signing artists, producing the albums and handling all aspects of the label in-house.  It was a tenuous uphill battle, and I flew to New York with improvements to the plan for about nine months until it was to a point where they decided to give it a shot.

The nice part about having so little competition was that the list of possible comics to sign was almost limitless.  In the first year I signed Dave Attell, Jim Breuer, Lewis Black, Dane Cook, Bobcat Goldthawait, and Mitch Hedberg.  We also released the audio from a new show on the network called “Crank Yankers”.

The downside was convincing artists that doing a comedy record was a good idea, convincing record stores to take them, and reintroducing the public to the idea of buying comedy records.  To this day most people don’t walk into record stores looking for comedy albums.  In fairness, most people don’t walk into record stores anymore period, but you get the point.

That sounds like a good way to start. As the label opened for business, what parts of your original business plan were confirmed? And on the flipside, what were the surprises that you discovered in the first few years?

I recently took a look back at the old plan I first pitched to Comedy Central and shockingly, it was about 80% on target, from the artists signed to the profit margins.  The sales projections that I had which were largely blind guesswork and in my mind even a little ambitious, but they turned out to be way below where we netted out.

As far as surprises, there weren’t too many.  Some artists I thought would do better didn’t and some I thought would take a very long time to develop turned into stars in relatively short order.

The really interesting part was how the industry as a whole changed from the start until now. For example, we did exactly zero digital sales in the beginning (2002), and today, I’d estimate we’re 85% digital.  There’s a good chance we won’t be manufacturing physical CDs two years from now.

On that note, wow would you describe Comedy Central Records today? It is it an indie label? A major label? Or is it a hybrid of both? What are the advantages and disadvantages of having that mixed status?

It really defies description, because it’s not set up as a traditional label.  In many ways it’s a perfect hybrid  — backed by the marketing and financing, not to mention prestige, of Comedy Central, and the top-notch distribution of ADA, but still small enough to have a personal touch and everyone here is doing it for the love of comedy.

CCR artist Dane Cook's "Retaliation" debuted at #4 on the Billboard charts, and has sold 650,000 copies since 2005.

For example, unlike majors there is no constantly shifting bureaucracy and executive team- no one gets orphaned by a fired regime.  And if any artist, manager, or agent has a problem that needs resolving or has an idea or a need, they can get me right on the phone and it gets taken care of if there’s a viable solution.

The artists get advertising on the network and robust off-network marketing, we use the best royalty accounting firm in the business to make sure artist royalties are paid accurately, and hopefully there is none of the same terror and frustration having to deal with the machinations of a major.

Plus, our catalog generates a good amount of revenue so we don’t have to desperately try to grasp for the next immediate hit and can focus on development and what we think is funny — even if the artist hasn’t built up a big fan base yet.  And in the Internet age, quality tends to get found.

It seems like there are many interesting comparisons of running a comedy label, as opposed to a music label. What are the most striking ways in which a comedy label operates differently from a music label? In what ways are they the same?

One of the major drawbacks is that we can’t license our audio to TV, film, commercials, video games, etc… because it’s by and large spoken word standup as opposed to music.  Another is that our sales are limited to English speakers.

But there are some big positives.  With spoken word standup, people tend to buy the whole album as opposed to just singles, which is a big problem with music.  Of course there are those out there who just want Jim Gaffigan’s “Hot Pockets” joke, but for the most part, the comedy album is a piece of whole cloth.

Another plus is that, as opposed to musical acts who tend to be comprised of numerous players and prone to breaking up, comedy is almost always just one person with no equipment who just tends to get more famous.  With Slimstyle, the costs and logistics of getting an eight-to-ten piece swing band on a bus and touring were almost insurmountable.

For those who just want Jim Gaffigan’s “Hot Pockets” joke — instant gratification:

Who makes it on to CCR? When it comes to your A&R process, how do you discover talent?

We have an absolutely amazing talent department at Comedy Central who identify talent for the network early on.  The normal process is that comics with a strong ten minutes of material perform on our TV shows like “Live At Gotham” which will showcase a few up-and-coming acts every episode.

Then, comics who have at least a strong half hour of material are invited to perform on their own “Comedy Central Presents” special.  This is the point where the label typically becomes interested for two reasons- one, because the comics are close to or at the point at which they have an album’s worth of material, and two, because we can now advertise the comedian’s CD every time their “CC Presents” airs on the network.

This is how we deal with a lot of emerging talent, but there are also other ways we work.  For example, I often sign established acts who want to work more closely with the label or network, or are leaving another label.  CCR also brings talent to the network- Bo Burnham is a good example of this.  He got his start producing and starring in web videos that became a sensation, we released those videos commercially in a DVD accompanying his debut album and he ended up doing a “CC Presents” and hour special (that also ended up as a DVD) with Comedy Central.

Ultimately, there are basically two criteria for who we sign to the label:

1. You have to be really funny.
2. You have to have a distinctive voice or point of view.

That’s it.  Things like having a strong following or being on TV or in movies is great, but those two criteria are the main things we look for.

Now that you’ve been doing this for a while, what comedians have you found are a good fit for CCR, and on the other hand, who isn’t?

Again, really funny people with distinctive voices or points of view are the best fit.  I realize that sounds glib, but that’s the real answer.  This is what we look for. Ideally, we try to deal with talent who have or want to have a relationship with the network as a whole.

"Stark Raving Black" netted CCR its latest award, the 2011 GRAMMY for "Best Comedy Album".

Are there things that CCR can do for your artists careers that a typical music label can’t? What kind of comedians stand to most benefit from working with CCR?

I could go on for a while on this one, and a lot of it was outlined earlier, but one of the major factors is that we can advertise the records at little to no cost on the network- typically running lower third ads contextually during the comedian’s programming- and promoting the releases on comedycentral.com.

This is, of course, the perfect audience to be in front of, and also represents tens of thousands of dollars worth of promotion that no one else can come close to duplicating.  That’s in addition to the significant off-network campaigns we do.

The bottom line is that we make, sell, and promote nothing but comedy records 24/7/365 which gives us and our artists significant obvious advantages.

When it comes to production and distribution of the records, how do you work? Do you record only live shows? Record in studios? And are your costs for production high or low?

The vast majority of our records are spoken word standup, which necessitates recording in a live setting.  We will typically send out a mobile recording engineer to the venue (typically a comedy club), and record a weekend’s worth of shows.  Usually there is one standout show of the bunch that we will use as the body of the album, then cut in additional material or jokes that worked better in the other sets.

One of the quirks of this genre is that the audience tends to be the most important part of the recording, and how the audience reacts can drastically change how the jokes are perceived by the listener.  Jokes seem funnier the harder people are laughing at them — this is the reason sitcoms customarily use laugh tracks — which may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised just how important it is.

By the time of the album recording, the comic has gotten so good at doing the material that the differences in delivery among the sets are usually minimal.  But the difference between an intelligent, raucous audience in a packed room, and a sober one in a half-empty club is staggering.  We’ll re-record shows if the audience isn’t good enough.

Our costs of recording, as one might imagine, aren’t high.  We can spend a lot in editing and post, making sure everything is just right, and we put a lot into the artwork.  But in the end, we like keeping the production costs low, because those costs are recoupable, and as such the artists start seeing royalties sooner.  It also allows us to put more money into marketing which benefits everyone.

Also on the business tip, how is your sector changing, and how do you expect it to continue to evolve? As record company executives how do you keep pace with the changing business environment?

The biggest change is the switch to digital — both from a distribution and marketing perspective.  There are always new platforms cropping up that sell or stream audio, and it’s a challenge to keep up with it all, but it’s exciting to find these new ways to get our albums out, and we’re always up to experiment.

Mitch Hedberg -- the man who inspired it all.

On the marketing side, we now have to reevaluate the ways we market every three or four months as the different outlets change and get more sophisticated.  A lot of the time we have to make money on smaller numbers of units, so marketing effectiveness is key.

I expect to see a complete shift to digital albums very shortly with its requisite benefits and pitfalls.  On the one hand, we will no longer have to manufacture, warehouse, ship, take returns on, and destroy physical product, but the downside is that piracy is becoming more prevalent and increasingly difficult to stop.  Luckily, people are still willing to support comedy and pay for good content.

Let us peer inside your head: Are there music business mentors that have been particularly inspirational to you?

I grew up with the Washington, DC punk rock scene of the late eighties and early nineties, and Dischord Records and its bands were hugely inspirational to how I do business in terms of ethics and production value.

And Sub Pop, Moon Records, and all of the other genre-focused labels highlighted the need to specialize in one type of music or audio.  There are a number of benefits to specialization in that you can really connect with your audience, and it makes marketing easier and more effective when you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you put out an album of a different genre by figuring out how best to get to the target listeners.  Ideally, we want someone who will buy every album on the label, just by nature of it being a CCR release- because they know it will be good.

There are cautionary tales in these labels as well, though, because if you are the main label of a popular genre, the tendency is to want to put out records by everyone in that genre, focusing on quantity over quality, which inevitably leads to a burnout and dropoff in interest by the audience.

I see CCR as, among other things, a comedy filter. Recording and distributing comedy albums is relatively inexpensive and easy — they’re released and disappear all the time — but great records with strong marketing campaigns behind them are much fewer and farther between.  We are acutely aware of this, and as such sign and release a limited number of artists and albums every year in order to try to maintain that quality.

It looks like you’re really in a groove. Lastly we ask, what makes NYC a seriously good place for Comedy Central Records to run its business?

For the most part, the comedy industry is in New York City and Los Angeles.  We love the city and its amazing comedy scene – from Upright Citizens Brigade  and the small alternative rooms to Saturday Night Live.  The comedy heart beats strongly here.

– David Weiss

Now, commercial music is all synch licenses and “inspired by” original compositions ordered to sound like a record. Competing directly with licensable album tracks, music houses have adapted by hiring artist-composers who can deliver authentic sounding tracks to the client’s creative direction that also effectively scores picture.

The result is arguably better music for visual media across the board, and a viable new revenue stream for artists who can put energy towards pitching for these jobs. Because selling music to fans is not getting any easier.

Josh Ascalon and Damon Dorsey w/ some of RAD Studio

Still, some artists see the music-for-hire proposition as potentially compromising to their own brand. In the Brooklyn indie music scene – oft-referenced by agencies seeking a piece of cool – bands with critical success may hesitate to sell their sound, or sounds yet-to-be spun, especially while they’re still on the rise.

But what if they could produce commercial music anonymously?

This is the premise of Melody Robot, a new collective of artists, composers, and producers that operate both behind and in front of the Brooklyn music scene.

Melody Robot is run by three young music industry entrepreneurs: composer Damon Dorsey and producer/engineer Josh Ascalon, who also co-own RAD Studio in Bushwick, and music licensing and sales man, Christopher Mazur.

“What led us into this was seeing our artist friends who are gaining notoriety, and out there touring the world, and yet still broke as hell,” says Ascalon. “They’re coming home from tour and crashing on friends’ couches. They can’t afford a place to live.”

“We all felt like there’s got to be a way to make a little more money,” Dorsey adds. “Especially as all these companies are trying to brand themselves with the whole cool, Brooklyn indie-scene thing. And we’re like, ‘Wait a minute, we are that.’ We’re actually making that music. So how do we get in on that?’”

ALL IN THE FAMILY

It all started with RAD Studio, the recording facility Ascalon and Dorsey own and run with musician/producer George Lewis Jr. of Twin Shadow.

Located within the utopian Castle Braid building and arts community in Bushwick – and with three very active owner/operators – RAD is a business that operates more like an extended family. In its two years, RAD has built a name for itself in the Brooklyn music scene working on records with bands like Hooray For Earth, Das Racist, Snowmine, Beige, Chairlift, and more recently The Vandelles and Ill Fits. Stereogum has aired “Live at RAD” sessions (see below) featuring Twin Shadow, Hooray for Earth and Zambri.

“We’ve always been a really close-knit little studio,” says Dorsey. “We are fully commercial, but we pretty much stay within our family as much as we can. It’s like a big group of musician friends – many of which happen to have taken off in the last couple years.”

Another studio might have launched a record label off of this momentum, but RAD is building Melody Robot – a much more direct bridge to revenue in 2011.

With Dorsey, Ascalon and Mazur acting as the producers and client liaison, Melody Robot provides an outlet through which some of these friends and collaborators can now write and produce music-for-hire, and even license and customize existing music to the right projects. And members of the Melody Robot collective do not have to put their name on anything – unless they want to.

“We’re not talking about who is in the collective and that’s really for the good of the artist,” notes Dorsey. “It’s largely why people have joined the collective – because we are discrete about this.

“It’s important to our artists to maintain separation between the commercial work and their image as an artist. Of course, you can guess at some of the work, and who’s behind it, but we’ll never say who’s involved exactly. Unless it’s a need-to-know thing by a client and we’ve all agreed on those terms.”

There’s a kind of reverse psychology to the Melody Robot model. Most music houses push their artist roster pretty hard, even take artists on the road to play sales presentations at ad agencies. By association, the music houses look super cool.

With Melody Robot, however, the emphasis will have to be on the music and sound design itself – an approach that will give the collective’s musicians an outlet for new sounds, ideas that may not fit the direction of their band, for example.

“It’ll be about their actual ability, as opposed to their face or their brand,” says Ascalon.

“I mean, it’s great if you’re an artist and some brand that perfectly aligns with how you’ve already branded yourself comes along and wants to give you a lot of money for your music. But there are more cases where maybe it’s not the most romantic thing in the world to be involved with…and through Melody Robot, these artists will have the opportunity to do that on the basis of their talents, not their brand.”

In cases where that artist co-brand does make sense, Melody Robot can broker these deals as well. In fact, according to Mazur – who primarily handles client relations and sales for the company – Melody Robot also cuts these artists a bigger piece of the pie than they would get elsewhere.

“The unique thing about our collective is that – if an artist is open and legally able to license their existing music through us – we’re offering them 65%, where Melody Robot is taking almost nothing for a finder’s fee. We’re blowing other music companies out of the water with that, because we recognize that they are also branding themselves in that moment. And the artist should get paid for that.”

If the deal is custom music and the artist is contributing anonymously and wins the job, the split is 50-50 – still a generous payout when compared with other music houses.

Of course, these other music companies aren’t exactly short-changing their winning writers – it costs a company significant time and resources to, first of all, bring in a job, and second of all produce it from beginning to end, covering all the associated overhead. With RAD Studio and other projects bringing in revenue, the Melody Robot principles do not have to put all their eggs in one basket with this collective.

“We’re building something new, and it’s inspiring,” says Dorsey. “We’re trying to set a new and different standard and stick to it. Even if it costs us more [in the short term.]”

RAD, NEW SOUNDS

By virtue of the music that’s come out of RAD, the collective aesthetic might be described as one that explores psychedelic and new wave synth pop, and experimental, effects-laced indie rock. This is often dense, distinctive pop songcraft, where the production and songwriting process are totally intertwined. It’s a song and a sound – music that’s both highly textural and melodic.

Since the artists’ names will not be their calling card, Melody Robot will have to bank on its aesthetic, and cultivate that accordingly rather than being an “all styles for all projects” kind of shop. “We realize the one thing we have is our aesthetic,” says Ascalon. “So we’re embracing that. We’d be more inclined to put our own spin on what the client wants [vs. music to order].”

In a world where everyone’s dropping names, if not standing behind a monster reel, this is certainly not the easiest way to build a business. But the partners are confident about their model. They describe what they’re doing as “developing a premium sonic branding option for music supervisors and creative directors looking for the new sound.”

“We do great work,” says Dorsey. “My philosophy is that cream will rise to the top: Clients receive good work, it’s original work, it has a unique sound. And we feel that clients will continue to come to us for a unique sound. And over time, we become associated with the sounds that we’re all already going for in our music. But now it’s part of this growing entity.

“People will know our sound. It comes directly from the source, and you really can’t fake that.”

For more information on RAD Studio, visit www.radstudiobrooklyn.com and get in touch with Melody Robot via www.melodyrobot.com.

X5 Music Group has been quietly mastering the online music space.

When the digital label X5 Music Group started in 2003, its founders had the chance to rewrite every bad old rule of the music business. They took full advantage of the opportunity, and the benefits of a fresh start are clear to see: Today, X5 stands as the world’s highest-selling classical music label by generating over $10 million in sales 2010, with 13 of its albums placing on Billboard’s 2010 year-end Classical Albums chart and a #1 that was parked on iTunes’ Classical chart for over a year.

Originating in Stockholm, Sweden, X5 made two shrewd moves this year: They chose New York City as the home of their U.S. offices, and they recruited former Amazon senior digital music manager Scott Ambrose Reilly to lead it. With his deep background in music management and digital distribution – he was an exec for digital music pioneers Digital Club Network and eMusic before joining Amazon – Reilly knows innovation when he sees it.

Last week’s X5 release, The Greatest Video Games Music, is the latest indication that Ambrose’s instincts were on when he joined the label. A concept album of the best-known video game themes performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the collection was released on Tuesday, November 8 and went directly to #1 on Amazon’s digital download charts.

Ambrose notes that X5’s baggage-free birth had everything to do with why the company is cleanly beating out traditional record labels – and a lot of other digital-only plays as well – in today’s marketplace. “Think about three guys sitting down in 2003 starting out fresh with a record label,” says Reilly, perched 75 floors above NYC from X5’s Empire State Building offices. “You’re going to do it digital-only. You have no legacy catalog and no past history curves to worry about.

“Starting out fresh, X5 didn’t really know how the traditional — what I call the ‘vinyl LP’ business model – worked. That’s what we’ve been living under, and even the way the digital business is run is a variation on that. When you’re not burdened by all that, the future looks great.

“You can say, ‘Why do we have to deliver the exact same product to every retailer? Why do things always come out on Tuesday?’ When you start thinking like that, you start innovating, because you’re not locked into the way things are.”

Scott Ambrose Reilly is overseeing X5's US presence from NYC.

Applying New Thinking

X5’s inventory is built up not by A&Ring the artists with the most YouTubeviews, but rather by licensing and acquiring musical catalogs, and then optimizing them for individual digital vendors, mobile operators, and mobile handset manufacturers. The resulting releases are compilations that gather together the best recordings of a particular genre, repackaged to work amazingly well together at the Amazons and iTunes of the world.

The result is albums whose titles may not ring so scintillatingly – The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music, The Top 10 Opera Classics, The 50 Most Essential Christmas Masterpieces – but their sales figures do: Over 100 million songs have been moved by X5 to date. X5 album titles and artwork are created to take digital shoppers straight to the point of the release, clueing them in instantly to what they can expect to get for their money.

“We have a model that is the digital version of what many great companies did in the physical world, from Rhino to TimeLife, to Putomayo and K-Tel,” Ambrose notes, “but those were mostly track-at-a-time collector products. We’re doing it as a cohesive, mainstream product line, which you can do more efficiently in the digital space because your manufacturing and licensing risks aren’t the same. So our aim is to create products that are as close as perfect as possible for the digital space.

“It seems simple, but you have to have the right price, the right cover art, the right name. Very few people are thinking about the right product for digital, or what’s right for this retailer vs. that retailer.

“We have different catalogs up at Amazon and iTunes, because the customers are different at each store. An Amazon customer is very much quality/value driven, while the iTunes customer is more quality/lifestyle driven. So, there will be, in essence, a whole different product for each.”

Different Store, Different Story

What do you think you'd find in this album?

Despite the sleek Internet origins of online stores like iTunes, Reilly points out that there are several stone-age tendencies burdening the way labels and independent artists work with them. “Even when it comes to a company as digital as iTunes, most people providing their product to them are still working under practices based around the old model,” he says. “For example, street date: the brick & mortar record stores made it Tuesday because they needed to stock the shelves on Monday. And is there a reason we only have one street date a week?

“As I mentioned, in digital it makes sense to have more than one version of a product. And once someone finds your album on a crowded chart page of a digital store, are they going to know what it is within three seconds? A huge carryover of the vinyl business model is the artistic love of the album cover, with the gatefold sleeve – but unfortunately people don’t engage with the covers that way anymore. It’s got to look great as a postage stamp, communicate a message, and make someone want to click on yours instead of another one.

“And a new approach to naming/titling is important too. Just a generic example here, is the difference between naming a collection of songs Amore instead of 14 Great Italian Love Songs. I guarantee you album sales will be greater with the latter: People will know what is, and what it has, when they find it.”

New Opportunities Beyond Licensing

With their success in licensing, compiling and distributing proven tracks come fresh opportunities for working producers, engineers, studios and artists. Case in point is the new 21-cut Greatest Video Game Music release, which saw X5 hiring the esteemed London Philharmonic to record modern-day classics including “Legend of Zelda: Suite”  Hans Zimmer’s “Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2: Theme,” “Angry Birds: Main Theme,” “Super Mario Bros. Theme,” to “Grand Theft Auto IV: Soviet Connection”.

The latest release from X5 puts all their digital music smarts together.

“That’s where we put together everything X5 has learned about compilations and the digital marketplace,” Reilly says. “The foundation was laid two years ago they said, ‘Let’s create a new product with these principles. Let’s do research and come up with what we think are the 50 most popular classical songs in the world, then get an orchestra to record them.’

“That album, The 50 Greatest Classical Songs Ever, was more successful then we would have expected. So we said, ‘How do we apply these principles again in a different way?’ So this time its The Greatest Video Game Music recorded once again by the London Philharmonic. The title is very clear about what it is, with a cover that’s amazing! It shows a solider from a video game, in the battlefield with a flaming cello. It really captures your attention.”

Keeping Moving

While X5 may not be the only company to rethink some of these old paradigms, it’s clear that their own particular approach to digital music reinvention works. And as Reilly points out, any artist or label who’s serious about success will have to keep thinking one step ahead.

“Constant innovation is crucial in the digital music space,” he observes. “At X5 we know that if we’re not going to figure out a way to bump our own titles to the top of the charts, somebody else is. And we’ve done great with catalog, but we’re also using that money to take risks with releases like The Greatest Video Game Music.

“We keep thinking, ‘What can we do that’s interesting, that doesn’t exist anywhere?’ When we do it right, that makes it easier for customers to find music they like.”

– David Weiss