It’s a great time to be a Jacksonville music lover. Over the course of the next few months we have over a dozen huge national acts coming to town and three major music festivals gracing the area. In other words, it appears as though our little corner of the state has officially arrived. No more driving anywhere for two to six hours to catch your favorite band live; now the biggest obstacle is a little traffic on I-95, something most of us have to deal with daily anyway. Jacksonville is a destination now, not just a place people have to travel through to get to Daytona or Orlando. We’re no cultural Mecca, but we’re not a sleepy hick town either. No, our beloved River City has come a long way and finally tour organizers are ready to acknowledge it.
Mid-October seems to be our coming out party with The Hives (pictured above) hitting Jack Rabbits this Friday and Little Richard gracing the stage at the recently revamped St. Augustine Amphitheater the next night. Nada Surf will also be rocking St. Augustine, this time at Café Eleven on the 27th. Over at the Veterans Memorial Arena, the Wild Young Things Tour featuring Fall Out Boy, Plain White T’s, Gym Class Heroes and Cute Is What We Aim For will roll through town on October 30th. November brings Ben Harper, Widespread Panic and David Bazan among others.
Then there are the festivals! MagnoliaFest at the Spirit of Suwannee Music Park in Live Oak on October 25th through the 27th will bring Toots & the Maytals, Donna the Buffalo, The Duhks and many, many more. On November 10th the Tallyrand Music & Art Festival puts Spoon, The Polyphonic Spree, The Bravery, Against Me! and about a dozen more huge bands on Met Park’s stage. On November 17th the annual Planetfest brings Breaking Benjamin, Seether, Sum 41 and others to Met Park.
We won’t even touch on the national acts coming to town next year or the incredible local scene that’s been cultivated and nurtured, out of which phenomenal bands are standing on the threshold, poised to be the next big thing people will travel hundreds of miles to see. This time, we’re going to take a look at some of the major touring acts that are coming to town this fall. We’re going to look at the industry itself. We’re going to show you that, while your back was turned, Jacksonville has become a city to be envied.
by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
A technical and marketing revolution has taken place in the music business since I was a record producer and owner of a recording studio back in the late 70s and early 80s. I was part of the now archaic analog gear and vinyl records past. Suddenly, CDs happened overnight, and boom, the digital runaway train ran over the naysayers, stubbornly extolling the virtues of analog technology. The deniers shuttered as accelerating digital technology caused their heads to spin like Linda Blair’s devil noggin in The Exorcist. As early as the late 80s, the evolution of the Internet was inspiring new ideas about how records are marketed, sold, and how artists view big record companies versus independent labels. It was war – corporate greed and control versus independence – a battle that still rages.
Prince and Michael Bolton pioneered direct Internet sales to their fans from their private recording studios. Prince still likes to skewer the big record conglomerates with his guerrilla marketing tactics. Visionary artists saw the hand writing on the wall as the Internet was upgraded to fiber-optic broadband and the World Wide Web took off like a rocket.
Yes, there was a down side. The evil of the original Napster allowed geeky slackers to download music for free. Finally, that open door was closed by vicious lawsuits designed to shock the freeloaders into submission. A cadre of college kids were dragged into court in shackles like major criminals and fined thousands of dollars for running file sharing networks. A compensatory agreement was worked out so legitimate music websites like Rhapsody and iTunes could charge a fee to join and allow music downloads for a lower price. Now, one can download entire albums for $8.99 to $10.99, or buy individual songs for 99 cents. It was a bold new world of marketing music. It was the beginning of the end for record stores.
During the counterculture revolution of classic rock’s heyday, from the 60s through the 80s, rock radio dominated the business. The path to success was dependent on radio airplay–getting one’s music on heavy rotation on the rock radio stations which would generate a national market for the artist’s albums. The arena rock bands of the era used this formula exclusively by signing with big labels that took their publishing rights, but made sure the artists’ music got on the air and charts by any means necessary (cash and cocaine in FedEx envelopes to DJs) and the artists rode the charts to glory. The Nashville country music scene still does business this way (but with no payola). Country music radio stations introduce new artists that generate requests, which, in turn, leads to hit singles and albums. In country, radio airplay is the only path to big time success.
During the 90s alt-rock revolution, fiercely independent artists toured in vans on the alt-rock club circuit, self-producing their product and selling it on their websites and at their gigs, which gave them complete independence. They reasoned that if they could glean enough fans from live concerts, then the fans would buy their product and support their shows. For Pearl Jam this formula was a phenomenon. The band had already sold platinum product but were not being played on the radio. Star power has recently realized they don’t need the major labels to sell their product anymore. The labels footed the bill to market their name and their music for the last 20 years, but the artists are taking their careers over for themselves now.
Recently, Prince gave away his latest album with the price of a concert ticket, which paid off in sold out concerts. In today’s world, many artists are making their living playing shows and festivals, using their CDs as promotional tools. Today, the live performance is king.
This month, arguably the most important rock band of this generation, Radiohead, had record company moguls reaching for their Maalox when guitarist Jonny Greenwood announced on the band’s official blog that the group’s new album In Rainbows would only be available on the band’s website Radiohead.com. More shockingly, he declared that people interested in purchasing the album could pay whatever they wanted for the product, and “free” would be perfectly acceptable. No, these rich, intelligent, creative artists had not lost their minds. They knew that in 2006, CD sales declined to $55.2 million, online sales increased to $631.9 million. In stark contrast, concert ticket sales skyrocketed to 3.6 billion–that’s “B” as in billion! And, the band has a major tour scheduled for 2008. Like Prince’s clever “up-yours” to the suits, the Radiohead dudes pulled off a marketing coup d’etat.
The fact is: The cream rises to the top, whatever path an artist chooses. Having large numbers of fans that buy an artist’s concert tickets and albums is the holy grail of the music business. But getting to that place costs money. Big record company support is still a viable path to glory for an artist, and some artists argue that signing with a major label actually gives them more freedom to concentrate on their music because they have people taking care of their publicity and marketing.
by hilary johnson and jon bosworth
The music industry is finally coming full circle once again. There was once a time when the only way you could hear a song was when the artist came to your town and played it for you. Before long, there were dozens of small, independent music labels helping fans get recordings of the music they loved and getting that music to people everywhere across the airwaves. And then there was Woodstock.
“After Woodstock all these indie labels started looking at all the things they didn’t have for sale,” says Scott Fravala, owner of the successful independent label Vision Sound Records. “They realized all the money they weren’t making and all the money they could make. They wanted to grow their company.”
So that was where the first shift occurred. Suddenly, music was about capital and not about creativity. It was the first pull to the long thread of the music industry sweater that continued to get pulled and yanked until it finally unraveled completely. And here we are.
With the major labels scrounging around, trying to maintain a world of music that only exists in their minds, independent labels are taking this opportunity to bring the music back to the artist.
“While indie labels are looking to the future, major labels are trying to stop the future from happening,” says Fravala.
The major labels like Atlantic, Electra, Geffen, and Columbia, have essentially owned the music industry for the past forty years. Without their support it was nearly impossible to achieve any kind of real success as an artist. They had the money, they controlled radio, they inflated record prices and controlled distribution. Without their backing, any artist would quickly and harshly get lost in the shuffle.
Not that indie labels haven’t always been around to contribute to the music industry. After all, Nirvana started on Sub Pop, an indie label, before getting sold to Geffen after some notable success. In fact the early nineties were the hay day of the independent label, when labels such as Matador, K Records, Merge, and Touch and Go, among many others, were leading the indie rock movement. Indie rock at the time referred to a band on an independent label. But in the late nineties, Napster exploded onto the scene, breaking down the power of the major label and almost completely destroying the potential of a smaller label to make any money at all.
Napster, and the many other copycat shareware programs that followed, pulled the rug right out from underneath the music industry as it was. Once people were able to get the music they loved for free, right or wrong as it may be, and didn’t have to succumb to the overpriced standards of the industry anymore, record sales took a huge hit. So huge, in fact, many labels folded or downsized their employees to half their original size.
Artists like Metallica, who were used to the huge paycheck they were receiving from royalties and record sales, lashed out against the Napster community. Labels tried to think of ways to combat the explosive effects. They sued Napster almost out of business. When that didn’t stop the free downloading (thanks to those copycat shareware programs) the record industry turned to filing lawsuits against it’s own bread and butter – music fans. But while the industry was facing such hard times, it refused to adjust the cost of their products, and so record stores could no longer afford to stay afloat. They had to compete with large chain retailers who were getting product at bulk rates. So when the small record store sunk, so did the smaller record labels. Thus fans of anything other than top 40 or pop music were forced to turn to their favorite shareware programs to get the albums they wanted. And the record industry couldn’t sue everyone.
That’s when iTunes and Rhapsody jumped into the picture, offering the artist money (albeit diminutive) for the music they make and giving people an alternative to potentially viral downloads that are seen by many as stealing. Since any band can get on iTunes, it is often the only way to find independent artists. An independent label or artists themselves can pay iTunes a small annual fee and an upload fee and their music is available to millions of subscribers. The same royalties paid to every band out there are now paid to yours. This model has paved the way for many bands to find terrific international success without the help of any label at all.
The only obstacle to the artist at that point is marketing the music they make, the one last bastion of hope for major labels was their pocketbook and their ability to get the artists’ music to the people. But labels largely relied on radio play and MTV to do this. Since MTV has gotten away from promoting music as much as pop culture, and music lovers have turned off their radios and turned on their iPods or XM, even that safety has been undermined.
And then came MySpace. An amazing tool for the artists, this online community bridged the gap between artists and music fans. Through viral marketing strategies and word-of-virtual-mouths, a fan can find any music they want on MySpace. From discovering new music to hearing your favorite bands newest songs, it’s a place where fans become a part of the team, get to know the band, listen to the songs, post them on their own pages as a badge of honor, and even download the music right off the band’s page and onto their personal computer. Tour schedules are listed and merchandise can even be purchased. MySpace has suddenly become the new place for a band to connect with their fans. So instead of getting one of the hundred albums labels want to sell you, you get to choose from millions of artists in your favorite genre. So what about MTV? Never mind. Now there’s YouTube and artists can have a video and translate their music into imagery without any of the label’s money.
These days, radio airplay and huge musical venues seem cold and distant. Fans enjoy feeling connected to the artist, watching them build their own ladder and helping to push that band to the very top. And with that kind of fan support comes musical loyalty that got lost somewhere down the line. Otherwise, Napster would have failed. People would have supported the industry instead of help its demise.
People have gotten a taste of freedom from the major label chains. Now all that was left to wonder was how would the music industry, buckling and crumbling under the new financial handicaps, ever recover? Or would we lose the industry altogether?
Although the music industry could never “collapse” because people will always want to listen to music, it must adjust to the changing technology and adapt out of it’s half a century old business model. Instead of gnashing their teeth about bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, who find major success without ever signing to a major, and now big bands such as Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead dropping their labels, the industry needs to embrace the technology and use it to facilitate easier transactions, more effective marketing tools, and take advantage of this new opportunity of cheap marketing and distribution to offer a larger variety of music to music fans. Instead of applying reliable revenues for solid profit-makers like the Flaming Lips to marketing the newest pop sensation out of Orlando to turn a bigger bottom-line dollar, the industry needs to go back to the age-old retail mantra of letting the customer be right. Rather than suing the pants off the hands that feed them, the industry needs to give the people what they want. Which also happens to be the music that their favorite musicians want to make.
“We are living the dream, not living in Mariah Carey’s house,” says Fravala. “And that dream is making music, the music we want to make.”
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
