(no subject)

[jfb]

Eric Olsen wrote a piece for MSNBC last week on the end of Pearl Jam's association with a major label:

If Pearl Jam — now touring the United States to wildly enthusiastic crowds — is able to create a successful business model mobilizing its fans via the Internet and engaging in such “crazy” stunts as releasing live double albums of every show it performs, this could be the beginning of a stampede away from the lumbering dinosaurs that the major labels have become.

Well, I guess. And, you know, I think such a stampede would be a great idea, regardless.

But if Pearl Jam--after twelve years of major-label-backed success, and the kind of promotion (music videos, national airplay) that only money can buy--continues to make money off its well-deserved fan base, well, what does that prove? The real test is whether bands can be successful (and I'll leave the definition of "success" open for interpretation) without signing a seven-record, decade-long contract in the first place.

Comments

[pobig.livejournal.com]

I'm more surprised that having seen Pearl Jam mentioned all over the place, I've never, to my knowledge, heard any of their music. The comparison to the Grateful Dead makes things clearer.

As for becoming a 'success' without the major labels, as a number of bands like Negativland have pointed out, you can make more money, from start to finish, by selling CDs out of your garage than most bands make with a recording contract. Columbia et al have been irrelevant from the word go as far as making money goes. The main thing they have to offer that artists want is exposure. Trouble is, a lot of the time that exposure requires adhering to some executive's idea of what will do well, with the result that some artists wind up playing widely popular music that they don't really care about.

[pobig.livejournal.com]

Er, not to rant or anything.

[marm0t.livejournal.com]

Paul recently made the same point about Aimee Mann. Which leaves me wondering whether there are any good examples of career "indie" artists enjoying widespread commercial success. The only one that comes to mind is Ani DiFranco, but, though she may be an Aimee Mann, obviously she's no Pearl Jam.

[jfb.livejournal.com]

You may be right--I hope you're right--that in the long run you can make more money on your own than most bands do with a major label. My point is only that Pearl Jam is not most bands, and we shouldn't look to them as an example. Sounds like you weren't looking to them as anything. :-)

I wonder how often musicians really do wind up playing music they don't care about. It seems to me that most of the time what major label money does is not replace someone's music with something else, but take someone's music and make it glossier--but they can still play it raw once they get out of the studio.

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I think it's great that Pearl Jam and Aimee Mann are now making it on their own, and I wish them nothing but success. But, well, you got the point. They're good news, and probably a sign of something, but they're not the revolution Eric Olsen is looking for.

Ani DiFranco was the best example I came up with, too. (Fugazi might also come to mind if I knew more about them, but I don't.) And the difference between her and Pearl Jam is partly what I meant when I declined to define "success". If she can make a living income year after year from her music, and she's happy making it, then what's not successful about that?

And a lot of my favorite musicians have, by choice or misfortune, never signed with a big label. (It's a little surprising to me how many of my favorites have signed--even Ida, whom I think of as a paragon of indie, made in my opinion their best album with Capitol's money, although Capitol didn't end up releasing it.) But I don't know how many of them have made a self-sustaining business out of it, never mind the kind of popularity Pearl Jam has.

Maybe it's too early to say. I guess I should stop theorizing and get back to work.

[marm0t.livejournal.com]

Dude, it's Saturday. Don't get back to work. Continue theorizing! Saturdays are for theorizing.

And I'm not even going to get started on the definition of "success." Okay, wait, yes I am. Because I'm curious about something, and your answer would be interesting. So here's the question:

How much of "being happy making music," for you, is bound up in receiving recognition for it? I'm not talking about financial reward; let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you are somehow able to sustain yourself financially and leave that out of the equation. Do you think you could be happy making music if you never got much in the way of recognition from the public or from your peers? What if it was really good music? Do you derive self-satisfaction from that, and how important is that in the overall equation? If you were making really good music (remember, leaving finances out of it -- pretend you're independently wealthy), but nobody was noticing, would you stop?

I guess that was really more than one question.

nasonex

[chrismwage.livejournal.com]

Poster Children comes to mind when I think of successful "career" indie artists..

Re: nasonex

[(Anonymous)]

Poster Children definitely think like an indie band, but they had a major label contract for 8 years. And although they are almost self-sufficient (they supplement their income with design work, and I think some occasional programming contracts), they have always been wildly unsuccessful in terms of sales numbers. Fugazi is a much better example, way more serious about being independent and also way more popular.

Epitaph is another indie label that comes to mind-- Bad Religion and The Offspring did very well there before signing to majors, and I believe Rancid has remained indie. I don't know if Epitaph has had major label distribution deals, though (I suspect so). Matador has had a similar history of bands right at the edge of mainstream popularity that either "stepped up" to the majors at their peak (Liz Phair) or stayed indie (Pavement, Yo La Tengo), but they had a distribution deal with Capitol for several years.

Then again, by some definitions (including the Billboard Independent Chart), Jive Records is an indie...

--Doug