Matthew Levinson

Let's cut a record

Published on 11/03/08
by matt

Talking with a friend on the weekend, about music, of course, I threw away the comment that (unlike say technology or travel) the music world was in trouble. He corrected me, quite rightly, reminding me there’s more music than ever before. Touching, human, real music as well. It’s the industry that has to recalibrate.

Thinking about that I read a post on David Byrne’s blog this morning about Maria Schneider’s latest jazz record. Schneider’s download-only release through ArtistShare features a 17-piece band (no lo-fi home recording distro here).

ArtistShare gets fans to contribute to the making of a record. US$9.99 gets a download when it’s done (plus texts, notes, pics). Higher up, you might get concert tickets. The max contribution is US$18,000, which gets you a producer credit – invite to the recording sessions, tickets to shows, maybe even a walk down the red carpet with the artist.

She got 200k from fan/participants for her record, of which 15% went to the “label”. The rest, 170k, went directly to the artist. (I suspect the recording costs come out of that as well, which must have been at least 20-30k). AND, she didn’t have to give up any of her publishing, which traditional labels often manage to get a big piece of.

And she won the Grammy for best instrumental composition.

There’s been a bit of this happening informally over the past few years – for example, Ollo’s last record, The If If, which featured design features from financial contributors to the record – but maybe doing it through ArtistShare could cut the visits to your friends hat in hand.

That's it. What Next?

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