By Eamonn Carey
I sometimes find it difficult to remember the last time I bought a CD. That’s slightly depressing. I remember queuing up to buy a variety of tapes and CDs in the past. I remember how excited I’d be while waiting for a new Pearl Jam album to come out – how pissed off I’d be that some fucker from Kerrang or Metal Hammer got to go to the studio to hear the album weeks ahead of real fans.
Of course, this was in a pre-digital age. Back then, you actually had to write off and send a cheque/bankdraft to join a fan club – which would entitle you to an occasional newsletter and a ‘signed’ Christmas card. With the advent of MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and others, bands and fans can engage with one another on an ongoing basis.
Joes and Janes go to their gigs in the hope that they will play some of their old hits rather than go with some masturbatory, self-indulgent freeform Jazz odyssey.
I’m a big admirer of bands who post regular blog posts, or better yet – videos, when they’re on the road or in studio. I think it’s brilliant to see fans and artists engage with one another – and that applies to artists across all disciplines. For a lot of fans, some level of recognition from their idols is big, big deal – and the chance to feel like you’re part of something bigger than yourself is surely the reason people become fans of something in the first place.
If anything, the collapse of the music industry is bringing bands, artists and their fans even closer together – by necessity as much as by design. Even the most aloof ‘artistes’ are being forced to prostrate themselves before the altar of fan’s money in order to keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed.
This is no bad thing. There are a few people in the music industry that could do with learning that their walk-in humidors didn’t materialize because of their ‘genius’. They’re there as a result of Joes and Janes buying their albums and going to their gigs in the hope that they will play some of their old hits rather than go with some masturbatory, self-indulgent freeform Jazz odyssey.
There are other artists that are positively embracing all the benefits that the digital age can bring. Funeral for a Friend might not be a name that everyone is immediately familiar with, but they are a band that have been using all sorts of technology to keep in touch with their fans for the last number of years. I recently got an email from them to say that they were planning to release an EP, and that fans (of which I’m one) had the chance to engage with the whole process in a really cool way.
The personal touch
Working with Pledge Music (www.pledgemusic.com), the guys from Funeral for a Friend offered a range of ways in which fans could engage with them and help them fund the EP. Want a personalized copy of the CD? £15. How about a Skype chat with the band? £45. Contribute backing vocals? £85. You can even get an acoustic gig at your house for £500 – well – not any more – that one sold pretty quickly.
In the space of just two days, Funeral for a Friend had received pledges that covered 120% of the recording cost for the EP, and fans are still snapping up pledges. For a full list of the remaining pledges, check out the Pledge website – you can help out tons of other bands while you’re there.
If you’re not a fan of Funeral for a Friend (and you really should listen to some of their stuff); but you are a fan of Public Enemy, you can go to Sellaband.com and get involved in the production of their new album. For $10,000, you get an executive producer credit on the album, you get a 3 year backstage pass, a signed copy of the CD, and you get to hang out in the studio with the band at some stage during the recording process. You also get a chance to share in the revenues generated by the album.
Who wouldn’t want to sit in on a rehearsal or hang out and drink a few beers with the band?
It’s a brilliant idea. What fan wouldn’t like their name on the liner notes of a band’s CD. Who wouldn’t want to sit in on a rehearsal or hang out and drink a few beers with the band after a gig (still available from Funeral for a Friend)? It’s a real way of engaging fans and giving them something other than a plain old physical CD. You’re not only getting money from fans – you’re positively encouraging them to go out and spread the word to their friends. After all, who wouldn’t boast about hanging out with their favourite bands; and who wouldn’t tell their friends to buy an album if they were getting even a tiny slice of the action.
As a business model for bands, it also has the potential to be incredibly lucrative. There are a ton of bands applying this model to the recording process, but it could just as easily work on tour – with fans perhaps paying a premium to get access to a soundcheck or getting backstage after the gig.
Maybe someone will even auction off some onstage time – micropayments for guaranteed stagedive slots or something slightly safer like onstage seating or a backing vocals slot on a song. There’s no denying that the music industry as was is totally fucked and dead. While that’s bad news if you work for a big label, it’s actually great news if you’re a fan, as it means that your favourite bands are going to have to engage with you a lot more to get you to part with your hard earned cash.
Eamonn Carey is a digital media consultant and co-founder of URBN, a digital publishing and smartphone company. You can follow Eamonn on twitter.com/eamonncarey. His Tech View column appears every Thursday on JOE.ie.
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