Unsigned banned
By Andrew Dubber,
Why sign on the dotted line when you can find a cheaper middleman online?
[Music]
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s been a bit of change in the music industry over the past decade. What with the Internet and everything, there might be one or two concepts that have outlived their usefulness. Consider the term ‘unsigned’.
The word has long had connotations of inferiority. ‘Unsigned’ meant not good enough to be signed. Not professional. Of a substandard quality. Being a signed band meant you had reached a level that made your music suitable for general consumption. You had, in effect, ‘made it’.
As a result, the record contract (that thing that you sign—hence the term) became the holy grail for budding musicians and bands everywhere. Because the labels held such power over access to manufacturing, promotion, distribution and the horrendously expensive world of recording facilities, getting a record deal ‘no matter what’ was really the only strategy available.
And so record deals became obscenely unjust. There are common practices in the music business that would be considered both reprehensible and downright illegal in almost any other context. My favourite example is the notion that record labels own the rights to the recording on the grounds that they paid for the recording sessions— and yet the money that pays for those sessions is actually recouped from the artist’s royalties as a repaid loan. In other words, the artist borrows money from the label to buy something for the label to own.
Still artists happily sign up because, after all, who wants to be an ‘unsigned band’? For many bands, just the contract’s enough. A nice advance, a chance to get the work into some physical form and available in the shops. A culmination of a life’s work so far. But for the vast majority, the reality of the record deal is somewhat less glamorous. The advance is a debt. The record is unsupported. The income is unsustainable. A hit makes a fortune but a near miss is a disaster.
Nowadays, of course, the economics of the music business are quite different. A quick read up on the Long Tail phenomenon (see page 99) reveals a whole new set of parameters for independent music. The hold over manufacturing, promotion and distribution is nowhere near as complete as five years ago. And the cost of recording? Much more affordable.
Of course, this is true across a range of disciplines. The Internet allows artists and producers to reach wide audiences—or at least larger niche audiences. YouTube and Google Video have changed the playing field for video makers that would previously have been considered amateurs. Lulu and Blurb have made publishing and wide distribution accessible and potentially lucrative to writers and photographers everywhere. Sites such as Ebay and Trade Me have opened up national and international markets to the local artisan, and PayPal provides the necessary ease of transaction.
For musicians, sites like CD Baby help with distribution. TuneCore will get you up and running on the iTunes store. EasyBe can set you up a simple download shop on your own website. Smart use of social networking sites such as MySpace will connect you with people who can be grown from friend to fan.
Tools like these, and many more besides, give an unprecedented degree of independence to musicians and music enterprise. So I suggest we ban the term ‘unsigned’ altogether and replace it with ‘independent’. That has a much better ring to it—and it’s far closer to the truth.
Unsigned bands scrabble for crumbs at the bottom of the heap. Independent artists are masters of their own destiny. Unsigned acts struggle to be heard. Independent artists (like, say, Nizlopi) have to make do with a Christmas number one single and the profits of their independently released album. For most, the successes are more modest—but they do add up to a self-determined career, rather than a long-shot gamble.
So: ban ‘unsigned’. And while we’re at it, let’s start using ‘indentured’ to describe those other bands with the major label deals.
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