Does playing the Internet end the A&R game?
In those lazy, hazily recalled pre-Internet days, the best way to get noticed as a musician was to gig. And gig. And gig. Playing a lot of live venues, especially in London, could create a 'buzz' and attract the interest of fans, A&R men and, hopefully, record companies. With the advent of the (mis)information superhighway, many pundits have been predicting the end of the record industry as we know it, the extremely cynical ones amongst them also adding "good riddance" while holding up two fingers in a significant gesture. "With the Internet," they say, "you don't need those dinosaurs — just put your music out there and watch the money roll in."
About The AuthorSauna-loving Abba fan Stephen Bennett is a writer, musician, film-maker and SOS contributor who recently left sunny Norwich to live in Sweden and drive a Volvo!
Radiohead have been extremely successful and generated a load of cash with their pay-what-you-want, downloadable In Rainbows album. My own record company has a growing roster of music by artists that most major labels would turn down without a second thought, but who can still sell significant numbers of records. What these two examples have in common is that the artists involved have an established audience, small though it may be in some cases, who await each release with bated breath.
I speak to many a musician who, after investing time, money and effort in producing their beautifully recorded magnum opus of Belgian death-metal-thrash-folk, stick it on the Internet, and are extremely disappointed when no-one buys their product. But why should anyone listen to their music if they have no idea that the band even exist, never mind what they sound like?
The Internet is full of music — music you may like, music you may not like, and Phil Collins. But how do you sort the wheat from the chaff? Record companies and A&R people, for all their faults, have been important filters in the history of popular music. While it's true that if a surgeon had the same success rate as an A&R person most of their patients would be dead, the 'old' system has brought much great music to the ears of the public. However, if this music were to be released on-line today, it would probably fall victim to the poor signal-to-noise ratio of the Internet. Nearly all of my large-ish record collection was brought to me via the record company/A&R system. It's an extremely flawed method, but somehow it works.
The jury is still out on whether any unknown acts have actually become successful just from gigging on the net, or promoting themselves on MySpace and other such sites — and cynics smell the dollar of the record company hidden behind the most famous examples of these so-called success stories. I've read of people being snapped up from MySpace by A&R people who are too lazy to get out to a real venue, but this isn't really any different from the old system — the artists still needed the 'establishment' to become really successful.
You could argue that record companies are needed even more these days, as almost anyone can knock together a pretty decent-sounding track on their Nintendo or iPhone. In the past you had to be really serious about your music, partly because getting a respectable recording cost so much. I'm not assuming that a GameBoy demo is necessarily any worse than one obtained by spending £1000 per hour in a studio, or that just being 'serious' is enough, but the sheer cost of producing good recordings in the past may have had some effect on quality control.
So how does one go about becoming the next big thing in this Internet age? Well, I have a really good idea. How about playing a gig or two? Get some musicians or laptop-ers together and get out to the local. There's never been a better time to gig, especially now that we have a smoking ban. Play some gigs and you may find that someone with some clout notices you and spends a little cash on your promotion. You may even pick up an audience along the way. As far as I can tell, it's either that or Pop Idol.