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WHY?
Traditional record deals can often be very bad for musicians and bands. Thanks to the drastic changes occurring in the music business today the road is clear for bands such as National Snack to find new ways of doing things.
Read the Steve Albini article The Problem With Music. Highly recommended!
OUR PLAN
National Snack will self-produce a broadcast quality album and then find a label that will help us release it on a licensing or profit share deal.
We know making music, the labels know selling music.
We make a product, the label sells it.
Producing an album can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds when made by a big label. A lot of this is excessive costs for pointless things like taxis and parties for executives etc etc blah blah. The falmbouyance of the music industry is paid for by musicians and it can often leave the artists owing the label. Even after good sales.
We don't need any parties yet and we certainly don't need taxis everywhere. We just want to make a record. We'll party when it sells!
We plan to make our album on a budget of £10,000
This may seem a lot of money to some of yout but when you start to add up the costs involved it's actually VERY tight. Click here for some examples of costs.
By producing the album ourselves we take away some of the risk for any prospective label while keeping control of the rights to the recordings ourselves. We dont risk getting 'shelved' in the same way as we could were we to sign a traditional deal as we only have to work with a label if we feel they are 100% behind the album.
It's that simple.
Sort of...
FURTHER READING
Below you will find a selection of links to articles and websites that cover various areas of the subject as a whole.
We really recommend that you read some of the articles. The information provided will give you a much wider and clearer picture of the dramatically and continually changing music industry than we can.
Having some background information will give you an idea of why we are doing what we are doing.
Wired.com with David Byrne - Champion of musicians rights and the diy/semi diy approach. If you only read one of these links then read this one, it's an excellent article that explains much of what we've failed to put into the right words ourselves!
Wired.com with David Byrne and Thom Yorke - Discussing the value of music
The Problem With Music - Steve Albini - Highly Recommended.
Howstuffworks.com - clear explanation of classic record deal and some alternatives
MCPS-PRS Alliance - Copyright information straight from the horses mouth.
Radio 1 One Music Guides - Really good resource and some good explanations about copyright, contracts and all legal issues involved with up and coming bands
Taxi.com - very good American musicians resource with many articles discussing current issues within the music industry.
Honey Records - Articles outlining the changing face of the music industry
2007 Digital Music Survey - Outlining trends in digital music sales for 2007
BBC News - Article on the changing music industry
The Guardian Article about the release of Radioheads 'In Rainbows'
MTV article - Discussing Madonna's new deal.
San Francisco Chronicle - The changing industry
Apple.com - Apple and the Ipod in their own words
Reuters - Discussing digital music
Rapture Media - How the internet is changing music
The Times Online - The day the music industry died
