I’m currently working on a radio feature, book about real-life indie music promotion in the 2000s. As such, I’m asking some of my biggest influences in the music world what they feel about digital music in the year 2009. Today, in the first published (unedited) snippit, I talked with Glenn Morrow the owner of the legendary Bar-None Records about his thoughts.
Eventually, I will compile these remarks, interviews and features into a full work, consider this the prep/research section of my feature for now.
Many thanks to Glenn for the comments and all of the years of great records! For more info on Bar/None Records, visit www.bar-none.com
IR: I noticed on your web site that you no longer accept physical CDs for demo submission, what are your thoughts on online music promotion?
GM: We may change that policy back to the way it was. We just wanted to take a break from the piles of submissions.It seemed like the green way to go. Unfortunately we tend to pay less attention to myspace links etc. We’ve always wanted to have an open door policy and we have found many things from submissions that we have signed.
IR: I was working on the premise that online sites, such as myspace and
sonicbids, don’t you find that the emerging technology and ease of
recording muddies the water? Aren’t there now “too many cooks in the
kitchen” if every person w/ a drum machine and a computer can produce an “album”?
GM: If the songwriting is good I don’t care what the format is. Hot Lava is a band we signed that made their first album using a Garageband program. Good ideas can get you very far. That said there is certainly a difference in quality when an artist takes the time and money to use decent microphones and works with seasoned pros in a real studio environment.
IR: with so many bands and musicians out there, is it still possible for a
> band to succeed by sending out demos (be it e-mails or otherwise)?
GM: It is getting harder and harder to sift through all the noise out there.
5 million myspace bands, the long digital tail. I still think the better
stuff rises to the surface but with a few exceptions it will be selling
less.
IR: Are you finding more brilliance out there because of the Internet, or just more lazy bands?
GM: I think more kids are better trained musically these days and they have 50 plus years of rock n roll to sift through for inspiration as well as access to so much more music to listen to. I probably only owned an orange crate worth of albums as a teenager.
IR: How complete of a package are labels looking for these days? For example, I’ve just finished a new CD, but am waiting for the final mastering and pressing, should a band try and make the product as finished as possible before sending out demos? I just got a CD in the mail by a band hoping for airplay that was recorded on a computer, badly played and very amateur – are you able to see through all of that and hear a great song, or do those types of submissions get discarded?
GM: We are always happy to get a finished master that we like. It saves us time money and guess work and the gamble that we might not be able to achieve what we think the artist’s potential is.
IR: What does it take for a band to get “noticed” if they don’t live in a
> major metro area these days?
GM: The blog world loving you, a lawyer willing to shop you, major press hype and the ability to get in a van and get out of town.
IR: Have digital sales (iTunes etc) generated more profits for indie labels? What, do you think, are the benefits of shopping for labels versus just using myspace or CDbaby or iTunes, etc..?
GM: Labels are filters for consumers, journalists, deejays, bloggers etc.
If the label has a history there’s the cache of being associated with the
other artists on that labels. There usussually cash involved to pay for
stuff like publicists and there are the years of expertise on the proper way
to set up an album in the marketplace. There are also all the connections a label has to the rest of the industry (msuic supervisors, publicists,
journalists etc.) that you can’t just get with CD baby and itunes placement.
More to come,
Jared Morris
WGMD Radio 92.7 FM
Rehoboth Beach, DE
www.jared-morris.com
