Jazz Odyssey

Here’s a link to a terrific article in today’s Wall Street Journal about the band Harvey Danger and their attempt to make music on their own terms. Harvey Danger’s late 90s hit “Flagpole Sitta” put them on the map and drove their debut release gold, but the story after that is all too familiar–a critically acclaimed second album sold poorly, label support dried up and they were dropped, leading the breakup of the band.

Record labels have what Mr. Lin calls “a time-tested formula” for success: Band releases album, band hits the road to support album. The label makes money from CD sales, and is constantly under pressure to put its promotional muscle where it will pay off. If an album doesn’t take off quickly, the label may well stop promoting it — and may even drop the band. That may be a sound strategy for a label, but Mr. Lin says for bands, the formula “goes wrong more often that it goes right.”

After getting back together and evaluating their previous experiences, they put together a plan to record and release and album sans label, incorporating a strategy that addressed digital downloads, physical sales and merchandise tie-ins.

So how is it working? Read the WSJ article for some of the numbers, and for perspective have a look at the blog run by Harvey Danger guitarist Jeff Linn. It’s certainly not a business model for everyone (having a hit single under your belt certainly provides and advantage) and as the ever insightful Coolfer notes in his blog:

…the moral of the story is this: Giving away music — especially an entire album — gets a little buzz, gets the attention of Boing Boing and may get a few blog links here and there, but it’s still not the cornerstone of a good business plan. It helps people cherry pick those two or three good tracks, though, and it elicits a lot of “Free stuff! Free stuff!” cheers all across the Internet.

All that said, Harvey Danger is just one of thousands of bands who are taking the DIY approach of building a business plan outside the traditional record business. All of the elements from music/merch distribution to micropayments have matured in features and ease-of-use, making it even more possible for musicians to customize a plan that will work for them. And as Robert Fripp once said “The concern of the musician is music. The concern of the professional musician is business.”