Mike McCready

With all of the market changes affecting the entertainment industries it’s hard for anyone to know what to say to an aspiring artist about how to make it these days. It used to be pretty clear for a musician / band. The best shot was to get a major label deal and then hope the label would promote you effectively and you’d become an international household name. But now it’s not so clear that’s an artist’s best option.

One path to success for a band was to create a success story in a local market such as Philadelphia, Chicago, New York etc. If a band was tearing it up in Seattle a major label could take notice and say to themselves, “If those guys can do that by themselves in Seattle we can put some money and know-how behind their promotion and create the same success nationwide”. At least that was a better bet for the label than just signing someone off the street based on a good demo recording – which very rarely happened before or happens now.

Creating success in a local market is still a good way to get a major label to take notice but now the question of whether or not to sign with a major label is actually up for discussion. If an unknown act is offered a major label deal I would still advise they take it if the deal terms are at all bearable. It’s still the best shot a band has at real financial success but slowly, what I call Show Friends is starting to matter.

In the past, an act would try to get a local following and would play as many local gigs as the venues would allow. As long as they could draw a crowd it was good business. In a sense the band would turn their friends into a business for the venue (and maybe a bit for themselves) and that was the path. However, with the emergence of MySpace and now some really good social networking sites dedicated only to music (see www.musicfreedom.com, www.broadjam.com, www.projectopus.com, www.music.com, www.musicgorilla.com) the game is changing – and fast.

I know first hand that major music label A&R executives spend a LOT of time on these sites trolling for talent. Again, they are looking for acts that have done very well at Show Friends so they can be a part of making it Show Business. The problem for major labels in this game however is that they are now not the only ones who see the opportunities and who have the resources to make the jump to Show Business from Show Friends – and now MySpace and others, by offering artists the ability to sell their tracks online are actually turning Show Friends itself into Show Business just by writing some new programming code into their sites.

At Platinum Blue as we watch this unfold and as we actually take part in it by empowering forward thinking professionals at both the labels and the social networking portals two recent conversations I’ve had come to mind that illustrates the challenges both sides of the equation are facing. Regarding Show Friends, a top executive at one of the portals said to me, “The problem we have is that artists and bands on our site post their music and collect as many social networking friends as they can by going to other artists’ pages, putting those artists on their friends list and posting a comment that says ‘I love your music. Now come listen to mine’. Neither artist can help the other in any real sense except by listing each as “friends” and giving each other feedback on their music. There’s not much business in that.”

A few days later I was sitting in the office of a top executive at a major label and he said to me, “This is a sinking ship. I’m on the deck and if I have to I can climb the mast but in the end there’s only so much I can do to keep us afloat and one of these days it will be time to jump off”.

Unfortunately, until things shake out a little bit more the best path to success for an artist is getting unclear. For many of us working out here on the front lines it’s also unclear which jobs hold the brightest future but one word screams; OPPORTUNITY.

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