Trent Reznor is an owned artist who is trying to convince everyone, himself included, that he is independent.

Sorry Trent, it’s not that simple.

Recently, Trent has been preaching to everyone who will listen about his wonderful new business model, telling musicians to give away their music for free. And, whilst some of what he says is true, an awful lot of it is junk.

In order to explain I’ll quote Reznor and reply to each of his points in turn.

Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters….

Ok Trent, I’m with you so far. Just so long as you definition of GIVE IT AWAY is the removal of cost and not the wholesale passing of rights.

Parter with a TopSpin or similar or build your own website, but what you NEED to do is this – give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Collect people’s email info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods. Base the price and amount available on what you think you can sell. Make the packages special – make them by hand, sign them, make them unique, make them something YOU would want to have as a fan…

Collect people’s email info in exchange for high quality DRM free MP3s. Fail. I thought you were giving away the music for free, not in return for an email address. It’s not 1998 anymore. People have woken up to email marketing. Asking people to trade their email address for a free tune will only send them running to try and find your music elsewhere. Or, worse still, running away to find someone elses music. Someone who doesn’t want their email address.

Making special packages by hand isn’t something that scales well. I currently sell plenty of albums. Some at a premium cost. I’m not going to limit my sales by having to hand craft everything. That completely negates one of the main benefits of digital distribution. Cost free duplication.

The point is this: music IS free whether you want to believe that or not. Every piece of music you can think of is available free right now a click away. This is a fact – it sucks as the musician BUT THAT’S THE WAY IT IS (for now). So… have the public get what they want FROM YOU instead of a torrent site and garner good will in the process (plus build your database)….

Wrong again.Music isn’t free. It takes time, and often real money to produce music. Don’t confuse free duplication with free production. Give it away for free, yes, but don’t be so disrespetful to the art that you think of it as free. In given your music away for free you are, presumably, hoping for some return in the form of attention. Don’t devalue any part of the equation or you won’t succeed.

Music is valuable. Attention is valuable. You will only succeed when you understand that and are happy to exchange one for the other.

Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace – it’s dying and reads as cheap / generic. Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO NAVIGATE AND EASY TO FIND AND HEAR MUSIC (but don’t autoplay). Constantly update your site with content – pictures, blogs, whatever. Give people a reason to return to your site all the time. Put up a bulletin board and start a community. Engage your fans (with caution!) Make cheap videos. Film yourself talking. Play shows. Make interesting things. Get a Twitter account. Be interesting. Be real. Submit your music to blogs that may be interested. NEVER CHASE TRENDS. Utilize the multitude of tools available to you for very little cost of any – Flickr / YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Twitter etc.

Myspace, seriously? If your music is on Myspace you’ve already failed. Myspace is a one way ticket to doom and obscurity. Get a blog and use it. Get a Twitter account and use it. Everything else will bleed your potential audience dry with ridiculous advertising.

If you don’t know anything about new media or how people communicate these days, none of this will work. The role of an independent musician these days requires a mastery of first hand use of these tools. If you don’t get it – find someone who does to do this for you. If you are waiting around for the phone to ring or that A & R guy to show up at your gig – good luck, you’re going to be waiting a while.

Agreed. Some common sense at last.

But if I think that Reznor has so many holes in his argument how come he is, apparently, making more money than ever?

Because he is owned.

Major label support made him famous and gave him the platform of publicity he now enjoys. The ideas that Reznor puts forward are as old as the hills in true independent circles. Real independent musicians have been using the free distribution model for years, many with great success.

Unfortunately Reznor is another Radiohead. Another example of the owned musicians turning and biting the hand that fed them in an attempt to jump off the sinking ship. They hope to persuade their fans that they hate the rampant greed that fed the major label machine, even though it also fed them.

It’s sad to see people getting taken in by this. If Reznor, or Radiohead, really wanted to be independent they would record new material under a new identity and promote it in a way that made it impossible to leverage their existing fame.

How far would they get without the mass coverage that their influential positions, positions that were given to them by the major record labels they now pretend to despise?

Only they can answer that. Want to be a real independent Trent? If your theories work, and most of them are sound, what’s stopping you?

The band had two vocalists. A male vocalist who was excellent, a seasoned professional entertainer, and a female vocalist who was, frankly, mediocre.

As is often the case with big bands, egos were everywhere, but things really started to spill out of control when the mediocre female vocalist, Michelle Humphries, decided that she wanted to be in a controlling position in the band. She wanted to have creative control over the set lists and even wanted to take away some of the male vocalist’s songs.

Clearly, she was insecure about her lack of talent and didn’t like the male vocalist always getting the limelight.

Furthermore, she started to attack the band’s soloists, myself included, asking that they play in a way that complimented and supported her rather than playing in a way that drew attention to themselves.

At this point I spoke out. I was fed up with her amateur attitude and pub singer mentality. Big band soloists need to express themselves. Jazz is about expression, improvisation and creativity. I wasn’t going to have anyone tell me how or what to play.

An argument ensued. Pointed emails where sent back and forth, and then, very suddenly, my freelance contract with the band was cancelled. I lost around twenty gigs with no compensation.

The matter still rests with my legal representative but I’m not particularly hopeful of recovering any money. The more time that passes the less chance I have of gaining any sort of legal traction.

When the ockbrookbigband.com domain name came up for renewal I let it expire.

But then, out of nowhere, all hell broke loose. A website designer, Adam Derbyshire, who had apparently been asked to secure the ockbookbigband.com domain and build two websites, one for the Ockbrook Big Band and one for a new band, the Michelle Humphries Big Band within that domain, posted the following message on the front page.

Hello. My name is Adam Derbyshire and I’m a web designer. In January 2007 I was asked by Michele Humphries, a member of the Ockbrook Big Band, to secure and host the domain name ockbrookbigband.com and to build and maintain two websites for her within that domain.  One for the Ockbrook Big Band and one for the Michele Humphries Big Band.

I was not paid for any work nor for the domain name.

After I secured the domain name a number of emails were sent by Michele Humphries to @ockbrookbigband.com email addresses containing what appear to be important and sensitive conversations.

The people mentioned in the emails are Andy, Glenn, Tim, Ashley, Dave, Kal, Derek, John, Peter and Colin. No surnames are given but I infer from the emails that these people are members of the Ockbrook Big Band.

Because I have not been paid and given the nature of the emails I have decided to make these emails public unless I am paid in full in the next 10 days.

If any designers are reading this then please feel free to blog about it and generally spread the word.

Hilarious. The people who had screwed me had also screwed their web designer. Clearly, since he has access to the domain name he also had access to any and all emails that were sent to the band members addresses. Depending on your point of view this was either blackmail, revenge or plain, old fashioned, karma.

The band chose to ignore his threats so they suffered the consiqueneces when he updated the site a few weeks later with the following email transcripts and descriptions.

The following emails were sent by Michele Humphries to members of the Ockbrook Big Band using @ockbrookbigband.com email addresses after I had secured the domain name on January 15th 2007.

Here’s the first one, from Michele Humphries to Glenn (glenn.trombone@btinternet.com), Derek (Derek.Law@telinco.co.uk) Dave (daversax@aol.com) and Peter (peter@ockbrookbigband.com). It was sent on January 16th 2007.

Dear Glenn, Derek, Dave and Peter,

I am sick and tired of all this. We have already discussed how this is the golden opportunity we’ve been waiting for to get rid of Ashley and now you expect me to take part in some sort of stupid meeting.

You promised me you’d get rid of him at the AGM but you didn’t go through with it.

How dare he call me a pub singer? Who the hell does he think he is? Its about time that this band realised that they are lucky to have me.

Tim Andy and John are all friendly with Ashley. Tim is close to him has argued with me before and John has never liked me. Andy and I don’t see eye to eye over volume and he knows how annoyed I get when his son smashes those drums so loud. He will definitely side with Ashley. Why didn’t you pick yourselves and make things so much easier?

I’ve made my position clear. I will leave the band unless you get rid of Ashley. Glenn told me that this was going to happen at the AGM but something didn’t go to plan.

The sooner we get this sorted out the sooner we can start cutting back the dead wood and reshaping the band. Everyone knows that Ashley won’t withdraw what he has said. We need to use this opportunity to get rid of him and strike while the iron is hot.

Michele

Here’s the second one, from Michele Humphries to Glenn (glenn.trombone@btinternet.com), Derek (Derek.Law@telinco.co.uk) Dave (daversax@aol.com) and Peter (peter@ockbrookbigband.com). It was sent on January 20th 2007.

No, I will not attend a meeting until Ashley withdraws his comments. Either you get rid of him or I’m walking out.

Michele

Here’s the third one, from Michele Humphries to Glenn (glenn.trombone@btinternet.com), Derek (Derek.Law@telinco.co.uk) Dave (daversax@aol.com) and Peter (peter@ockbrookbigband.com). It was sent on January 21th 2007.

I’ve spoken to Tim and spun him a story about how I think I’ve been bullied and really hurt by all of this and I’m pretty sure he fell for it and that I can now count on his support and his vote if things go that far. Thanks Glenn, the plan is working!

Michele

Here’s the fourth one, from Michele Humphries to officers@ockbrookbigband.com, addressed to Glenn, Derek, Dave and Peter. It was sent on January 25th 2007.

I told you this would happen. You should have had the balls to force him out at the AGM. If we are going to get rid of him on a vote then we need to make sure that we can control who is at the meeting and who votes for me.

If we prevent Ashley from going to the meeting thats one less vote for him. Can we get a date when Kal is away? Thats another vote less for Ashley. That would probably be enough.

All those idiots in the trumpet section will vote for Ashley, and so will Colin, Dave, John and Andy. Especially now that Tim has messed things up and made people start realising that this is all planned. I told you it was a mistake to put him in charge of the meetings.

I hope you know what you’re doing because it had better work this time.

Michele

Here’s the fifth one, from Michele Humphries to Glenn (glenn.trombone@btinternet.com), Derek (Derek.Law@telinco.co.uk) Dave (daversax@aol.com) and Peter (peter@ockbrookbigband.com). It was sent on January 29th 2007.

Hooray! Finally we’ve got rid of him. I think it would be best if we waited for a few months before launching the Michele Humphries big band. I know Colin won’t be happy about what we’ve got planned and neither will the others we’ve discussed. I’m going on holiday in March so lets wait until after I come back and things have settled down a bit.

Michele

Here’s the sixth one, from Michele Humphries to Glenn (glenn.trombone@btinternet.com), Derek (Derek.Law@telinco.co.uk) Dave (daversax@aol.com) and Peter (peter@ockbrookbigband.com). It was sent on Fenruary 3rd 2007.

Pete. You haven’t replied to my email about the new website. Is peter@ockbrookbigband.com still working?

Michele

At this point Michele Humphries probably figured out that any emails sent to peter@ockbrookbigband.com were not getting through (because they were coming to me since I had owned the domain name since January 14th 2007). Presumably Peter Cowley (peter@ockbrookbigband.com was his address) told her to stop sending anything more to @ockbrookbigband.com addresses because he knew they would end up in someone elses hands.

As you can probably imagine, I stood back and watched this mess unfold, quitely amused at how I had been vindicated by the bands stupidity and lack of security. First they screw me, then they employ a web designer, give him access to their band email accounts, reveal all of their plans and behind the scenes plotting, and then, in a final act of almost frightening naivety  they screw him.

Soon afterwards the website was removed. At the time I assumed that Adam Derbyshire and the Ockbrook Big Band had reached an agreement.

But today I received a Twitter friend request from @ockbrookbigband.com. Intrigued I followed back and read the one line bio. It would appear that no agreement was reached. Far from it. The band somehow managed to get the site pulled down leaving Adam Derbyshire with a legal battle on his hands.

The friend request was followed by a short message.

Ashley, thought this might interest you.

He was right.

And I’m more than happy to shine the spotlight in his direction.

Follow Adam Derbyshire on Twitter @ockbrookbigband.com.

Record labels are dead. Major labels, independent labels, all labels. As dead as dinosaurs.

Don’t worry, I haven’t lost my mind. Big Arena Records has morphed into a blog for independent musicians. A place where ideas can be shared and argued about with like minded individuals like you. If you are reading this then you should also have noticed the striking new look, resplendent in a shade that I shall call Triumph Spitfire Yellow. A name chosen for reasons which those closest to me will understand and anyone else can ponder over if they wish.

The podcast will continue but will, for the foreseeable future, function simply as a delivery conduit for any music that I want to draw attention to. All existing content, now grandly known as the Big Arena Records legacy content, is comfortably nestling in the archives where it can be accessed at any time should you want to take a look at what Big Arena Records was, rather than what it is.

I’ve outlined my reasons with a little more detail here. Take a look if you want some more background.

Hello. We are Enormous and this is our first, and the first, album release on Big Arena Records. It’s our debut album but it’s already attracting attention in all the right places. Full of unabashed love songs and thrashy pop gems, it perfectly demonstrates the band’s energetic brand of edgy, hook-laden guitar pop. Here are a few nice things people have said about it.

Like being locked in a lingerie store with Anna Friel and Catherine Deneuve

Melody Maker

Pure horn-rimmed pop with brass reinforced hook-lines that don’t let go. Enormous deliver upbeat, soppy, sing-along choruses one minute, then dark Costello-ish verses the next.

Sunday Times Music Supplement

Enormous are potential nouveau powerpop colossi

Mojo

From the punky swagger of Being Very Fair to the reflective melancholy of Things I Can’t Forget, Enormous singer/songwriter Davy Lawrence has seen to it that the tracks on Electric Baby Grand have all the ingredients of your typically English, 24-carat-gold stick-in-the-head pop stomper.

The Online Music Review

Summer love is in the air so grab your copy now! Just $9.99 for a spanking and shiny copy of your very own. Click here to download it now. No restrictions, no DRM, no copy protection or anything stupid like that, just an honest to goodness and very real slice of British independent music. Download includes full artwork and liner notes.

Track listing (click on the titles to play previews)

It’s All Coming True
Being Very Fair
Believe Her
Things I Can’t Forget
Never Coming Back
You Do Too Much
Finders Keepers
Sharon You’re A Shit
I Tried Everything
When You Get To Know Me
Everything Hangs On You

Enjoying the previews? Want to buy the full album, including artwork and support real independent musicians? Click here to download Electric Baby Grand for $9.99. All transactions handled smoothly and efficiently by PayPal and PayLoadz to ensure 100% security and instant delivery.

Click here to download the album and then run to the garage, turn the volume up, and get a dose of classic British spunk! We promise this will be the most fun you’ve ever had with $9.99!

And, as if that is not enough, the first 100 of you who help us out by buying this album will get a complimentary and very exclusive copy of a four track EP specially as a big thank you. We’d kiss you if we could but we haven’t figured out a way to do that over the internet yet. When we do, you’ll be the first to know!

Enjoy the podcast. It’s another hand crafted treat for your ears from Enormous front man Davy Lawrence. Click away, you’ll be glad you did.

What are you doing on Monday? Nothing special? Good. See you back here after the weekend for the official release of Electric Baby Grand, the debut release from your friendly neighborhood record label, Big Arena Records.

Anyway. Clicky clicky.

Go on, press it, you know you want to.

I’m a singer-songwriter and guitarist and I formed my first band twenty-something years ago. That band went on to sign a recording contract with an independent record company. Back then, in the context of the music industry at least, the word ‘independent’ had a slightly different meaning to the one it has now.

The label my band signed to, IRS Records – and others like them – were independent of the major record labels (although IRS were actually part of EMI at the time, as were many other ‘indie’ labels). The fact that many labels like IRS stood apart from the long-established music industry dinosaurs and had distributors that were not part of the major labels’ own networks made them independent in the eyes of the industry and provided them with a certain prestige in the eyes of the general record-buying public.

Being independent these days, however, is a much more all-encompassing prospect. Now, thanks in large part to the Internet and to the evolution of digital recording technology, artists, musicians and performers can release, distribute and market their recordings to the general public – globally, in fact – entirely independently of commercial record companies including both the majors and the indies.

With the development of DAW technology and its increasing capabilities and decreasing cost, the growth of home-based recording studios has meant that artists can now be fully self-sufficient, having no need to use any of the big, expensive recording facilities, and, as well as being able to market and promote themselves via social networking sites and via their own shop-front websites, this all adds up to a state of true independence for the artist or musician. The problem is, however, that they often do not know exactly what to do with all this freedom or how to best fully use it to their advantage. This is where Big Arena Records can help.

Big Arena was set up for musicians, artists and writers and is owned and run by musicians, artists and writers. We have musicians interests at heart because that is exactly what we are ourselves: musicians; but we also have the same structure and levels of experience and practical skills that a bona fide major record company has, with all the resources to hand – including promoters, video directors, a global distribution network, a state-of-the-art studio and a team of web designers and developers – that one would expect to find in such an organization.

We value what you create. We are here to guide you, to help you fashion your output and to distribute and sell it accordingly, putting the profits directly into your hands, not into those of some faceless executive or accountant from Warners or iTunes.

Music: it shouldn’t be free, it should be independent.

Well, almost.  Push play, you’ll see what we mean.

Apple reliably informs us that the podcast will available from them in the next couple of days.  In the meantime just manually plug in the feed to the podcast client of your choice.

Odeo users click here to visit our Odeo Channel (odeo/4147e0c00f601c18)

By the way, just ignore that last bit of code, it’s there to tell Odeo that everything is set up, it won’t appear on future posts.

Something like this would be idea,

Big Arena Records is a new independent record label set up by three musicians. Visit them, read their blog, enjoy their podcast and listen to their music.

When you’ve linked add a comment below so we can keep track of all participating links. At the end of May a winner will be drawn out of a hat and brand new iPhone.

Happy linking and good luck.

Fancy a shiny new iPhone to listen to our podcast on, totally free, courtesy of everyone here at Big Arena Records?  Check the blog tomorrow and, if you’re lucky, we’ll send you one.

In yet another desperate attempt to wrench every last drop of revenue away from the artist and into the hands of the faceless and talentless executives, Sony BMG have infected their back catalogue with advertising.  It is now possible to listen to any Sony BMG track for free as long you are happy to have your ears bludgeoned by a clumsy 10 second advertisement before the track begins.

You can still download the track without the advertisement but, of course, you have to pay for that.  

Whichever method the listener chooses the money still continues to flow into the sweaty palms of Sony BMG and not the artist.

The pricing structure deliberately encourages the ad supported download route.  If you download a full album of ad free music you will pay more than if you had simply ordered the physical CD, along with all the benefits of higher sound quality and usability, from a discount online retailer. 

Many naieve commentators such as the music industry lap dogs at BBC Radio 1 have applauded the move, saying that it will be a blow for piracy and will allow people to download free music in a legal and legitimate way.  

What these commentators, and the record label executives, continually fail to accept is the basic rule of music piracy.  Anyone who wants to pirate music will pirate music and anyone who wants to pay will pay.

Music piracy is on the increase for the simple reason that people do not like paying record companies for music knowing full well that little or no money ends up in the artists pocket.  When artists engage directly with the public the real music lover is happy to pay the artist for their work.  Recorded, live, written, it doesn’t matter.  It is the nature of the direct connection that counts.  

Non music lovers, and those people devoid of any musical taste, will no doubt be happy to play into the hands of the dinosaurs and fill their mp3 receptacles with adverts, idiotically claiming to be doing their bit for the great fight against illegal downloading.  However, even the most ignorant We7 user will soon get frustrated with the imposed download limits, not to mention the fact that their device now has room for less music thanks to all the adverts.

As always, the artist is left out in the cold.  Will the artist have any control over the advertising?  No.  Any artist that is unfortunate enough to be owned by the Sony BMG circus can now have their music, and any creativity, totally undermined by a babbling marketer, peddling anything and everything.

We7 tries to make independent artists submit their material so that they too can have their work branded and defaced by the ad men.  Of course, behind the scenes there is a strict vetting system in place, keeping out anything that isn’t in line with the corporate ideal.  The only artists to get through will be those who We7, and Sony BMG because they are almost certainly in the driving seat now, consider acceptable.

Now that the proverbial has hit the mainstream news fan it will probably take around a week before someone releases some free software that automatically strips the 10 second ad from a We7 download and allows it to be listened to as origianlly intended.  We7 already mention this possibility, discounting it by claiming that anyone wanting to do this might as well just grab a free copy via bit torrent.

This won’t put any money in the artists pocket directly but at least the potential fan can enjoy the listening experience and then make a decision to seek out the artist directly if they wish.  

The sooner the better.  Ask yourself the question.  You listen to two versions of the same recording.  One has a marketer selling to you for 10 seconds and the other one doesn’t.  Which one is more likely to turn you into a fan?

Real independent artists, those who make direct connections with their audience have nothing to fear from this nonsense.  The solution for them is simple.  Submit a preview album to We7 and only make your full albums available for sale direct from your own website.  That way you get your music heard by the We7 crowd, as long as it passes the corporate inspection, and still retain

Real music fans, the ones who are happy to reward real artists, will always find their way to the original, unedited and unencumbered, source.

Expect a more detailed introduction and explanation to unfold over the coming weeks as the launch date gets closer.  Until then, please enjoy the story as it unfolds and subscribe to our RSS feed.