Kings of A&R

Back to Square One - The Lack of Indicators.

Check out KOAR’s article we posted earlier this year regarding ‘indicators.’

As previously discussed, the 2004 to present music game has been mainly about numbers. Especially when dealing with unsigned artists and A&R, in many cases a band’s worth has been measured by their stats, ranging from MySpace friends to page views to an overhyped show and radio translating to record sales. However, as our society becomes more technologically ‘with it’ we find some of the top rated unsigned bands on MySpace are among the worst out there. Anybody can purchase a spamming program. We raised the question sarcastically before, but feel it is time for a serious answer. Today, the A&R is left with little to no indicators. The internet exploded and forget about radio. Without relying on indicators like statistics how is anyone supposed to know if a band is worthy? good? or great?

Anthony Rollo A&R at Universal tells KOAR:

 ”It used to be much easier to correlate airplay and retail reaction.  Less and less people are going into record stores, making it much more difficult to guage the marketplace. On the Rock side of things, the Rock radio stations just do not hold the same influence over the consumer that they once did.  Getting a read on an Urban or Pop record is easier than trying to guage the impact of a Modern or Active track. With more indie shops closing everyday, the research resources on the retail side are dwindling.  It’s tough to get a read on a local artist from a Best Buy or Wal-Mart.”

Relying on a bunch of kids to tell you what the public wants has proven fruitless. Buying into hype and fads has proven to not only be a waste of time, but has given labels a black mark with the record buying public. “Listening to the market and trying to see which ones raise their heads� is, again, burning up the precious little resources labels have anymore. Overall, let’s say that outsourcing your opinions is a bad thing.

Good ear: adjective. The natural ability to predict the potential success of a given song or artist. Ability to identify ‘hits.’

Once upon a time, A&R guys were the ones with the good ears. They could hear a band or a song and could predict the success of that act. Today, they fly out to see bands because they have high MySpace numbers. They weren’t buying into the hype, because they didn’t have to. They didn’t have to go to the streets and ask kids who to sign. They were hired specifically to know who should be signed and who shouldn’t. If that’s who labels are going to for advice, why not just cut out the middle man and hire a staff of teenagers? In reality, teenagers don’t know what’s going on other than their ’small universe.’ Rememer, Teenagers are in highschool learning about George Washington.

We’re aware that it’s slim pickins when it comes to brilliant unsigned music, but there is no reason why any A&R executive should say, “there are more and more records on our release schedule that don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.� Some of this failure can be attributed to poor marketing strategies, but most can be attributed to the band not deserving to be signed in the first place. Relying on indicators to tell you what is good will always fail you. You’ve got to have the ears.

The Broken Music Scene

Trends come and go. I know that may seem obvious, but it appears not everyone is getting the ‘and go’ part. With most genre originators moving on to greener pastures (or dissolving completely), labels seem to be clutching to the past as they search for their replacements. Pop punk and hardcore ran their course and those artists have moved on. So why does it look like labels are snatching up pop punk bands like its 1999?

Band X sells alot of records. Band Y sounds almost identical to Band X, therefore, Band Y should sell. Interesting logic, and actually that would probably be a decent plan if it weren’t for Bands A through W, who Band X ripped off. How many copies of the same record can people really be expected to own? Unfortunately for the labels, they’re left with little choice. Anyone who takes a gander at the endless supply of mediocre music on MySpace can tell you- that’s all there is. Band after band emulating their heroes rather than just appreciating them. You really can’t blame anyone but the bands. They own the records they’re copying, so of course they know what they are doing isn’t original. What baffles me is that these bands know they aren’t original. They know they are treading well-worn territory. They know that the artists they look up to so much have even changed their sound to try and escape the clone army and the supersaturation of the genre they helped create. These kids must know that they bring practically nothing to the table, and yet they still have the nerve to send out demos.

Of course, I understand wanting to chase the rockstar dream, but since when is it more gratifying to ‘make it’ as a completely unoriginal joke of a band instead of an innovator that carves out their own place in the history books? Perhaps we’ve made it look too easy. Perhaps the music industry being shrouded in secrecy was a good thing. Perhaps people should stop feeling bad for telling someone they suck and should get out of this business. Simon Cowell is onto something. Pull no punches and leave no delusions. Either they have it or they don’t and 99% of them don’t.

AJ, KOAR

New Found Pop Punk 2006 - Outdated.
Believe it or not we still get a handful of records created by 18 year olds who are still listening to New Found Glory and Blink 182. Guess what, New Found Glory went emo and Blink 182 broke up. THEY aren’t even into the music these kids are copying. Green Day is the premier punk band, the songs are far superior to those in that genre. It’s amazing that not one out of thousands of punk bands can pull it off like Green Day; It’s like Abraham going back to GOD claiming he couldn’t find one righteous person, hence destroy the City. Unless you can say with a straight face that you’re better than Green Day, don’t bother sending out kits.

Hardcore 2006 - Rebelling Against Nothing.
Even the scenester kids claim hardcore is dead. Don’t invest into hardcore, a dying genre that never even deserved attention. Have you attended a hardcore show recently? It looks more like ‘fight club’ than an ‘event’. Hardcore has become nothing more than a soundtrack for an ass beating. This is why the Ozzfest has been crumbling with poor ticket sales. These bands are dissolving left and right, or completely abandoning their ‘hardcore’ following, ala Avenged Sevenfold. We don’t need more bands in this genre churning out the same cookie monster vocals and lame guitar riffs. Do yourself a favor and sit on the side of the stage at Ozzfest and watch these ‘calculated cloned’ bands perform. These guys aren’t ‘rock stars’; they are dysfunctional kids getting high on crack. For goodness sakes, rebellion is all about originality. Today’s hardcore bands are sheep, certainly not goats with horns.

Folk, Indie, Starbucks and the Good Ol’ Acoustic Guitar.
You can thank Jewel and Sarah McLaughlin for inspiring every little girl to pick up a guitar and strum a couple of chords that put you to sleep. Don’t get me wrong, Jewel, Sarah, and Tori had their moments but their disciples failed. Myspace and the net are filled with acoustic coffee house females that still think the Lilith days are hip. Guess what, it’s not. People are beyond personal embellished dishonest diary notes accompanied with choruses that would people to sleep after drinking 2 shots of expresso. Again, think of something of original and help the industry. Don’t believe your own hype.

Put Down The Eyeliner.
What kind of a rock star whores himself for gap campaign and sticks up his thumb? This isn’t dangerous, this is Disney Land. Where do we start here? Rock is supposed to be dangerous, dark, and original. Nothing dangerous about today’s rock bands. In fact, the rap artists are bigger rock stars even though their gimmick is drying up. After listening to the unsigned and the more well known rock bands I realized that the inspiration level is dried up as the California desert.

The Suit, The Tie, The Stripes and the Monkey
Remember when America was helplessly attacked by the artificial demand from the Hives, the Vines, the Arctic Monkeys and the White Stripes? It’s over and you knew it was coming. When you hear something great, you know it, and these bands weren’t even ‘good’. The garage rock revival has come to an end.

Got Inspiration? Try

• AFI - Decemberunderground
• James Blunt - Back to Bedlam
• Blue October- Foiled
• Mute Math
• Cold Play - X & y, Parachutes
• Baumer- Come On, Feel It
• the new GNR single
   

To say music is struggling to reinvent itself is an understatement…

“I feel that it makes everyone look smaller, not bigger. Take for example, when you see some joe schmo artist who has a well known band in his
top 8. If you are a complete unknown and you have U2 in your top 8 it makes them look smaller.”

Throughout the entertainment industry it is getting harder and harder for acts to define their market. On paper, one would think that with so many available resources and new avenues to get heard, record companies should be able to really up the ante, however it is becoming apparent that much of the problem is indeed stemming from the “artists� themselves.

(You can find Phaze 9 promoting themselves daily drowning out comments on mainstream bands myspace pages including SOAD, Flyleaf and 10 Years.  Phaze 9 consist of a family including mother, father, and seven year old son. They purchased a Friendbot)

 

There is more than one issue to address, the first being that there simply seems to be a lack of quality acts in general, but why is that?  Maybe kids are too quick to pick up the Playstation controller over the axe. But beyond a lack of inspiration there is a major shift in this country that is happening right before our eyes: the insatiable lust for fame. Now, even my 40yr. old balding next door neighbor thinks he is going to be famous. The two biggest contributing factors of this in my opinion are Myspace.com and American Idol. American Idol has paved the way for thousands of fairly talentless people to take the mainstream airwaves. At best, the majority of these people are closet singers that ordinarily couldn’t draw their best friends out to come see them perform at a karaoke bar,
and now they really have a “voiceâ€? with this Myspace craze. Myspace.com is really interesting because it takes all the allure and mystique away from the artist. Back not too long ago you would only have a few outlets to get your “fixâ€? on the band in which you craved. You invested your time to see them perform, to see the video on MTV, or you went to the store to buy the magazine they were featured in…there was an investment. These days you can know what band ate what for breakfast this morning, what brand of toilet paper they use, and what their favorite TV show is- there is no mystery. Everything about our culture and where it is headed is the antithesis of Rock-n-Roll. What rock band back in the day would post a journal on their daily life…are you kidding me? (more…)

 

Radio is dead…yadda yadda. So let’s talk about the internet for a second, iTunes specifically. iTunes has become the new radio. And by ‘radio’ I don’t mean the place people turn to for new music, since radio hasn’t been that for over 10 years. By ‘radio’ I mean the place labels turn to for promoting new music and where they focus their money to give the illusion of popularity. It’s singles-focused like radio, and dominated by major labels like radio. Being #1 on iTunes is just as important and just as bull as being #1 on radio, although neither one in many cases translates into retail sales. You’d think a service where people are paying for the songs the jump to retail sales would be an obvious one, but that has yet to prove to be the case.

**send your demos and new music to KOAR. We want to hear your new music.

Quick: Name the biggest star in prime-time television.

Now: Name a star created by the Internet

I suggest you read “The Extinction of Mass Culture” by Senior Fortune writer Marc Gunther.

The advent of 300 channels and the Internet has fragmented audiences - and the explosion of choice has left us poorer.
According to Gunther TV’s biggest stars are Oprah Winfrey and Katie Couric, but they don’t appear in prime time and they’ve been around for years - before the 300-channel universe fragmented audiences and damaged broadcast TV’s hit-making machinery. The Internet is by nature a niche medium so it has not created any stars, and probably won’t.

All we have here is an infinite number of choices and a long trail of confusion. Can we expect less and less blockbusters? Absolutely

In 2000, Blue October signed to Universal Records and released the album Consent To Treatment. The single that was chosen did very little at radio, and the band was consequently dropped about a year later. In 2003, Blue October released independently their follow up record History For Sale with much success, picking up lots of regional rock support and national AC support when the single ‘Calling You’ was added to the American Wedding soundtrack. The band re-signed with Universal and re-released the independent record and more recently their latest endeavor ‘Foiled.’ Their new single ‘Hate Me’ has been charting in the top 5 for about 8 weeks and the record has been selling consistently beyond expectation. Obvious questions arise.

“We suspected Consent to Treatment wouldn’t do well when we made it,��? says guitarist CB Hudson. “Radio was completely overtaken by Limp Bizkit and rap rock, there really wasn’t a place for a band like ours. We didn’t have creative control on the record and made a lot of changes for the label and the whole thing just wasn’t right. Not the right timing.��? After being dropped from the label, the band continued to tour heavily in support of the release. They then turned to their manager’s label, Brando Records, for the release of their second album. “We were able to work with Dave Castell and we had full creative control of the record. We had grown a lot from being on the road and we were just better all around.��?

The success of the single ‘Calling You’ grabbed the attention of many labels, not just their former home. “We had a lot of label interest around that time and were doing a lot of showcases. Normally labels send out one or two people to check out the set and then take off, but Universal brought practically their entire staff. There were about a hundred people there and everyone was really excited! That really impressed us. Getting on a new label, you have to deal with all of the marketing issues of developing a story and finding out what the band is about. We had a previous relationship with Universal, so seeing their excitement let us know we could hit the ground running.��?

This renewed relationship with the label came with a few changes, primarily creative control. “We recorded some in LA, Dallas and Austin. We did it at our own pace and with our own people. The label brought some producers in and we worked with them a little, but out of all the songs we worked on with them, we kept maybe one of them. Justin [Furstenfeld] is a true artist and he already knows in his head where something should go. There is a vision for the songs and working with Dave Castell again we were able to capture what we really wanted. This record is exactly how it was envisioned.��?

The result of this creative freedom is the most critically acclaimed album of their careers, propelling the band to a level of success they began to question was possible. There is a lesson in here, but I am not sure if it’s for the major labels or the artists. Perhaps both. Blue October is called to their art and they have never wavered in their commitment to creating honest and compelling music. Being dropped and picked back up has had little effect on what they create and they kept on as if they’d never have another deal. Universal recognized their mistake in dropping the band prematurely and went way above and beyond to get them back and then gave them the freedom they needed. Not every band deserves a great label, and not every label deserves a great band, but when all are worthy and cooperative in their efforts, the outcome can be inspiring.

AJ, KOAR

The modern music industry is a business of numbers. Number of records sold, number of shows played, price of guarantees, number of radio spins, number of downloads, etc etc. All of these values are maintained with the hopes of calculating the odds of success with any given band. In this paradigm, the artists that rise to the top are either extremely talented musicians with a good sense of melody and hooks, or extremely talented business people with a good sense of marketing and promotion. Either way, the numbers must add up…to something.

Similar to beefing up a resume for a new job, a one-time gig pay out of $500 at a friend’s birthday party, a third pressing of a cd due to stolen boxes, being the 10th caller on a radio station, or an opening spot in a ‘sold out’ benefit gig can greatly increase a smaller band’s worth when spun right. This small scale fuzzy math only gets bigger and more complicated the higher up you go. A platinum selling artist doesn’t have to sell a million copies. A number one radio song in the country can sometimes be attributed to less than 20 stations. Somewhere, there is a cluster of intern computers with 10 thousand copies of a particular itunes exclusive. Surveys and tests that claim a random sampling are usually anything but, and results stay in line with whatever the conductor was out to prove in the first place. Ever notice how every radio station is #1? Everything from the collection of the data to the results can be manipulated and skewed in whichever direction you’d like.

Most people know this goes on and they turn a blind eye, if for no other reason than complete disinterest. The ‘bandwagon’ strategy seems to work better on music executives than most music listeners. I don’t care how many copies of ‘Glitter’ Mariah shipped to retail, or how much she paid for the chart position, I know sucks when I hear it. After factoring in spin, payola, human error and hype, numbers become virtually pointless. So the real question is, if numbers don’t really mean anything, how is anyone to know if a new band is good or not? Your guess is as good as mine.

In other news, Kings of A&R is ranked the #1 music site in the history of the internet according to our latest poll of staff members.

AJ, KOAR

By tonight, America will have a new Idol. But who will it be? For the first time since the shows inception, the outcome isn’t entirely obvious. Since the Top 12, it has been anyone’s game, with classically trained Katharine McPhee and Mr. Soul Patrol, Taylor Hicks surprisingly taking the top 2 spots. The two couldn’t be more opposite with McPhee having nearly robotically perfect performances but an emotional disconnect and Hicks convulsing across the stage shouting lyrics at a microphone, possessed by what he’s singing. Both present unique challenges in their future careers with Hicks embracing a classic blend of funk and soul mixed with a little country that is virtually unknown in modern music, and despite seeing McPhee week after week it is very unclear where her place would be in pop. She has a voice more appropriate for Broadway than Billboard, and aside from her striking physical appearance has not branded herself. Each of the remaining two have question marks hanging over their heads, as it is anyone’s guess if either contestant really has what it takes to be a pop culture phenomenon. With votes exceeding 50 million last week, and viewers in a recent poll stating they feel their vote on AI means more than a vote in an election, this is a good opportunity to find out which is more important to America, style or substance? However, the real proof is in the pudding and if bets are placed on record sales, it would be wise to keep an eye on past contestants Chris Daughtry and Elliot Yamin.

• Official predictions have Katharine McPhee as a +180 underdog
• Taylor Hicks singing “You Are So Beautiful”
• Katharine McPhee singing “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”

AJ, KOAR