Cool stuff...
Owen - "a community voting system: i.e. people post their mp3's or LA or whatever. then there is, on this "voting page" a chance for anyone to give $*^t a listen when they want. and you can click a like it button if you do. after getting to a certain "like it" level, it gets on the label."
I like the theory behind this, but it may present too many logistical problems to be able to run an effective label business. At one point we were discussing something similar, but run more like a one time event thing, such as a contest.
"also, there could be "feedback" mini forums for each entry, just in case anyone wants to offer suggestions on how to make the music/arrangement/mix/etc better."
This was also part of the "contest" idea. Each person who votes would have to give a review of each band. This also became a logistical question mark, as we could possibly have more entrants than time to review them.
"if we could get some ex-label people kicking around"
Hey, why not go for some currently-working-at-label kind of people? That might be a good leg up toward imprint deals, or letting an act "trade up" to a bigger label.
"we could kick the ass of a service like taxi in terms of feedback."
Ahem... no argument there.
"combination of 1 & 2, weighing votes by more established people more...etc."
We could toss this one around. The original idea was just to have the official RO label people voting. It would be good to include a rating system for all the members to weigh in on.
"we'd have to figgure out ways to work the money thing. that is a pain...but RO could seriously help fund this program w/o dicking the artist on royalties."
This also became a logistical problem. It's hard for a small label to turn a buck. When we went thru the whole thing on paper, there wasn't a lot of money left for either the label OR the artist. And growth of the label would be dependent on serious re-investment. If we re-invest, there's nothing for the artist. If we pay the artist, the label doesn't grow. If we don't grow, we can't pay the artist more. If we don't pay the artist more, nobody will want to be signed. Catch-22.
"furthermore [here's where it really rocks to have a big ass commited community]: when an internet label release gets enough downloads [or however the monetary thing works], RO could get it pressed to CD, distrubuited by something like mordom, caroline distro, etc."
In the grand scheme of things, pressing cd's isn't the biggest expense. It's marketing/advertising. It will be easier once we have upwards of 20k members. But even that is small scale from a marketing perspective. When we left off last time there were a couple ideas to use corporate $$$ to fund it, but hopefully we can find a way to do it that will still be on our own terms. Still up in the air on this one.
"and here's the kicker: RO has ALOT of members in different markets, and we could probably do a pretty good job doing grass roots promo; posters in local shops everywhere pre-cd-release, or for upcoming tours for RO acts. just the networking explosion we have going [people who know people wo do music] is killer."
This is similar to our cd-distribution idea. What would we offer to each member to do the promotion?
"majors do 2 things: steal yr money to record $*^t [oooo! advance!], while ^#$%ing the engineers/producers as much as possible, and 2. promoting the band so stuff moves off the shelves. they often don't do this, because it costs them to much. it would cost us less thanks to the wide network."
Majors actually do one thing... make money for their shareholders. When you think about it that way, nothing will surprise you anymore. And this again became a catch-22 for us. In order to stay in business, you have to make money. In order to make money, you have to engage in much of the same business as the majors. We didn't want to get sucked into the same vicious cycles the majors engage in. So much planning will be needed to be sure that doesn't happen. It's cool to be young and idealistic, until reality makes you old and bitter. hehe.
"also, to be written into the "signing deal" with bands/musicians RO adopts, we can have a fixed rate "buyout" of the deal if picked up by another label. that way, if we propel a band to super-stardom, it goes back to feed our evil empire."
Here's what would probably happen with the buyout thing... First, we would ask for a sum up front like a "finder's fee". This could be something between $20,000 and $100,000 depending on how much we had invested. If we put a lot of work into the band in the way of "artist development", we would be entitled to some kind of percentage of future material. If the label wanted to use material that we payed to have produced, whether it be physical masters or the writing of, we would be entitled to a piece of that as well. We would not be entitled to much percentage if we just found the band and sold them in the first year with the label writing all new songs.
"please keep this post going, cause this is a WAY cool idea."
I agree. This will be a very cool thing if we can eventually pull it off. I don't want to see us get f'ed halfway thru it tho. Long term planning is key.
"also, lets us do a lil more spec work with some hope of anyone hearing it."
Yes, do spec work... but the key to good spec work is knowing when to
pull the plug. It's hard not to get attached to a project, even if it has major flaws. In fact, sometimes the flaws endear us even more to the project. The more time, money, and energy we sink into it, the less we want to admit it's not working. We start to feel like it's our baby and we want to do whatever we can to make it work, even if the flaws will
never allow it to work. Meanwhile, there could be 2 or 3 other projects that would be easy to do and have much more potential for success, but we're so busy doing the dead end one we'll never have time to listen to them. Before we can get anyone else to hear it, it's important we train ourselves to put the producer hat on correctly and hear it ourselves.
This is one place a RO record label can have an advantage. We can get a large number of people to comment early on for each project, and hopefully have a better chance of putting realistic assessment before our personal attachment to each spec project.
I like the way you're thinking Owen! If we keep up the enthusiastic brainstorming I'm sure we can put something together that will turn the whole industry on its ear! (NPI)
Maybe it's time to schedule some IRC chats?
