The undiscovered Talent
 

It hit me this week how much amazing talent is undiscovered and how much garbage we listen to on the radio, after I heard the most amazing music I have ever heard in my life.
If you like Jack Johnson, you wouldve been floored by this guy. Although he'll probably never make it big, I consider myself unbelieveably lucky to have heard his music.

I'm sure you've all come across talent like I did, and just thought I'd throw that out there, as it really hit me that there must be so many more musicians like him that don't ever get publicly known.

Most of the music played on the radio is crap (exceptions of course). For every band you hear, there are tons more that will never get heard (on the radio). I'm a big fan of local acts, and try to see as many as I can, although it's been much harder lately. Most local bands do have tons of talent, but don't have the right connections, so they don't become main stream. And thank god for that, the more main stream an act becomes, the more crap that comes out of them.

Nature of the biz.

Most people don't realize exactly how much power the big labels have. When you sign their contract, you effectively become their property. They get to tell you what you release and when you release it. The release date of an album is entirely at the label's discretion.. they can release it right away or shelve it indefinitely. They can essentially hold it hostage by telling you that they don't like certain tracks and that they need to be replaced before the record will be released.

Oh yeah, and you don't get paid until the record comes out. It amounts to extortion. And who owns the copyright to the music when it does come out? Take a wild guess. Therefore, if you record or distribute the track in any way without your label's consent, you could theoretically be sued for copyright infringement involving music that you wrote and recorded yourself. Good Charlotte got shafted big that way - their first album was a fairly well received garage punk offering when they put it out there, sort of a Weezer meets Green Day affair. Their second album, released by Sony, was a rather forgettable pop punk offering. Although it's never been publically acknowledged by either side, there's a large portion of the fan base who believes that this was a result of direct influence from Sony, forcing the boys of GC to conform to the big genre of the day. And since Sony owns the rights to their current catalogue as well as the next five albums Good Charlotte produces, there's very little that the band can do about it unless Sony decides to drop them.

When it comes to signing, the whole thing is an even bigger mess. Because profits in the music industry are nosediving, the labels are tightening their belts. Basically what they're lookng for at the moment is one hit wonders, because that's where the money is. They sign the band, make their advances (say, $4 million all tolled), release an album and a couple of singles to $8 or $10 million gross profit. Then they ask the band for their $1-$2 million advance back, leaving the label with about $5 million profit and the band with next to nothing. The big names are unattractive, because they start to get the sway to start getting their own fair share of the profits - denying the label that money.

Your talent's probably better off where he is just now. Independent artists don't make a whole heck of a lot of money, but they don't do much worse than any but the top names on the big labels either (which, according to figures, makes up roughly 5% of a label's catalogue). While he doesn't make a whole lot doing things on his own, he also doesn't end up with huge debts to a big label that need to be paid back. If he's smart, he's not even sending in demos, realizing that the best possible scenario is that he'll get one big hit and then be released from his contract (when you're released, any outstanding debts or advances are wiped out).

The good news is, the whole thing is looking like it's going to change soon. Pressure is mounting; sales are down and the RAC is starting to make it's voice heard. The whole system as it stands now just doesn't work anymore.

As to whether what will replace will be better or worse, who knows? But something's going to give, sooner or later.

Martian pretty much nailed it. Artists do get an advance to live on until the album is released, although that money is also used to record the album and the label recoups that money before the artists get a dime from record sales. Bands can make money playing live shows in the interim. All in all, the music industry sucks right now. It's always been a dream of mine to start my own label and, while it might never amount to anything, that is actually what I am working on right now. At least I am having fun doing it and it will be done the right way. I believe in artist development, music over image, and treating the artists right.

There are so many musicians out there that don't get any exposure. In the time we live in with technology we can find so many bands that would have been impossible to find in the past. We're pretty lucky with how easy it is to make music available online. If you look for it, you can find almost anything. There are countless sites that you can just upload songs you create for free, in any instrumentation or amount of people or whatever. You could scream on an album for an hour and get it heard somewhere, which probably is another reason there is so much crap out there now. Technology is causing recording to become cheaper and cheaper which is a great thing, but I guess it could leave room for more crappy music that sounds kinda professional, but still sucks.

check out www.garageband.com - they have a ton of music of unsigned artists... and you can get on the artist's mailing list and find out when they are playing locally... there's some absolute crap there, but there's also a lot of really good stuff..

Another decent site you could check out is www.hxcmp3.com

They have a nice search feature that lets you search for bands that sound like (or at least say they sound like) certain bands. The search engine also lets you choose from the band's influences, names, genre, etc...

I honestly don't know how much variety they have in their selection, as I've looked for metal there almost exclusively, but I've found some mellower stuff there as well.

Some bands have lots of songs to download, some have none... you get the idea. It's just a matter of luck, I suppose.

No matter what, I'd be certain that almost everyone here could find at least one band there that they dig, and would have never have heard otherwise.

I either had or have some stuff up on garageband.com. It's a really cool site, if you review people's music after you upload a song, you're guaranteed that somebody is going to review your music for every so many songs that you review. Of course you can listen to and review any music you want on there, but if you want feedback right away it's awesome.