NAPOLEON WASHINGTON: one (hopefully) original project... please comment

[DaVinci]

I dig the music. It is definitely a breath of fresh air.

If you don't mind: I am quite intrigued by the website. It's very well done, and it addresses some issues I've been thinking about for some time.

I am a self-produced musician who is probably 6 months away from releasing my own material, and am just now in the process of domain registration, talking to some friends who do video, website design, etc.

I have been thinking for some time now about issues that are probably on many independent musicians' minds... namely the desire to make a living, and yet the need to get as much exposure as possible. I have come to the conclusion that I want at least for now to do everything possible to get my music into as many hands as possible, and to do the best I can reasonably expect to recoup some costs and make some money along the way.

What I had decided to do is something I hadn't actually seen put into practice until seeing your website. The free download/donation thing seems to be a rather enlightened practice in the current climate.

If you don't mind... I would love to hear anything you'd care to share about your experience in terms of electronic distribution, etc. I don't mean to pry into personal matters, but if there's something you can share in terms of general lessons learned relating to numbers of downloads, average donations, etc... anything that you feel good about sharing would certainly be of interest to me, and (I suspect) any of the numerous others on GS who are self producing and promoting. Anything related would be good as well... lessons learned about promotion by any other means.

I don't know what other sorts of activities you engage in (playing out, etc) that might feed into the marketing, but I would assume you've picked up some wisdom along the way, and would love to hear about your experiences.

I am, btw... quite impressed by both the music, and the presentation.

Thank you for your time.

[Halloween]

Not that you don't already know. But the Virtual album is awesome.

[Washington]

Originally Posted by CallMeAl

If you don't mind... I would love to hear anything you'd care to share about your experience in terms of electronic distribution, etc. I don't mean to pry into personal matters, but if there's something you can share in terms of general lessons learned relating to numbers of downloads, average donations, etc... anything that you feel good about sharing would certainly be of interest to me, and (I suspect) any of the numerous others on GS who are self producing and promoting. Anything related would be good as well... lessons learned about promotion by any other means.

I don't know what other sorts of activities you engage in (playing out, etc) that might feed into the marketing, but I would assume you've picked up some wisdom along the way, and would love to hear about your experiences.

Thanx for your interest and appreciation.

I'll try my best to answer, however I don't really know how to start... a general report would take many, many pages. Specific questions would be a little easier, so if this happens to bring up any, don't hesitate to keep the discussion going.

Before I get to it, let me mention an important update that you may have missed : since the project was released (and George Necola was kind enough to make it a "special of the month" sticky right here), I got signed. I was contacted by a french label named Dixiefrog (the european label for Popa Chubby) and could secure a very good deal with them, most notably including that I wouldn't give up on anything already set, keep the website up and the electronic pay-what-you-consider-right parallel distribution, and wouldn't tour if I don't want to. The album has been physically released and distributed in Europe as of April, 2011.

There is a thread with the press release and more details, including some about gear itself (hey, this is GS) here. Here's a few cuts from there that may already cover some of your questions :

Originally Posted by Washington

[answering "What are your thoughts now on 'pay-what-you-want'?"]

First, my thoughts are just that : one single opinion. Disclaimer done. Now, I did not do it being firmly convinced of anything, I did it for the experience. Before going that route, I read a wild bunch of economic papers, among which this one is probably the funniest, along with Reznor's comments, industry reports, Albini's rants and many others.

In restrospect, the first thing I'd reckon is that there is nothing special to await from this method in terms of distribution. If you intend to sell your albums or get an audience - two very different things - , it works. Period. But probably not any better than anything else, however differently (see this thread for an interesting comparison). The info you can gather as per general figures, for instance that roughly 10 to 15% of downloads end up in a donation, seem correct. Also, bear in mind that you probably won't achieve even that result if you simply record an album and upload it "as is", counting on Facebook and other such idiocies to generate a buzz. That is very naive. I see only two ways to generate a little interest : either you already have a wide audience and faithfull fanbase, like NIN or Radiohead did, or you find a way to give ypour stuff a measurable "added value" that makes sense for it to be on the web. That's what I did with the "living booklet" thing, and it proved worthy (but an unbelievable amount of work) : from what I know, most of the donations were made in acknowledgment of the amount of the effort.

The thing is, I consider the system to serve an entirely different purpose. The fact that listeners may pay anything they want and download the album is merely peripherical to the proposition, however it is financially crucial for me. I wanted come up with a project that had a chance to serve as a trigger for something else to happen. Now the interesting thing is that I did not no what exactly to expect. How could I have ? I turned out to be that I got contacted by a label to license and release the album, after some media were really enthusiastic about it. Great. But had I submitted it to them beforehand, it would probably have been turned down (even if they'd probably claim otherwise now). Let's rather say then that it'd at laest have gone unnoticed. Besides, they made it very clear that they did not care about the web thing but were solely seduced by the music itself. Dunno how true it is, but at least it's worth noting.

Originally Posted by Washington

[Answering "Do you think labels will be reluctant to sign you if you give away your music for free (before they sign you)"]

Generally speaking : yes, I believe distributing your own music for free would compete with a label's plan and would hardly be regarded as a plus. Most labels intend to digitally distribute the music they sign, thus it would obviously amount to shoot yourself in the foot. It is only common sense that a seller wouldn't be too fond of seeing you having already spread around for free what they're supposed to find a market for.

Nevertheless, there are exceptions. The first and sorriest one being that up to 25% of sales nowadays are reportedly made to the artist himself (i.e. for gig sales) by the industry... Therefore do bands suddenly become less interested in giving stuff away. Next, if free downloads are by definition nefast to the CD sales, their consequence - if managed well - can be of great interest for both parties. But for that to happen, a lot of careful thinking is necessary : just putting your album online won't do. You'll need to find a way for the web to make your music more desirable, your product a bit more interesting, and its digital version not to compete with a "hard" release. It means for the label to invest bigger-than-average money to make for a very appealing product, which is certainly harder for the artist to motivate. Still, by not competing with the label but cooperating with them, you may end up with a few cards in your sleeve.

To sum it up, here's my modest guess : if you care the least to get signed, definitely forget about uploading your music, giving it away and then prospecting for a label. I'd reckon it would make things far more complicated. In my case, I simply did not imagine I'd ever get signed, thus didn't give a flying f*ck. But still, I tried to use the web not just to distribute my stuff but rather to stir interest, in the hope of triggering something, and that ended up in a label contacting me - but I hadn't planned that specifically. I never would have been allowed to keep my web platform if I had sent demos around... I probably wouldn't even have been listened to. Being called for instead of the other way around means much more weight on your side to negotiate your deal.

As for the legal side, note that it is not legal to share copies of your CDs, wherever you got them from and whatever the price you paid them. On a side note and noticeably not directed at anyone in this thread, one should not assume that pay-what-you-want digital download is free just because there isn't a digital cop to control what you do. This is not splitting hair : for me, the intention was only to make it possible for people not to pay, no questions asked, if they figure they have a good reason for it. I know we don't all have the same income, for one. I imagine my music addresses the adult side of people anyway, and therefore do I trust their judgment.


[Answering "How much roughly do it cost to set up and maintain a cool modern flash website like that?"]

Domain registration and hosting costs the same for everyone, and it's fairly cheap whatever the content (unless you need a huge streaming bandwidth, which is terribly expensive but wasn't necessary in my case).

I can't quote figures on the rest, but it doesn't come cheap. Programmation took a full-time top-notch engineer six weeks, with long days, and professional work in that field is much more expensive than one imagines. The design (particularly the films) must have represented another full-time job for at least 13 weeks, at that's counting gently. You may figure out the cost for all that in the real-world economy for yourself. Perhaps there is something interesting there : I could do it because I didn't need to pay for my part. A major label who'd want the same thing would have to pour big money. I suppose that's why you don't see that very often if at all - you see, I wouldn't imagine I have invented anything : I could simply afford something tremendously expensive because I paid in sweat, which is the only thing I'm rich of. It is very probable that an idea like my little "living booklet" has already been voiced more than once, and perhaps brought to completion.

And now for a bit of background...
I've been playing music (or rather, hoping to) since I was 11. For sheer stubbornness and because I later chose to study graphic design, I did not enroll in any proper musical or instrumental tuition. I went up a very common path though, teaching myself what i could and faking the rest, until I could make an economically miserable but otherwise quite enjoyable living through gigging and touring in various formations. Still, I never scored more than an average 100 to 120 gigs a year, and always had to rely on other jobs to make ends meet. After about 10 mediocre years of this, I came up with this Napoleon Washington project and independently released two albums (2002 and 2006) for which I could secure a proper, serious yet modest distribution. A that time, I was touring solo, and even though the gigs were much better in terms of income and venues, they were harder to book, further apart and less frequen. All in all, it suited me quite well, because I was getting very fed up with sitting in a car or a bus watching boring highways go by and killing time in shitty hotels while all I was dreaming of was actually craffting music. See the difference ? I had enough of executing songs. I cared less and less for the showroom, the shop, the window. I craved for the bench. The workshop.

That's possibly a very important difference with what you describe as your personal intentions.

I don't try to make a proper living with this project alone. It is just one part of larger ensemble, that includes for example occasionally gigging with other formations, working in video compositing, or at the present time producing an album for a very interesting french singer that occupies me more than full-time. Why don't I try to make my personal project a bigger achievement then ? Well, being signed is quite nice already. And don't really have an ego that craves for much more recognition. And more than all this, precisely because it is a very personal project. There is things I am not willing to do with that. For example, I should be on Facebook and I should Twit around, I should permanently bust the balls of my potential fanbase, and all that. So should you, if you want to "make it", for whatever that means. But well, I don't, not that way. I find Facebook to be unbelievably moronic and boring, and I'm perfectly at ease with missing celebrity for the sake of not wasting a minute of my life there. That's just me. I refuse to consider making music like enrolling in the Marines : long as I don't blame anyone else for what happens, I'll just do as I please. Custom style.

It doesn't mean I have an opinion on what others do, nor that I think there's any "right" or "wrong" method. Not a bit. Examples abound of musicians making a nice living by tightly remaining in contact with their fanbase via FB, Twitter or blogs. Or at least, that's what CDBaby and the likes trumpet extensively, go guess why. Doing none of this, I proudly collected $100 from CDBaby in five or six months.

In the other hand, there's a lot one has to do besides blogging and twitting. Press weeks organized by the label where they park you in a hotel and have journalists coming from 10am till late, business lunches to discuss your edition contract (quite different from a license contract) or taking the time to answer questions from felow GS are things I enjoy doing. Fortunately.

So to sum it up : If you have an idea, a drive, a project, go for it. Do exactly what you're doing here : read, read, read some more and ask questions. Search, document, study. But then, make your own mind and don't sweat over finding a reliable template as per what's the perfect solution. There's none. Set up for what suits you, be brave, don't look back but more than anything, don't take yourself too seriously.

Hope this helps. Once again, I'll be right here if you have more specific question not answered yet. Good luck !

[DaVinci]

Very interesting and informative.

Thank you.

In my own case, the content of the music is a bit more mainstream at least in terms of current pop trends. Since the goal really is major label backing, I have wrestled back and forth with the paradoxes of exposure vs. revenue as it relates to giving music away, and how that affects future relationships. Thank you very much for your perspective on the subject.

I think, however, that our goals are perhaps not so different. If I never see a dime from what happens from THESE songs on THIS album, then so be it... I am looking more to form alliances that will serve me throughout my career and lifetime. I fully expect that if I end up as an artist on a major label's roster, it will be with NEW material that they can control.

It's not the fame that I crave either. I'm too old for that. It's control over my destiny. If this album opens the door for me that creates the label relationship that has me make a decent living writing and producing for other artists to take the spotlight, I'd be perfectly happy. My focus is strong, but it is not narrow. I will be interested to hear your production project when completed.

Anyway, you've certainly shed some light on subjects that are likely on many self-motivated artists' minds these days.

Congratulations on the particulars of your label deal as it really does sound like the right fit for you.

One other question I can't help but wonder, if you don't mind... is if you've noticed any one thing you've tried that has been particularly helpful in terms of generating traffic to your website... or interest in the music in general. Obviously, the GS feature would be one such example, but is there any one in particular (prior to label involvement) that stands out has having been particularly effective?

[M.T.Pilot]

I'm not a fan of this kind of music, but I certainly appreciate the presentation and the production quality thumbsup

[Washington]

Originally Posted by CallMeAl

One other question I can't help but wonder, if you don't mind... is if you've noticed any one thing you've tried that has been particularly helpful in terms of generating traffic to your website... or interest in the music in general. Obviously, the GS feature would be one such example, but is there any one in particular (prior to label involvement) that stands out has having been particularly effective?

Well, yes. There are things that do increase or generate traffic. But first, not many; and then, that's not really good news.

Let me start with this : if there is one thing I learned over my (modest) time, it has to be that only the rich gets a loan. That applies to just everything, but it is quite obvious in the field of music business. The more needy you'll appear, the less you'll raise any interest. Now of course, a certain kind of immature bragging (like we sometimes find on internet forums, ahem...) will do just as much damage. But save for that, the less you ask, the more you get.

What I mean is that things like sending a email announcement to your entire adress book will certainly get you some onine visits, with a tremendous ratio of call/result. But that will amount to a few hundreds, generally. Same with posting on GS : some will check it out, some will be irritated by a banner... at the end of the day, you can surely count on it to learn a lot about what you did, how to do it better next time or to initiate interesting discussions. Not much else, and it suits me fine.

So what generates traffic really, for Bob Katz's sake ? I'll tell you what I know : media. Plain old traditional media coverage, plus airplay. Nothing else. Everytime I'm on TV, on the radio or in a magazine, traffic peaks nicely. The rest of the time ? A smooth and regular descending slope.

And that's why I'm saying it's not great news, and why I'm saying that only the rich gets a loan. You have too bring something to the media for them to look at you. You have to be rich of something, and let me tell you that "art" or "talent" is not the kind of currency you'll pay your ticket with. THAT is naive. The only thing you can bribe them with is information. Substance. News. Washington has just released an album ? That's not news. Nobody gives a flying f**k. He did it on his own ? Even less so. Smells outright failure, if the guy has to do it alone. It's available online ? Please. Sooo ? "Er... well, uh... I designed 45 minutes of motion graphics to go with it." Ahaa ? Mmmmh. Gets warmer. And what else ? "Uh, well, it comes with a booklet and you can browse it and flip it and it gets moving like magic and you can download it in twelve different formats and you can download the vids and and and ..." Ok, now we got something.

Not much, though.

You have to sweat bullets, and have a very good understanding of how media work to get any coverage without any outstanding commercial performance to show. That's why I couldn't give a sh*t about Facebook and the likes : by the time I was finished with presskits and promo material, plus trying to get in touch with whatever I could gather over the years as press contacts, I was done. Not a calorie left for Twitting, believe me.


And then, you may have the local media, and it's about it. Go for it, because THAT will generate traffic, a miniature buzz and a tiny (and soon melted) snowball. Yet this has to be turned into something else quick. Which implies that once you're there, you can simply hope you did your homework properly, because it's not for you anymore to try anything. Only when I got signed did I get a press agent, paid by the label, who royally spent a few days of her valuable time to sneak me into the small columns of bigger media. And that's when I learned that those magazines and radio simply don't even open anything that comes from other sources than four or five selected press agencies. We knew that for labels, or so we thought. Well, media in general are even more bothering-proof.

So to sum it up : there is means to increase or generate web traffic, but it is crucial to try and understand as much of the mechanics behind it as possible. It is quite flabbergasting how people seem to believe that internet buzz, for example, happens out of thin air. Just have something amazing, and you'll have a million views on youtube in a cinch. You know what ? That's wrong. We've been led to believe that there's a kind of cold and repeatable logic to this, while it is just a plain lottery. Buzz doesn't happen, it is created.

And that's where I can't help any further : I don't know how to do it. I have not experienced any righteous buzz, my stuff on Youtube has grandaddyly rocketed to five thousand and some views (which is plain nothing), and I wouldn't know how to do better to save my life. But hey... I'm quite happy like that.

Hope this is helpful someway. Cheers !

[burningyen]

Wow, amazing production value all around!

[Timur Born]

Washington. Thanks for the last informative post.

[Washington]

My pleasure.

[digiframe]

Just downloaded your album and made a donation... website is amazing, love it! Thanks for sharing!
Kind regards,
Jorik

[drewDUDE]

Thanks for steering me to this thread; very informative. Kudos to releasing a great project with an outstanding website to compliment it!

It must really feel good to have 4 years of work come to fruition and be largely embraced by those who catch wind of it.