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Tim Muddiman on record deals, streaming and music in the digital age

'It’s been reported that there are now 20 ways to release an album'

Tim Muddiman
Tuesday 13 September 2016 11:25 BST
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The dream of any young musician is to pick up and learn an instrument, meet other musicians, start a band, record songs, and then go out and get a record deal to advance their talent and propel them and their fantastic creations towards stardom. This dream has also come true for many other artists who have grafted hard and mastered their talent.

It’s a simple dream that has come true for some, but many other artists have had to graft hard, going through hell and a thousand knockbacks to achieve success. Admiration must be given freely to anyone who has made a career out of music. It’s a snake pit of downfalls, poverty, perseverance, endurance and luck. However, the dream of scoring a major deal or a good independent deal is no guarantee of long-term success.

More and more people are practising their music alongside their jobs, crafting a good project in their spare time and seeing where it travels. Two members of Fierce Panda’s latest signing Sean Grant and The Wolfgang work for Apple by day but regularly play shows and recently had radio play on BBC 6 Music. “Yes this means we don't deal with massive budgets,” affirms Sean, “but I’d much rather be signed to a label with a rich history and people who still really care about their artists”.

My bandmate Sam Harvey has a different story. In his words, they were given a golden ticket. The band was called Departure, and they signed a five-album deal with a major record label in 2004 after playing just six shows. Sam says, “We toured with big established bands from The Killers to Duran Duran, played all the festivals, and recorded in some of the best studios in the world. The pressure was on for the second record, but creatively we were beginning to unstitch. The situation wasn't helped by our A&R guy becoming an unwanted fifth member working as an extension of the label and trying to push us in a musical direction we did not want to go in. It all came to an end in 2007.”

Major deals such as this are virtually unheard of these days, so what does an artist do when they are committed 100% to their music? Lal Muttock of ‘BBC Introducing’ said, “Long gone are the golden days of the record deal. Artists are quickly learning that you can achieve great success by funding albums in other ways like PledgeMusic or Kickstarter. It’s the future of the new modern day recording artist and quite possibly the only saviour of the music industry”.

We now have social media, which means that you’re in the pocket of people who actually care about what you’re doing. Use it to interact directly with your fans. I believe in delivering large amounts of content – at least one album a year, music videos, and covers. Promote your own shows – don’t give your ticket sales to someone else, at least not yet. Do the groundwork. Earn your stripes. Earn your fan base. Read everything. Look at trends. Do some research to identify where you fit into the press and which outlets speak to the people who will like your music. The trends of the press are difficult to negotiate, but how can anyone new hear about your project without press exposure? Stream your music on YouTube, Spotify, Facebook video uploader, etc. Forget making money from it for now. Use it as an essential tool so people can hear who you are. It sure beats sending cassettes through the post.

To reach great heights, an artist eventually needs everything: radio play, a dedicated publicist, promotional budgets, tour budgets and a good number of people who actually want to see you play live. If music is your chosen path, it’s entirely possible that the older routes to fame and fortune are extinct for many of us. Any investor will want their money back, and any record label that is willing to invest in you financially as an artist or band will want a good level of control – if not complete control – over when you release music, how often you release music, what the sound of your music is going to be, and the direction in which you will take your music. Very depressing.

It’s been reported that there are now 20 ways to release an album. Exclusive streaming, brand partnerships, having your iTunes infiltrated or giving it away for free on the front of a newspaper to name only a few. With physical record sales being at an all-time low, major-selling artists are holding back on free subscription streaming sites and going for exclusives streams where revenue is still possible. Streaming is here. It isn’t going away. On 20 August, Frank Ocean, disenchanted with his deal with Universal-owned label Def Jam, sidestepped the deal and self-released his ‘Blonde’ album via Apple Music. To fulfil his obligations to his ‘record deal’, he also officially and conventionally released the album ‘Endless’ the day before. So here we have a double-pronged approach. Official and non-official, signed and independent releases in two days. Universal are potentially starting a lawsuit against Ocean and have since banned their entire roster of artists from exclusively streaming anything.

De La Soul, one of the hip-hop genre’s originators has just completed a Kickstarter campaign to release their first album in ten years. Sample clearance on their back catalogue is preventing them from revenue streams. They have a huge worldwide fan base and iconic status. This route would have been unheard of 5 years ago. Is it every man for himself? Increasingly that seems to be the case.

One day, the right label with the right deal and the right intentions might just come along. The industry is still changing at a dramatic rate, and business models are also shifting constantly. The time might come to partner with specialists who can move you onto the next stage of your journey. If it doesn’t, by the time you’re ready to move on, you’ll be equipped with enough knowledge and a large enough fan base to successfully go it alone. PledgeMusic has been a great help for me in funding my debut album. I chose not to sign record deals on this part of my journey for all of the above reasons. My creativity is far too important to me to risk anything going wrong. My fan base and my future belong to me. Plus, I don’t want a proper job…

Tim Muddiman and The Strange's debut album Paradise Runs Deeper is out now via Believe Digital.

Tim will Support Gary Numan at two intimate London shows

1 October - Bush Hall

2 October - Electric Brixton

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