Feature Article |
Is This Kid About to Be a Star?
By Jessica Pressler
Like, for starters, the entire music industry.
PERHAPS YOU’VE SEEN THE HEADLINES: CD Sales Down 20 Percent! Albums in Decline! Dastardly Digital Downloads Responsible!
The music industry is in, to say it nicely, flux. Not only has the Internet killed CD sales by making it so easy to acquire music that you can literally do it in your sleep, but new technology has made it possible for musicians to record, edit, promote and sell their own music all over the world. This allows them to bypass the three major obstacles that have impeded new artists in recent years: the radio conglomerates, with their fascist categories — Alternative, Urban, Country, Pop, Adult Contemporary — and strict hits-only playlists; the chain stores, like Wal-Mart and Target, who won’t risk shelf space on anything that’s not guaranteed to sell; and the major labels, who lately have been able to afford to work only with the sorts of musicians who will please the other two. The labels have suffered the most. When, in 2005, the quirky, locally connected quartet Clap Your Hands Say Yeah sold more than 45,000 copies of their self-produced first album through their website, it was a watershed moment. Why even bother with a label when, clearly, you can do it yourself?
That’s why the success of Gnarls Barkley last year was such a bright sign to the record industry. Brian Burton, a.k.a. Danger Mouse, and Thomas Callaway, a.k.a. Cee-Lo, already had credibility among Internet music fans when Josh Deutsch, a former senior VP of A&R for Virgin, signed them to his newly formed Downtown Records. Their song “Crazy,” an infectious hybrid of soul, strings and production values, had “leaked” onto the Web and was already becoming hugely popular in the U.K.
How to duplicate that success in the U.S.? The label created an intensive, long-term online marketing campaign designed to draw in Internet denizens the way an anglerfish draws in shrimps — by mimicking them. Months before Gnarls’s album, St. Elsewhere, was released, Downtown “leaked” tracks like “Crazy” to blogs where music fans congregate, set up websites where visitors could sign up for free tickets to “secret” shows — sponsored by companies like Nokia — and held a “MySpace friends only” gig at Coachella, the indie music festival in Los Angeles. It was a strategy that suited both the company’s limited resources as a start-up and the egos of their consumers: People who were introduced to Gnarls Barkley on MySpace or a blog, as opposed to through traditional mass marketing, felt “like they discovered something,” says Downtown marketing head Michael Pontecorvo.
The Internet buzz led Grey’s Anatomy and Entourage to play “Crazy” on episodes, bringing it to a wider audience, and by the time it was released to radio, the gatekeepers to the airwaves had no reason to be skittish: “Crazy” was ubiquitous. It became the first single to go platinum without a physical CD, and was popular enough that when St. Elsewhere was released in May of 2006, it followed suit — although, once possessed of the actual album, some of the band’s initial audience decided that it didn’t quite measure up to “Crazy.” No matter. The marketing campaign itself was, as the Boston Phoenix put it, the “true work of art.”
The fact that Downtown Records appeared to have beaten online mp3-leakers and bedroom bands at their own game, bulldozed a route to get new artists on the radio, and incurred major sales was seen by industry-watchers as a sign of hope that even in the digital age, a record label could be relevant, even necessary, to success. Josh Deutsch was hailed as a visionary.
For an encore, Downtown acquired the rights to the soundtracks for Borat and Entourage and signed a few more Internet buzz bands, like Art Brut and Cold War Kids. And then, with the industry watching to see if Downtown Records was a one-hit wonder or could live up to its hype, Josh Deutsch upped the ante. He took an unknown, Kevin Michael Seward, and started prepping him to become the next very big star.
PERHAPS YOU’VE SEEN THE HEADLINES: CD Sales Down 20 Percent! Albums in Decline! Dastardly Digital Downloads Responsible!
The music industry is in, to say it nicely, flux. Not only has the Internet killed CD sales by making it so easy to acquire music that you can literally do it in your sleep, but new technology has made it possible for musicians to record, edit, promote and sell their own music all over the world. This allows them to bypass the three major obstacles that have impeded new artists in recent years: the radio conglomerates, with their fascist categories — Alternative, Urban, Country, Pop, Adult Contemporary — and strict hits-only playlists; the chain stores, like Wal-Mart and Target, who won’t risk shelf space on anything that’s not guaranteed to sell; and the major labels, who lately have been able to afford to work only with the sorts of musicians who will please the other two. The labels have suffered the most. When, in 2005, the quirky, locally connected quartet Clap Your Hands Say Yeah sold more than 45,000 copies of their self-produced first album through their website, it was a watershed moment. Why even bother with a label when, clearly, you can do it yourself?
That’s why the success of Gnarls Barkley last year was such a bright sign to the record industry. Brian Burton, a.k.a. Danger Mouse, and Thomas Callaway, a.k.a. Cee-Lo, already had credibility among Internet music fans when Josh Deutsch, a former senior VP of A&R for Virgin, signed them to his newly formed Downtown Records. Their song “Crazy,” an infectious hybrid of soul, strings and production values, had “leaked” onto the Web and was already becoming hugely popular in the U.K.
How to duplicate that success in the U.S.? The label created an intensive, long-term online marketing campaign designed to draw in Internet denizens the way an anglerfish draws in shrimps — by mimicking them. Months before Gnarls’s album, St. Elsewhere, was released, Downtown “leaked” tracks like “Crazy” to blogs where music fans congregate, set up websites where visitors could sign up for free tickets to “secret” shows — sponsored by companies like Nokia — and held a “MySpace friends only” gig at Coachella, the indie music festival in Los Angeles. It was a strategy that suited both the company’s limited resources as a start-up and the egos of their consumers: People who were introduced to Gnarls Barkley on MySpace or a blog, as opposed to through traditional mass marketing, felt “like they discovered something,” says Downtown marketing head Michael Pontecorvo.
The Internet buzz led Grey’s Anatomy and Entourage to play “Crazy” on episodes, bringing it to a wider audience, and by the time it was released to radio, the gatekeepers to the airwaves had no reason to be skittish: “Crazy” was ubiquitous. It became the first single to go platinum without a physical CD, and was popular enough that when St. Elsewhere was released in May of 2006, it followed suit — although, once possessed of the actual album, some of the band’s initial audience decided that it didn’t quite measure up to “Crazy.” No matter. The marketing campaign itself was, as the Boston Phoenix put it, the “true work of art.”
The fact that Downtown Records appeared to have beaten online mp3-leakers and bedroom bands at their own game, bulldozed a route to get new artists on the radio, and incurred major sales was seen by industry-watchers as a sign of hope that even in the digital age, a record label could be relevant, even necessary, to success. Josh Deutsch was hailed as a visionary.
For an encore, Downtown acquired the rights to the soundtracks for Borat and Entourage and signed a few more Internet buzz bands, like Art Brut and Cold War Kids. And then, with the industry watching to see if Downtown Records was a one-hit wonder or could live up to its hype, Josh Deutsch upped the ante. He took an unknown, Kevin Michael Seward, and started prepping him to become the next very big star.
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