FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Independent's Day
Things ain't the way they used to be in the independent music biz
by Hector LitorcoSome observers would argue that the rules for independent music changed when Nirvana crawled from the Sub Pop trenches into the David Geffen Co.'s coffers. Alternative rock, once the proud yet ambiguous domain of college radio stations, became a shameless and hugely ironic '90s marketing catch phrase for major corporate labels.
In the majors' attempts to sign the next big thing, the indie label talent pool was targeted and a feeding frenzy ensued. And as commercial radio and TV began belching out the sounds that made the indies so special, the role of the independent label in the grand scheme of the music biz had been, and occasionally still is, called into question. Bill Baker of Mint Records, Vancouver's prime purveyor of garage rock / punk / pop music for the past six years, is neither impressed nor concerned by the way things have shaken down.
"When you see somebody go, 'Hey look, we just discovered Pluto,' if you just fell out of the sky and looked at newspapers eight months or a year ago, it'd be like all those Pluto ads coming from their Virgin record. It was like, 'Pluto: this great new band that we just discovered.' But for better or for worse, we put out a record by them two years before that. If people are worried that the major label action is going to damage the livelihood of the indie labels, the only thing they have to do is just make sure they're well protected.
"Sometimes when I feel very cynical and down-beaten about things," he continues, "I think that labels such as ours are viewed from other perspectives as nothing more than a farm team for the major labels and everything else. But ultimately that's nonsense because if we were, we'd be selling a lot more things to them than we are, which is none."
Baker completes his stance by stating that the corporate invasion "wasn't one of those things where a certain trend was exploited and everything went back to normal. You see a lot more people working for major labels in the capacity of 'street reps' or 'indie / college reps'. They've really got their finger in a lot of pies and they want to make sure they don't miss out on something the next time it comes around."
Nettwerk Records, which is distributed in Canada by major-label EMI, is one of Canada's most successful indie labels and was recently presented with a national industry award as Best Independent Label. In assessing the fate of smaller labels, Sondra MacLeod, Marketing and Product Manager at Nettwerk, feels that the biggest problem is distribution.
"If they sign someone cool and they can't get the product out there to have people be able to pick it up.... That's the advantage of having a tie to a major. If we were just a little label doing it on our own here, we might not see such a widespread distribution. And if we did, we'd have to work really hard at it."
MacLeod has seen a shift in the perception and acceptance of indies by the public, which has a knock-on effect on how some bands take to being on an independent.
"Everything's a little more diverse now," she says. "People realize that they don't have to stick with a certain label. From a band's point of view, there's all kinds of options for them. It used to be, 'Oh man, I'm not going anywhere until I'm signed.' Now it's more, 'I'm on an indie. That's cool. I have more control.'"
Still, the notion that indie labels - often considered to be a bastion of integrity and credibility - automatically work to a band's benefit is not necessarily true. According to Ben Falconer, co-founder / owner of local imprint Melodiya Records, operating for purely creative purposes does have a downside.
"If you look at it from an artist's point of view," he reasons, "indie labels tend to give you less than major labels do when you sign a contract with them. So in many ways, indie labels aren't that artist-friendly from an economic point of view. (Melodiya gives) total creative control to the artists on our label. In return, we expect them to cover a fair chunk of the bill. If we're going to give all the control to them and they're going to create what they and we feel is legitimate music, we also expect them to put their money where their mouth is."
As Melodiya is a smaller and much younger label than Nettwerk, Falconer sees the biggest obstacle facing indie labels as being more fundamental than distribution; it's the number of quality Canadian acts that aren't signed or on their own label. He uses the Calgary scene to illustrate his point.
"Everyone says Calgary's full of great music and it's this total cauldron of quality," he says, "and I tend to agree with it in some ways. But I disagree with it a lot because many bands here just have a very short shelf life, a very short vision of what they want to do. It's like, 'We're going to be a band. We're going to play the Night Gallery and the Republik. We're going to get a demo tape out and get it reviewed. And then we're going to break up and start all over again in a new band.'
"There are really few bands that are willing to take a risk and take it out on the road, go to another city, try to get the stuff reviewed in the US and Europe. It's hard to find bands that are willing to die for their music, so to speak."
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