All records for radio and retail are traditionally "Added" on a Tuesday here in the US. Thus, it's our goal at Tinderbox to find the couple best acts for each given "Add" date (often with a small budget) and represent them to both college and community radio. Quite often, as a result of that airplay, an artist may be experiencing the first "national" awareness of their music.
Why does that matter for burgeoning artists? Because "story" and "buzz" matter more than ever. Thanks to technology the number of people making broadcast quality music has swelled. That means with everyone offering up bytes of their music - the better acts need to build awareness like never before. I can't site a better example than our client Ingrid Michelson's experience. Without any sort of label she's managed to make herself a household name. Personally, I can tell you it makes it a lot easier to pitch the TV and Film folks for licensing (that's the part I do here at Tinderbox) when there's a story.
Music Supervisors at Television for example are trying to use music that's "breaking" and "affordable". By the numbers independent music gets placed into significantly more television opportunities than does music from the majors. In fact, there are going to be new outlets for music everywhere. My wife who works for Target Corp is working on media campaigns for the new television and slingbox technologies invading cell phones. And I've been reading about Disney and Viacom banking on two minute daily e-casts of original television dramas and Chevrolet purchasing the technology for users to call out any song or movie they'd want from their car. Delightfully, there will be peripheral music EVERYWHERE in ALL of these coming medias. The agreements for these music usages won't be the standard "master and sync" license either.
Advances are disappearing but the shear volume of users and opportunities for the placement of music in media is far out pacing that loss. Artists and managers that learn how to stack their pennies and pesos from these opportunities will thrive. "Performance Based Royalties" collected by ASCAP, SESAC and BMI will rule the future of the music.
Jon Delange
Tinderbox Music
www.tinderboxmusic.com
Did you get anything out of this short article by Jon? Then come to the conference where's there's mountains of not only just basic info like this, but literally real talk from the real folks who licensing for a living. Jon will be moderating two panels on Saturday July 26, "Meet The Music Supervisors" and "The Guitar Hero Effect, The KRION Effect & Gaming & Branding Licensing". These are two panels you don't want to miss. Go now and book your registration for the Dfest Music Conference!
