Rise Of The Musical Middle Class Part III – A Global Perspective
Last week’s start to Hypebot’s series, The Rise Of The Musical Middle Class (Part I & II) pointed to a growing group of artists that may never ride in limos, but who make a living thanks to the marketing and distribution opportunities the internet provides. The series is getting attention across the blogosphere and led to some lively and informed discussion worth joining.
PART III – A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Another trend giving rise to the new Musical Middle Class is the globalization of lifestyles. Traveling, working and living in a variety of countries is easier than ever and causing the viral spread of new music on a global scale. More and more fans and artists think of themselves as global citizens with worldwide perspectives and tastes.
Thanks to the internet, a South African living in Turkey or an American fascinated by Malaysian dance music can keep track of the music that matters to them and with a mouse click listen to and purchase tracks that were released by obscure but empowered artists.
With rare exceptions, music spread virally across the globe will not climb any charts. But it provides another source of income as some artist rise from obscurity to a place in the new Musical Middle Class.
In my own experience at Skyline Music, it has meant that Russian rock band Auktyon can tour the US and build an audience fueled by Russian immigres who tell their friends or that North Carolina based Toubab Krewe and The Reverand Peyton’s Big Damn Band can each build European tours around an invitation to play a festival.
These tours won’t fuel anyone’s retirement accounts. But each one is happening outside of the major or large indie label system. And both now and in the future, they will provide a small piece of each artist’s income as overseas download revenues trickle in and small performance royalty checks arrive.
If you doubt that the Musical Middle Class can be fueled in part by globalization, take a look at your own iPod and you’ll probably find more than one overseas indie track. Help the global musical viral spread and share your favorite global artist with our readers.
global music indeed. there’s a fantastic sound-collage artist from asturias, spain called “dot tape dot”. most of his music created over the past 6 years has been exclusively released either by him or small netlabels, still he has a remarkable amount of fans who buy everything he puts out.
I’d add to this by saying that, paradoxically, the global availability of music makes local, grassroot music economies that much more valuable and a musical middle class in these towns and cities increasingly viable. Look at the various bands from Canada that have benefited from the global exposure gained by bands such as Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire.
The value here is making a geographical “backwater” (i.e. not LA, NY, Nashville or London) a recognized creative nexus, encouraging artists to move there and further diversifying the art created. One could say this also happened in Manchester in the 80s, or Seattle in the 90s. As a music fan, I would’ve given my right arm to see The Stone Roses play the Factory! I believe this exact phenomenon is happening today in Belfast.
But the global availability of music expedites this process – people can see instantly where these communities are thriving and “lower level” acts from that same locale benefit from the cache.
These local music economies bear strong resemblance to the “middle-class” described here. It’s a strong focus of mine to encourage this kind of “Think Globally – Act Locally” approach for the creation of just the kind of music economy you describe.
More on this idea at my blog (available by clicking my name below.)
As a producer/musician who works with several “middle class” artists I have to say this is very interesting indeed. And because they’re mostly soul/R&B artists you don’t read about them much in the blogosphere. Hopefully this will provide a unique perspective.
I know that most of us look to Europe and Japan to support our careers. It seems that those markets don’t have the hangups of the U.S. market. To put it nicely, the urban music fans seem to care more about the music than an 18-year-old’s T&A. We play the biggest clubs in NYC, yet are virtually unknown outside of this region in the USA.
One singer I work with, Maya Azucena, just won two Grammy Awards in Croatia this year (they’re called “Porins” over there). She has also appeared on MTV TRL in Italy and many other Italian TV shows. We have toured Europe a few times. Next year we go to China and South Korea for the first time.
Kendra Ross has worked with Kanye West, Talib Kweli and Faith Evans. Her debut album has gotten amazing press and airplay, yet she still doesn’t have a US deal. She just signed with a Japanese label and a European label. And she’s in final negotations for a South African deal. We will be touring Japan and Europe next year. All of this has come from her self-financed CD, so she keeps all of the profits. I like to call it “extreme DIY”.
Almost all of our success has been through the internet, religiously following up on requests, and rabid fans doing some of the work. Maya got popular in Croatia because a fan stumbled across her website and sent a message. Maya replied saying that she’d like to perform in Croatia and to help if at all possible. One thing lead to another and now she performs there 3-4 times a year.
Another thing that has helped is licensing. One of my songs with Maya has just been licensed for “The Wire” on HBO. This alone has brought in more money than most people make in a few months. It seems that licensing has been open to independent artists more than ever before (I haven’t seen this mentioned yet).
Guests spots have also worked out well. Kendra has written for and/or performed on all of Talib Kweli’s albums. Maya did a one-off for a dance company and it ended up going to #4 on the Billboard Dance Charts. She also did a duet with Stephen Marley on his new CD, which made it to #35 on the Billboard Album Charts. You don’t really see enough of this in the rock world.
Being independent has been quite fruitful for us. During the time that we’ve been recording and releasing CD’s on our own, we’ve had several friends get caught up in the perpetual major label run-around only to end up with nothing released. Now they’re trying to catch up to us and scrape their way up the middle class.
I can easily name 20 artists in the middle class. They’re all finding revenue from several different sources. It boils down to two things: talent and hustling. You can’t have just one and expect to succeed.
Need more info? Just follow the links: http://www.TheRooftopMusic.com ; http://www.myspace.com/TheRooftopMusic
The music middle class? I think it is becoming and more so with globalization a music netowrk future. A future where everyone who wants to is a part of the music industry and musicians customize how they do business with the more successful ones building upon the top fans in their network. These top fans become even more connected building music reputations. For some more thoughts along these lines check out my Record Label 2.0 post
http://blog.timelineonline.org/2007/12/record-label-20.html