How practical is it to try and bill oneself as “organic” when trying to break into today’s increasingly digitized music industry? More practical than one would think.
UCLA Extension students enrolled in C. Michael Brae’s Music X 448.41: “Music Marketing in the New Music Industry Era,” are working fast to uncover the intricacies and skill of creating and promoting a record label with a finger on the flourishing pulse of the L.A. underground music scene.
Organic Sounds Records is the meticulously planned product of the class’s daunting eight-week project to not only create a record label, but to sign artists, release an album, book a concert, generate publicity and establish themselves as a legitimate business entity. The burgeoning label has also partnered with the Surfrider Foundation to donate a portion of its proceeds to charity.
“We’re learning the current business trends and what’s going on in the music industry as well as applying the knowledge to a real-life application by forming our own music label,” said Alana MacKay, head of publicity for Organic Sounds Records. “We’re all really excited about it.”
In a booming age of technology where it is becoming easier to create and distribute music, marketing has taken on a whole new form. Now, bedroom mix masters can bring their latest GarageBand creation to the attention of millions of Internet surfers via MySpace and other such community sites.
The advent of this new era holds its pros and cons.
“We’re not getting the same quality of music that we used to,” said Clay Busch, president of Organic Sounds. “You know, Joe Schmoe down the street isn’t going to run to the mom-and-pop store and say, “˜I need to buy this CD,’ because there’s not 12 good tracks. They’re going to say, “˜I want the single. I’m going to go download it on iTunes or I’m going to go steal (it) off of LimeWire.’ That’s just the reality of the game now.”
On the other hand, genuinely talented artists now have the chance to make themselves known to an audience on a larger scale than they would have been able to reach in other bygone ages, like in the more primitive ’80s.
The students behind Organic Sounds, being fully aware of the opportunities and obstacles the Internet creates, seek to harness only the best of this rapidly changing, wildly volatile world housed in the expanses of cyberspace.
While having a cigarette on a midday break from class, CEO Matt Akana and Busch casually laugh and blow swirls of pale gray smoke into the breeze, giving them the appearance of unassuming college students relaxing ““ which they are. As they spoke, however, the pair morphed into savvy music moguls.
“I think it’s really an exciting thing for us because, as a student label, we get to take chances that the bigger labels don’t get to take,” Akana said. “We can focus more on quality rather than quantity. We’re not really looking so much to sell a million records as we are to be creating a big, organic, local scene of L.A. talent and O.C. talent.”
The label’s first CD, due out in approximately four weeks, will be a compilation of tracks from previously unsigned L.A.-area bands and artists, as well as a few students from the actual class. This decision to base their focus in Southern California stems from the sound business sense provided to the class by its instructor, Brae.
“They were looking for alternative ways of marketing,” Brae said of his class.
A desire for reciprocity fueled the decision to create a locally based compilation of talent. By promoting local artists rather than attempting to import artists from far away, the label seeks to tap into the local fan base devoted to their particular group.
“They’re promoting these local artists so then, in exchange, these artists are bringing in their built-in fan base,” Brae said. “So this actually helps with the promotion of the event to pack it out.”
The founder and CEO of Hitman Records and MP4 Player, Brae’s credentials include representing artists such as the Grammy Award-winning front man of Club Nouveau, Samuelle Pratter, as well as the double-platinum group Digital Underground. Brae also has an academic background, having crisscrossed the state teaching similar courses in music management at universities such as California State University, San Francisco and the University of the Pacific, not to mention also writing a book, “Music Distribution: Selling Music in the New Entertainment Marketplace.”
With his mile-long resume, Brae lends his industry know-how to his troupe of marketing hopefuls, advising when needed but still allowing the class free reign over their various ventures. Brae, who has been working with UCLA Extension for nearly four years now, is amazed at the speed and dedication of his students working under the time constraint of the quarter system.
“Nobody would realistically pull that off in nine weeks,” he said of the label’s hope to put out an album. “With the majors, it can take up to a year to release a project. It’s a monumental task, but that’s what separates (Organic Sounds) from anybody else. That’s what will make it exciting.”
In addition to selling physical copies of the album at its first booked concert in mid-June, Organic Sounds has also enlisted the services of CD Baby, an online site that allows independent musicians to sell and distribute their music, in addition to signing up with Super D and Phantom Distribution. These online distributors will allow the Organic Sounds debut album to be available on 18 digital retailers, including Rhapsody, iTunes, AudioLunchbox and Sony Connect, according to Brae.
“There’s absolutely still a market for people who want to have a tangible disc in their hands. There’s always going to be a market for that, but at the same time, you have to be able to embrace the fact that things have gone digital,” Akana said.
He and Busch also explained “the beauty” of their label and its subsequent decision to utilize both physical copies of CDs as well as digital tracks.
“If you come (to the concert) and you listen to the whole record, and maybe you like five cuts off of it, spend $5 on iTunes. You don’t have to buy the whole album,” Akana said. “We’re giving you the best of both worlds.”
Organic Sounds Records, with relaxed and friendly student executives, collective pride and the support of a business-wise instructor whose ear-to-ear grin reaffirms confidence, is giving the traditional idea of a record label a new meaning.
“We’re growing it from the ground up,” Akana said of the class project. “We’re not in this for money. We’re more in this to build a scene and to make something that is important and that will live on.”