In the music industry, it usually seems like record labels call all the shots, but on Nov. 14, MilkBoy Recording announced the launch of the UnLabel, an untraditional label that guides bands without ball-and-chain contracts.
Sleeping Naked, formed by UCLA third-year student Holden Seguso and Vanderbilt University student Craig Tallent, is among the bands taking advantage of the UnLabel’s professional support. With the help of the UnLabel, Sleeping Naked has been able to keep artistic control while still enjoying a label’s innovative marketing.
“Instead of us being the boss of the band or us signing a band, the band is actually in control of what they want,” said the UnLabel’s director, Tom Laskas.
A traditional record label signs a band as an investment, actually owning a portion of what the band produces. But bands like Sleeping Naked, which works with the UnLabel, choose the services they need, pay a fee to the label and still maintain financial and artistic ownership over their music.
“It allows a certain amount of creativity too; the band gets to create the product that they want, and there is no format that they have to stick to other than what they want to hear, what they want to produce,” Laskas said.
“Especially with marketing, it gives us the freedom to do some more creative ideas in getting a product out there,” he added.
Professional marketing is just one of many services the UnLabel offers. The UnLabel, run by Laskas and co-owner Jamie Lokoff, also assists musicians with promotion, recording and production, Web and graphic design, general management, tour management, and distribution.
Laskas attributes the viability of these services to the Internet’s profound impact on the accessibility and distribution of bands’ music. “It’s the Internet which has changed the scope of the music industry because it used to be that the only way a band could be heard was for a record label to sign them,” he said.
Because bands can now get their music onto iTunes or sell their CDs through CD Baby, distribution has become available to anyone and everyone. Through social networks like MySpace and Facebook, bands can reach people on a global scale.
“Sleeping Naked is selling music in Europe; they’re selling music in Canada, and that’s because of all the social networks we’ve created for them,” Laskas said. “Their outreach goes way beyond UCLA where Holden goes to school.”
As college students and musicians, the members of Sleeping Naked sought the help of the UnLabel to accommodate their hectic schedules. The UnLabel manages a strong Web presence for the band to compensate for the band’s inability to tour.
The UnLabel’s marketing campaigns have helped Sleeping Naked extend beyond the college audiences and generate a larger fanbase. Lokoff said it didn’t take much time for the band to accumulate more than 50,000 plays on MySpace, and this is only one of many social networks that the UnLabel has organized for the band.
“What we try to provide for (the band) is just a plan, an outline and a focused goal, so all they really have to focus on is making their music, showing up and bringing a great product,” Laskas said.
“That is the biggest complaint we hear from bands,” he added. “They come in the studio and say, “˜All we want to do is make music, go on the road, sell our CDs and keep launching ourselves.'”
The UnLabel has especially worked to accommodate Sleeping Naked’s college listeners. With the release of Sleeping Naked’s new single “Straight Chillin’,” the UnLabel created a video scavenger hunt embedded with trivia where viewers could win an iPod Touch. Fan-based interactive games such as this video contest are changing the approach to music video production.
“These guys (Sleeping Naked) are young and really talented, and we’re able to really focus on the college market and come up with things like the video scavenger hunt and programs for college students to get on,” Laskas said. “It’s a really great group to work for because they have a great demographic.”
Since its recent launch, the UnLabel has made it possible for independent musicians to be their own creators, while still providing these bands with the marketing guidance needed to get their creations out and heard by the public.
As the music industry continues to change and evolve in the face of declining traditional album sales and the rise of the iTunes and MySpace generation of music advertising and sales, the UnLabel is still getting the ball rolling for musicians of all influences and backgrounds.
However, in this day and age, it’s the chain attached to that ball that is undergoing the biggest revisions, and the results await to be seen.