The Record Industry is Broken
The model for musician development is in shambles. The industry is facing a period of profound change.
Recent developments like Radiohead’s recent efforts to give away its album for whatever someone wants to pay and Columbia Records’ recent proactive efforts to re-evaluate their ability to be profitable in the music business only bring this into sharper focus.
The mighty music business is in free fall — it has lost control of radio; retail outlets like Tower Records have shut down; MTV rarely broadcasts music videos; and the once lucrative album market has been overshadowed by downloaded singles, which mainly benefits Apple…
Only 10 years ago, companies wanted to make records, presumably good records, and see if they sold. But panic has set in, and now it’s no longer about making music, it’s all about how to sell music. And there’s no clear answer about how to fix that problem.
David Geffen September 2007
The record industry no longer knows how to sell music. With its decreasing ability to sell music for their top acts, the record labels lose the ability to take their profits to fund the development of new and up and coming bands.
So where does that leave the independent band or musician? In other words…
Where do we go from here
Helping Bands Help Themselves
As with any change there are both positives and negatives. For the positive, the Internet has allowed musical distribution to become more democratized. Independent musicians now have the power to get their music out to fans through the web. Bypassing the old models.
However, the record label marketing machine is fading. Bands cannot rely on labels to help thems become known and listened to a by a larger audience. Radio is becoming increasingly less relevant. No longer is it the way people discover new music.
… no one listens to the radio anymore, … they mostly steal music, but they don’t consider it stealing, and … they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. … the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That’s how they hear about music, bands, everything.
Rick Rubin September 2007
Now what to do? Musicians in the digital age must play a more active and educated role in managing their musical endeavors.
Why Volume 11?
Moving Bands To a Higher Level
This website is dedicated to providing self-managing musicians or managers of one or two bands to quickly and easily keep themselves educated on the changing music industry’s trends.
Everything from the latest news to companies and products that can help independent musicians best self manage in this amazing time of change and opportunity.
With so much change and so many new businesses being created almost daily to attend to the needs of independent artists, there is a real need to provide a place to voice comments and opinions so everyone can learn from each other’s experiences and companies can adapt to user recommendations. With trial and discussion, a new music industry model will eventually be created. An active user of this site should be able to both play a role in scoping the new direction of the music industry and stay ahead of the game by being made a aware of the new companies that exist to help their music get heard.
Who is Volume 11?
Volume Eleven was founded by two guys who started managing San Francisco bands and found the Internet-age band marketing tools chaotic and overwhelming.
This experience inspired them to begin exploring the available online tools in order to develop a path for other emerging bands to follow...
Matt
Matt moved out to California from New Jersey and immediately fell in love with the life style and spirit of the San Francisco Bay Area. Matt's interest in the independent music scene began three years ago when Seconds On End guitarist Peter Sawyer began giving him guitar lessons. Matt became a fan of Seconds On End and began attending their shows and eventually became their manager in late 2006.
From that point on, Matt has focused much of his free time on helping independent musicians to get their music heard by a wider audience.
When he's not going out to see his favorite live music, surfing, playing baseball, practicing guitar or harmonica, or hanging out with friends, Matt can be found creating abstract oil paintings in his art studio in Palo Alto. Matt works as a lawyer and specializes in helping emerging start-up companies with marketing and with optimizing their business model.
Dan
A Santa Cruz native, Dan has always had a love for music. The work with V11 has been a natural extension of his personal attachment to the power of music and his experience as a web site designer and coder. He has worked in Silicon Valley for the last 10 years designing and building websites, working for various start-ups ranging from online radio, to video podcasting, and for more established companies like Yahoo! He is currently working with web search technology.
Dan's experience as a programmer, engineer and coder gives him unique insight into the best ways to help independent musicians to utilize the web and harness its technology in order to help their music gain wider exposure.
In addition to enjoying the vibe of his favorite tunes, Dan is an avid traveler with an amazing knowledge of the histories of cultures around the world. Dan's growth as a graphic artist can be seen through the posters and website of Seconds On End.
Volume 11
The Volume 11 site was the result of Matt and Dan having the good fortune of meeting Peter Sawyer of Seconds On End and other great bay area musicians.
In their discussions regarding Seconds On End management, Matt and Dan realized that there was a real need in the marketplace for a website with a two-fold purpose: (1) Consolidate information about music management tools and trends in one central location, and (2) encourage discussion and sharing of information among independent musicians and band managers. And so Volume Eleven was born.
© 2007 Volume Eleven LLC. All Rights Reserved.