Is This the Way of the Future for the Music Industry?
For those of you who have followed the English indie electro scene for a while, you'll no-doubt have come across the sounds of Lamb, hailing from Manchester, whose breakthrough album featured the holy sounds of 'Gorecki'.
Lamb then followed up this stunning debut with 3 more albums.
The third featured 'Gabriel';, a worthy successor to Gorecki, and the last album 'Between Dakrness and Wonder' was a fitting way to go out on a high.
But now lamb have reformed at last! And their fans are so grateful - the music world is indeed a better place for Lamb being back in it.
Andy and Lou - your solo acts were great, but they weren't Lamb! But this article is not about Lamb.
It is about the interesting approach they have taken to writing and producing their fifth album - asking existing fans to pay for the new album up front to enable it to be written and recorded without an advance from a record company.
This is an awesome idea.
I for one bought the album straight away without even thinking about it.
Of course, only bands with an established following can take this approach.
However, a closely related avenue is open to everyone, and that is the trend among indie bands these days to look for investors, not record companies.
This makes good sense today when you can, with some practice and perseverance, write and mix a pretty professional sounding song in a pretty low budget home studio, when online marketing is affordable, and when the costs of touring have dropped enormously due to budget air carriers and the fact that half a band's road kit can now fit inside a laptop.
Of course, challenges remain - finding an investor is still difficult, but arguably less of a mountain to climb that getting your tunes heard by a record company's A&R.
The only problem is that, as more bands go this way, potential investors are going to find themselves increasingly deluged by great music and perhaps they will find it just as difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff as record companies already do.
But then again, that'll just mean that bands will have to invent yet one more creative way of getting their music out there and heard by the public at large.
What will be the next chapter in this story? Only time will tell but the music business is moving fast at the moment in multiple directions and this creates new opportunities for indie bands to explore.
Lamb then followed up this stunning debut with 3 more albums.
The third featured 'Gabriel';, a worthy successor to Gorecki, and the last album 'Between Dakrness and Wonder' was a fitting way to go out on a high.
But now lamb have reformed at last! And their fans are so grateful - the music world is indeed a better place for Lamb being back in it.
Andy and Lou - your solo acts were great, but they weren't Lamb! But this article is not about Lamb.
It is about the interesting approach they have taken to writing and producing their fifth album - asking existing fans to pay for the new album up front to enable it to be written and recorded without an advance from a record company.
This is an awesome idea.
I for one bought the album straight away without even thinking about it.
Of course, only bands with an established following can take this approach.
However, a closely related avenue is open to everyone, and that is the trend among indie bands these days to look for investors, not record companies.
This makes good sense today when you can, with some practice and perseverance, write and mix a pretty professional sounding song in a pretty low budget home studio, when online marketing is affordable, and when the costs of touring have dropped enormously due to budget air carriers and the fact that half a band's road kit can now fit inside a laptop.
Of course, challenges remain - finding an investor is still difficult, but arguably less of a mountain to climb that getting your tunes heard by a record company's A&R.
The only problem is that, as more bands go this way, potential investors are going to find themselves increasingly deluged by great music and perhaps they will find it just as difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff as record companies already do.
But then again, that'll just mean that bands will have to invent yet one more creative way of getting their music out there and heard by the public at large.
What will be the next chapter in this story? Only time will tell but the music business is moving fast at the moment in multiple directions and this creates new opportunities for indie bands to explore.
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