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Tuesday, November 14, 2006

In late October, Saddle Creek Records launched its Cursive "Bad Sects" remix contest. I saw the notice in my e-mail, read about it, but didn't realize how important it really was. On the surface it seemed pretty bland, but deep down there was something interesting in it all.

In late September Barnaked Ladies launched an album, after releasing much of it online to be remixed in about the same way Saddle Creek is offering up "Bad Sects." Barenaked Ladies' album grossed $978,127.99 in its first week, according to Nettwerk Music Group, parent company for Desperation Records, which is operated by the members of Barenaked Ladies.

This all might sound confusing, but its much less so than it seems. Basically, indiefellows at Saddle Creek took immediate attention to the success of Barenaked Ladies release, and the infectious marketing done by their parent company. In the past, it would have taken a few years for such marketing techniques to trickle down to the indie labels such as Saddle Creek.

"Generating revenue, especially in the artist-run model, is about selling music in various mediums, selling concert tickets, licensing music to TV, ring tones, packed USB drives, etc. That is how success is measured, not by the physical album sales." explains Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music.

Arguably, Nettwerk and the Barenaked Ladies simply took cue from Beck who similarly released his album for remix and then released the remixed album separately- similar but not the same.

It will be interesting to see how other independent labels follow Nettwerk's progress towards what McBride described to Wired Magazine in August as "collapsed copyright." Nettwerk will work with and help to represent artists like Barenaked Ladies, but the artists will run their own labels, retaining copyrights to all their material - increasing profits for artists by some 300%.

As McBride told Wired, with such changes in the music supply system, "Now we can really start to have fun."

In tribute to Saddle Creek Records, I present every single Saddle Creek track I could find anywhere. Well, almost, I left out a couple that I think suck pretty bad. Many of these songs are available online elsewhere, but here they are together. If you don't already love all of these artists, check them out at www.saddle-creek.com. Or click the "(web)" link beside their name to go to their website.

(right click & 'Save Link As...' to download mp3's)

Cursive (web)