Who Needs A Record Label?

It was time to go beyond live gigs. The band recorded three tracks in a local independent studio and self-published them as a mini album, which they sent to a music service called CD Baby, which takes albums on consignment and sells them online.

CD Baby, in turn, transferred the digital tracks to iTunes and other top music services, so they could be bought or streamed just like the biggest label hits.

The band then emailed song tracks and personal notes to various MP3 blogs, getting a positive mention on several, such as Music for Robots, which brought yet more attention.

The band’s MySpace page started filling up with fans, and soon managers, labels, and industry folks came calling with deals.

But then something surprising happened: Birdmonster turned the offers down. As Arcuni put it, “We’re not anti-label in principle, but the numbers (risk vs. reward) didn’t add up.”

A music label exists primarily to fulfill four functions: (1) talent scouting; (2) financing (the advances bands get to pay for their studio time is like seed capital invested by a venture capitalist); (3) distribution; and (4) marketing.

From Birdmonster’s perspective, they didn’t need a label to provide that.

A growing local fan base, amplified online, had already spotted their talent. Improving digital recording technology had made studio time cheaper than ever—they could record the tracks in a few days in the studio and then mix and overdub them at home using personal computers.

The cost to record the entire album was less than $15,000, which they covered with credit cards and savings. CD Baby and a similar company called Cinderblock provided the distribution, which gave them a reach as broad as iTunes, Rhapsody, and the other top services.

And MP3 blogs and MySpace were free marketing.

Why sign their life away now to a label, they reasoned, when they could record and distribute their music themselves and keep their creative independence? If the first self-released album did well, they’d be in a much stronger negotiating position with the label, for rereleasing the first album in stores, or for the second album, much as My Chemical Romance was after its first album.

And if it didn’t, there were still live shows and touring, which are really the best part of being in a band anyway.

And so Arcuni quit his day job (our loss!) and set off to become a professional musician, emboldened in a DIY age where technology has shifted the balance of power from label to band.