Managing the Grateful Dead

Danny Rifkin & Rock Scully - 07/31/1966

Photographer: Herbie Greene

When the words Grateful Dead and Corporation are uttered, one would feel that they are not inclusive of each other. Well the business of music was well played by the band through the management team that would take a group of hippies with talent to become icons of their generation with a profitable brand. Joshua Green wrote Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead an article published in The Atlantic, which lifts the curtain and shows the business side of the Grateful Dead. Insight into how early on the incorporated their band and trademarked brand images. Just like any other corporation had a board, CEO and divisions. The board not only included band members but according to Green’s article roadies and other members of the artist’s team. He also goes onto describe innovations as a corporation that would be adopted by the greater marketing world like targeted marketing. Until the death of Jerry Garcia the Grateful Dead were continuing concerts and one of the longest running profitable brands in the industry.

This says a lot about the organization and their band manager Rock Skully. He served as the band’s manager from 1964 until his eventual firing in 1985 due to personal drug use interfering with his duties. Regardless of his personal problems, of which he was able to eventually overcome, he and the team that developed the organization that is the Grateful Dead excelled. For 20 years Skully traveled with and managed the band, in 1992 he wrote a book on the subject titled Living With The Dead: Twenty years on the road with Garcia and the Grateful Dead. As a manager he also managed other Grateful Dead spinoff acts. Further insight into Skully, and his experience during the period managing the band can be found in an interview by Fine Art Magazine. One noteworthy part is when Skully talks about how they made the decision not to play clubs for in which they earned very little and create their own events. This move created growth for the band as profitable events allowed for further equipment purchases and investment into the band.

Interview: Rodney Orpheus

Today’s post is a short interview with Rodney Orpheus on the topic of the music industry and his own experience and lessons as a musician. Rodney is a friend and one whom I respect because of his passion for not only music, but also the technology that is a part of the way we create today.

Daniel: Give a short introduction and bio.

Rodney Orpheus: Born in Northern Ireland, first record released in 1985 with The Cassandra Complex, have sold about quarter of a million more since then and worked with acts such as The Sisters of Mercy, Future Sound of London, etc. have also worked for Music Tech companies such as Steinberg, DTS, and PreSonus, as well as teaching Music Technology at college level.

Daniel: What steps in your career do you feel made you successful?

Rodney: That's hard to say. First it's hard to define what "success" is, and secondly, so much of it is sheer luck and/or a long process of continual hard work. So to point out a clear "step" is difficult.

Daniel: While each person has his or her own interpretation of success, and luck is an uncontrollable factor, what has been your strategy in terms of “hard work” as you put it?

Rodney: I guess the first thing is to learn as much as possible. I devoured every piece of reliable info on music making that I could find. Luckily it's a lot easier to get that info these days than it used to be. Not just reading, but talking to professionals, watching videos on YouTube, whatever. That's the first hard work you need to do - learning stuff. After that, it's putting it into practice as often as you possibly can.

And I don't think "luck" is an uncontrollable factor. You need to put yourself into a position where opportunities present themselves, and be ready to grab those opportunities. That's what "luck" often is.

Daniel: Surviving in the industry for so long you have also been witness to many changes. There are some good conceptual models for the industry in relation to the new digital model of revenue for the artist. What is you interpretation of where the industry is going and how an artist can position for the future?

Rodney: I honestly do not know - I wish I did. That's why I haven't released a record in a decade. I genuinely no longer know what it means to "release a record" or even what a "record" actually is. I am beginning to think that the age when music as a normal business is over, and we'll go back to musicians being a community resource - effectively busking on a grander scale.

Daniel: In business developing a profession network is crucial. What steps did you take on early in your career to develop you own professional network?

Rodney: I wrote to people I liked and told them who I was and what I wanted to do. A surprising number contacted me back and gave me good advice. I'll be forever grateful to Green Gartside from Scritti Politti who spent a whole evening on the telephone with me explaining all the details of how to release an independent record for example, even though he had no clue who I was. There are some good people in the music business, buried among the assholes. You just have to find them

Daniel: Cassandra Complex has had a long run since 1980 and has continued to be your central focus. What is in store for your fans on with the upcoming CC2012 tour?

Rodney: Lots of greatest hits songs of course, since we don't play that often. Hopefully a few songs that we rarely play, and also we're planning to play some new material (which we are still writing!)

Daniel: Do you manage all aspects of the project or are you working with a label or manager? Have you been able to manage at least a break-even with festival bookings and tours?

Rodney: We currently manage everything ourselves, and have done through most of our career. It's not an option that I would recommend for most people though. We do have an agency booking tours for us. Hopefully we can make money on this tour - that's the plan anyway.

Daniel: You have gone through different roles in the industry from writing reviews, working for Steinberg and now a resident with PreSonus. Tell us a little bit about your role with PreSonus and what excites you about working for them?

Rodney: I am the European Product Marketing Manager, which is a nice vague title that means I do presentations to musicians and at trade shows, make training videos, help back up our European support staff etc. I love PreSonus because it is a company that is first and foremost run by musicians for musicians, it's not just another faceless corporation.

Daniel: PreSonus acquired Nimbit in April of this year. What are some of the key benefits for the user of Studio One and other PreSonus products?

Rodney: Integration. We want someone to be able to load up our Studio One software and do *the entire process* of writing, recording, editing, mixing, mastering AND releasing without needing any other tool, or having to leave that environment. When you open that software, anything you need to do that involves your music should be right there seamlessly, no matter what that is.

Daniel: What closing advise do you have for those musicians that desire to find ways to reach their fans and reach financial sustainability in their careers?

Rodney: Learn everything you can. It's called the *music business* for a reason - it's about music AND business. If you think you can make a living just by playing the guitar and singing about how your girlfriend left you, you're an idiot.

Daniel: Thank you, Rodney for the insight and opportunity for this interview. To view his work please visit: http://cassandracomplex.co.uk 

Licensing Service: Restorm’s Rightclearing

Image (c) Restorm.com 

      Revenue streams are important to an artist, publisher and label to generate cash flow for survival. One aspect of the music industry is licensing music for use in films, video games or for other artists. Restorm is a website for fans, artists, venues and labels to unite. A user-friendly interface allows for quick development and synchronization with existing social media sites. Including the ability to import video and pictures from the accounts saving much time not having to reload files to a new service. This feature saves time and frees the artist or label to move onto other activities like communicating directly with the fans or getting back to the studio. The site is geared to sell music to users and media partners and as the site promotes offers a higher percentage then most other sites for each sale to the artist.
      The best feature they have to offer over other web service companies is uploading loss-less files that can be offered through the Rightclearing service. This service allows media partner and users to play tracks to find music for a project, then directly license the music from the artist. All legal contracts, transaction management are conducted by Restorm. All rights to the music and 100% of the price point set by the artist are positive parts of this service. Once an artist has setup an account and upload the loss-less file these can be offered for licensing. It is that easy, for Asura Records we will be test running the last three albums by the artist ZoneWire. A follow up post will be made as soon as we secure our first license deal. Other similar sites that offer licensing services include: The Music Licensing Store, Harry Fox Agency, and Broad Jam to name but a few. The difference with Restorm and these other services is that you control the pricing and the legal contracts are very transparent to the artist. The downside is that the artist waits for the licensee to make the choice out of the catalog as opposed to other services that allow for direct submission (some at cost to the artist!) to projects.
      Bottom-line, licensing is a big part of developing positive cash flow for an artist and their music. This form of revenue needs to be a part of the revenue mix for developing sustainable income for a musician and Restorm brings to the table a free service that helps develop this aspect of the business for the artist, publisher and label.

Business Storytelling

This blog post is going to highlight effective story telling in public communication. Through research trying to locate a topic that relates to cooperation or cooperative business relationships I discovered a TED video by Howard Rheingold titled The new power of collaboration delivered in 2005.

His opening sentence is inviting the audience to join him in challenging past notions on how biological creatures accomplish tasks specifically humans. The preamble continues with the presentation of commonly perceived facts of human nature. The use of the term “only” is emphasized with “competition”, “winning” and “dominating” another person or group to survive. Rheingold then shifts to highlighting another perception and emerging trend across disciplines of cooperation and interdependency. As he continues he returns back to human nature to look at the past with the lens of cooperation instead of competition. Demonstrating a past not just filled with war and conflict even from our early days of nomadic life but cooperation to achieve mutual beneficial results.

Rheingold built trust and was able to communicate his ideas by creating a contrasting palate for the audience. Simple terms that appealed to the audience, which made acceptance of his narrative palatable. The use of the term “only” for oppositional thought to his thesis created a restrictive, narrow counter argument that seems ridiculous if one only thinks of the complexity of nature itself. This made it possible for the audience to accept his thesis as it was not constrained and had multiple motives for human development through both cooperation and competition. Throughout this initial discourse he also inserted terms of communication, technology and wealth. In the end his central subject is that increased open communication through technology and cooperation can develop new forms of wealth equality.

In relating this to the cooperative business model he gives some great examples of how even large companies working in an open format are able to develop economic gains not just for themselves, but for the community that jointly participated as well. The only misgiving I have with the structure of the storytelling is that it gives me a feeling of Us versus Them, those that think one narrow way and those that have a more broad perception.  It is effective speech to win over an audience but does the audience need to be won over on this topic? I say this as the target audience for TED seems to be progressive, intelligent minds especially in 2005 which was prior to TED going to an open format for all to view (2007 was the year TED Talks started publishing to the public on the Internet). Rheingold is effective in delivering his point and his overall demeanor is good for public speaking. Even his orange suit grew on me a bit.

Performing Rights Companies

Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) is a performing rights company that collects and administrates licensing for artists and publishers. Asura Records has been a BMI client since it’s inception. Publishing and rights collection is complicated in that it is an immense undertaking to monitor and track performance and utilization of one’s music in the various many forms of broadcasting. Because of this it is best served to subscribed to and register one’s work with an agency like BMI. There are several to choose from the main two being BMI and ASCAP. We chose BMI for the single reason being that most artists in our genre are also BMI artists.

BMI has many useful tools for a working musician to expand business and develop new forms of revenue. One such tool related to marketing and branding is a simple two page pdf file that outlines simple questions to ask yourself while developing a brand strategy. Another recent service is the BMI Live service, which allows performing artists to register concerts and then receive a portion of the performance licensing fees collected from venues by BMI.

BMI is active in representing artist right in legislation. This past March BMI was invited to speak in a round table with the U.S. Register of Copyrights to recommend industry best practices and help communicate the importance of intellectual property rights in the music industry.  Two recent legislative acts that highlighted a need for clearer communication and the need to protect rights while also protecting privacy of individuals were the anti-piracy acts (SOPA and PIPA).  These two acts lead to a clash over the right to fair compensation for performance/broadcast of IP and the privacy of the individual and possible censorship of websites. 

When making a choice for a performance rights company, review the needs of your business and the community of artists in your particular genre. Weigh the options of tools and the benefits that are offered by each to determine which organization will be the best fit. Please feel free to comment on this thread about your experience with any rights company or if you would like further information on my own experience.

Co-Op Record Labels and more on Direct Distribution

This article will explore research of existing Co-Operative (Co-Op) or Work-Owned record labels. While Co-Ops have existed for many years and have gained popularity since the 60s there are few advertised Co-Op record labels. 2012 is the International Year of the Cooperative, as proclaimed by the UN Division for Social Policy and Development. I will not go into depth on what constitutes a Co-Op here in this article but wanted to share some research into locating Co-Op record labels. Another ongoing stream of research into websites and services that offer artist to fan distribution and services of which is a new start-up about to launch called distro.fm.

In my research to date three Co-Op Record labels have been identified that show some success in their operations and have made it past the first couple of years as a startup business. Two exist here in the U.S. and one in Canada. The Blocks Recording Club is based in Toronto, Canada since their founding in 2003 and became a Co-Op in 2005. They host a variety of indie artists; one nice feature is that they use another Co-Op or collective to help with merchandising and sales called The Blue House. For the U.S. there is Black Cactus Records (BCR) in Phoenix, Arizona and Revolutionary Productions Artists and Musicians Cooperative (RPAMC) or Revolutionary Records in Seattle, Washington. BCR presents itself very professionally and give a good account of being a Co-Op and how the logic of combining resources and creating less duplication of effort goes a long way to freeing up individual time to focus on the art of making music. RPAMC appears much smaller in scope but highlights the purpose of passing knowledge from one generation of musicians to the next. This aspect of education to create skilled workers through community effort is the key purpose of creating Asura Records as well as the founding of systems like the Mondragon Co-Ops of Basque, Spain. Follow on articles for Co-Op record labels will explore how these organizations formed and their own business structures, which require outreach and interviews to come.

Distro.fm is a new startup non-profit company that will host artist-to-fan subscription services like you would find on Spotify.com, but the bulk of the money generated from the subscription goes directly to the artist not a tech company. This is a great concept which I will watch as they move towards their launch date. This idea combines the streaming radio trend with content that the artist can release directly to their fan base outside of traditional releases. Content can include jam sessions, concerts, art and interviews. Really it is up to the artist to devise what their fans want and make the content have value to keep them subscribed year after year. A great steady revenue stream potential in this concept especially if Distro.fm delivers on a percentage of profit sharing that beats out the competition.

Please comment to this article if you would like to share any other Co-Op record labels for my research.