Getting Past the Plastic

Indie Artists Look for Debt-Free Funding for Upcoming Albums

By Matt Parish

Outside of getting signed and banking on a label’s riches, bands have for decades taken the time-tested method of gambling on their own future fame and glory by putting themselves into piles of debt to credit cards, generous friends and parents. Sure, it seems like a good idea at the time — “Don’t worry everyone, this is all for the best cause ever — buying a gas-guzzling used van so we can drive across country and promote our home-recorded CDRs.”

But times are changing. And while nothing will ever beat the thrill of burying yourself in calls from credit agencies for your art, self-starting musicians are getting more sensible. Last year’s West Coast cover artists Maktub just finished putting out a record completely paid for by fans up front before they even went into production, handing out “executive producer” titles to pre-payers. And they’re not the only ones who are doing it. Going straight to consumers for investment is becoming a real option not only for bands starting out with no capital, but also for bands sick of the major label financial runaround.

In March, former Interscope Records artist Annie Hardy (from Giant Drag), posted a blog on her MySpace page that included a PayPal button and a message urging fans to click and donate money so she can get started on her next album. “Even if it’s just because you are riddled with guilt from illegally downloading the first album and you feel the need to repent, any reason will do and every penny counts,” she wrote.

The move by Hardy is kind of like the first time you see your uncle in line at the unemployment office, but it could be a more traditional, honorable approach than it seems at first. What’s to separate the online change cup-rattling approach from the subway musician and the traveling bards from hundreds of years ago? Who’s really laughing, the indie bands eating PB&Js for months on the road to recoup their last album or the folk singers on the street and wedding band cheeseballs who haven’t had to work a day job in their whole life? Maybe indie musicians are ready to stop looking down their noses at people who actually worry about where the money’s coming from.

And don’t worry, there will be people to help. Companies like SellaBand and Slicethepie have jumped in to formalize the fan/investor transition. Both work in a similar manner — tap the bands’ online fanbases (“MySpace friends,” in less business-speak) to get money up front for big-budget recording projects in exchange for free CDs or downloads and “shares” in the album’s returns. The model seems decidedly less indie than what most artists would be raising on own — the goal for every band to even get hooked up with studio time is $50k.

Both companies are based overseas thanks to prickly anti-gambling laws in the U.S., apparently. And while there aren’t any breakout SellaBand artists yet, there have been some notable stories — Cubworld getting through the investment gauntlet to land in a studio with Gwen Stefani’s producers, for example.

To be sure, the model is a long way from Maktub and Hardy’s grassroots approach. Slicethepie even uses a rating system, so that only bands ranked in the top two percent of the site’s roster by member reviewers will qualify for funding (and the reviewers are paid for their reviews, even more if their reviews turn out to actually reflect the overall ratings of the artist). In the end, it sounds like a twisted high school popularity contest held at a stock exchange, and who knows when and if the model will ever make anyone any money. But both these companies and the humble PayPal-ers seem to at least agree on one major detail: something’s broken that needs to be fixed.