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Unsigned? want to get signed? read more....


mcrmusic

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Hold it kids!

I've seen bands come and I've seen bands go over the past four decades or so - and one thing is certain. Each and every band that has reached a certain level will get looked at and apraised by the major lables.

They are looking for

1. A following.

2. Talent. (i.e. the band is made of musicians who play at a professional standard).

3. GOOD TUNES.

4. Stage craft.

5. Photogenic looks.

If you have ever played a major club or event' date=' yoiu will have been looked at. They will ask themselves if the band on stage can tick those five boxes. Maybe you are so good that they might want you even if you do not have good tunes or if the drummer can't keep the beat. Tunes can be bought and you can throw out the poor drummer and get a good one.[/quote']

I would dispute a few of those points as it reads from the fifties... There are nemerous bands around these days that fly in the face of (no I can't be arsed naming and I don't know the names of some I have seen around) the sexpected A&R practise and the music industry is so broad these days the normal rules barely apply... There are still standard basics that everyband must consider but above all sellability and originality rank pretty high. Beel and Sebastian and also The Magic Numbers are hardly bonnie bands are they proving the point that you just bever know... Good tunes is a given though, which is a talent...

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top tip

type,read,read again ,post ....Ta ta ta ta da da TAAA dAAAAAA no need to edit Wahey....why not go to see 16again at The Lemon Tree on Sat instead,they are better than all this namby pamby shite masquerading as entertainment shennanigans and hours spent swearing at TVs and computers. revolt NOW

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it depends where the potential market lies, a band like oasis will always have hoards of folk tripping over each other to get tickets because they identify with the attitude they exude and want to share in the experience of seeing them live - the energy. i dare say the magic numbers have a sizeable following in the ugly and overweight crowd (no pun or offence intended but you see where i'm coming from?) just as zappa will always have huge support from the pretentious, know it all crowd.

i think the 5 rules listed by the byre are valid but essentially where theres a market for a band, theres every chance someone will pick them up and help them out to meet it. boxes ticked or not.

i know that simplifies things.. and you can never use absolutes, it can come from anywhere.

thats a very corporate sounding point i just made, for which i will now go and saw my penis off with the sharpened and reshaped point of a snapped drum stick.

its only fair after all.

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If an artist even smells like having an alternative career' date=' they will stay away from him / her / them as they were infected with something nasty.[/quote']

Complete and utter bollocks. What the hell are bands supposed to do until they get signed? Busk in the street?

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Complete and utter bollocks. What the hell are bands supposed to do until they get signed? Busk in the street?

Live in their van. Travel from city to city making enough money to get to the next one and maybe pick up some food along the way. Hoping they land at someones house who can screen tshirts and happens to have a load spare that he's willing to give you if you send him the money once they're all done. Selling as much demo's to get the music out there and heard. Plugging the 7" if theres one. Eventually getting home to the parents to catch up, record a new record, pay off the tshirt guy and borrow money from friends to get more done, the new record pressed, get out on the road and do it all again for the next four months. Its a way of life. One I kissed goodbye when I became a dad at 17....

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Complete and utter bollocks. What the hell are bands supposed to do until they get signed? Busk in the street?

I meant by that, they will not touch you if you are a lawyer or have some other career that pays a good salery and has a well-defined career path. Obviously musicians need to eat, but if you are a dentist and cound be earning 60k, sleeping in the back of an unheated van on piles of unsold CDs in the South of Germany in mid-winter may not appeal to you.

If you can tick all the boxes, getting signed is fairly easy. It is then that the hard part starts. Some lables are very supportive and provide hotels and tour dates and get you good instruments and orgaise your lives in general (all against advances on your forgivable debt of course!) and some do very little. Usually the majors are supportive and the small companies are less so. But that is not always the case, particularly if you are singed to a two- or three-deep lable (a lable that belongs to a lable that belongs to a lable).

Most bands on getting signed, expect to be on Top of the Pops within weeks, months at the latest. In reality, it could be years before any real career starts to take off. Until then you end up supporting the lable's headliners until you can pull a couple of thousand bums onto seats on your own name.

I can think of musicians who have spent decades working the second rung circuit before getting tours as headliners. Government Mule is one of my favorite bands right now and these guys have been around for God knows how long under different formations until they got to do their own tours. Ganddaddy is another. Both fantastic bands and well worth watching live BTW. These guys are well into middle age and are only now slowly making names for themselves. The Darkness did not come from nowhere suddenly - they had been slogging around Europe for twelve years before they were an 'overnight success.'

There is also the Merillion and Arctic Monkeys question. In other words, is there in today's market, any point in having a lable pushing you when these guys did it without any lable support?

Put it another way, if you can create a hype and a following, why bother with lables? The lables are interested in bands and other acts that can fill halls. But if you can fill halls, you have the means and finances to be your own lable.

Conversely, if you cannot fill halls, no lable can help you.

I think, on reflection, that if I were a young artist today and I had the chance, I would sign with a lable if it is a good lable that provides support and gives me at least a two-CD deal with touring and a set release date, both for the CDs and from the contract. It is, after all, a great way to learn the business and get started.

But I would body-swerve these vanity publishing deals from Messers Dooee, Cheatem & Howe . . .

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I meant by that' date=' they will not touch you if you are a lawyer or have some other career that pays a good salery and has a well-defined career path.[/quote']

When will you get bored being wrong all the time..... Pallas have been signed twice....

1983 EMI and more recently by Inside\out and Graeme the bass player is a lawyer.... and before you say "hes only the bass player" he formed the band and is the main song writer.

Im sure there are gizillions of other examples....

Can I just say that your coments are a little black or white... the world is full of shades of grey.

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It's the other way about! They all studied music first.

I should have added to my list' date=' the industry is also looking for total commitment. If an artist even smells like having an alternative career, they will stay away from him / her / them as they were infected with something nasty.[/quote']

how would you explain the likes of; snow patrol and idlewild who were picked up at university? you cant expect an unsigned band to fund itself?

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Yes, I am generalising and yes, there are always exceptions to any 'rule' if indeed it is a rule. But this is a forum, not a book manuscript. What I was trying (and failing?) to say is that any lable, management, agency etc., is looking for is someone who is going to stay the course and not duck and run as soon as things start to get tough.

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Interesting points' date=' but I don't understand this bit.

I'm also slightly perturbed that you can't spell 'label'...[/quote']

I too am peturbed. It's one of those typing things, like getting the letters in my own name the wrong way around and then never spotting the mistake. Still, I could have written ladle!

But on the other point, Marillion and Artic Monkeys are (according to the news etc.) unsigned bands that use the Internet and gigging only to create a fan base. They use labels (I paid attention that time!) only for distribution. As I do not know the ins and outs of the story, I cannot comment on whether this is true or whether it is another example of industry hype, but it does serve to illustrate a point.

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But on the other point' date=' Marillion and Artic Monkeys are (according to the news etc.) unsigned bands that use the Internet and gigging only to create a fan base. They use labels (I paid attention that time!) only for distribution. As I do not know the ins and outs of the story, I cannot comment on whether this is true or whether it is another example of industry hype, but it does serve to illustrate a point.[/quote']

It is nothing more than hype. I think "the industry" is desperate to cultivate an image of being intouch with the "internet generation" and people like the artic monkeys and the test icicles are their PR babies. The music industry behemoths are always going to find a way to adapt to new mediums and these 2 bands are prime examples. It's a con.

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It is nothing more than hype. I think "the industry" is desperate to cultivate an image of being intouch with the "internet generation" and people like the artic monkeys and the test icicles are their PR babies. The music industry behemoths are always going to find a way to adapt to new mediums and these 2 bands are prime examples. It's a con.

mmm... me thinks you give the 'industry' (and by that I mean the majors) way too much credit - they really haven't a clue at the moment.

A good example of this is the fact that the CEO of HMV resigned last week because of the devasting Christmas results - a huge swathe of their business has gone this year to internet retailers considerably more than they predicted. Agreed HMV are not the music industry but they are a very good barometer to the state of the retail music industry in the UK, and one of the main outlets for the material punted by the majors.

A second example is how some of the majors are quibbling with Mr Jobs or how much they want tracks to sell for in iTunes. They're strangling their own golden goose, iTunes sells over 1 million tracks per day and climbing rapidly, to me this shows just how lost the majors are.

The Byre speaks a lot of sense, its just laced in that cynicism that seems to hit you post 30 ;-)

Yes Pallas got a deal with Graeme still working as a lawyer, but maybe that then explains why The Wedge was then suffed in favour of Talk Talk their label rivals. Proving once again that being signed is far from making it...

Oh and getting back to the topic of this thread - buy that book its invaluable and certainly worth 40 - the only references I've seen better than this are pro industry ones costing several hundred. I bought mine last year, and just away to order this years...

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Yes Pallas got a deal with Graeme still working as a lawyer' date=' but maybe that then explains why The Wedge was then suffed in favour of Talk Talk their label rivals. Proving once again that being signed is far from making it...

[/quote']

What does suffed mean?

Why would Graeme's previous employment affect something that happened three years after they were signed?

The only label rivals that effected Pallas while signed to EMI were Marillion.

In the years that I was professionaly involved with Pallas Talk Talk were never mentioned.

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Guest Neubeatz
sell sell sell buy buy buy sell sell sell sell buy buy buy

the "business" can go and fuck itself

If you look at the charts, there is evidence that it enjoys such self gratification. ;)

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What does suffed mean?

Why would Graeme's previous employment affect something that happened three years after they were signed?

The only label rivals that effected Pallas while signed to EMI were Marillion.

In the years that I was professionaly involved with Pallas Talk Talk were never mentioned.

Sorry that word was meant to be stuffed.. thats what happens when I post while on the train..

I thought Graeme was still working as a lawyer in some capacity when the Wedge was released ?

I remember going to the album launch in Virgin records - that used to be next to the music hall - think its now the P&J shop - and he turned up in a suit cause he'd been with a client.

Talk Talk and Pallas were siigned on the same label at the same time. Had the marketing budget been spent on Pallas instead of Talk Talk maybe things would be different (for a few years)

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Sorry that word was meant to be stuffed.. thats what happens when I post while on the train..

I thought Graeme was still working as a lawyer in some capacity when the Wedge was released ?

I remember going to the album launch in Virgin records - that used to be next to the music hall - think its now the P&J shop - and he turned up in a suit cause he'd been with a client.

Talk Talk and Pallas were siigned on the same label at the same time. Had the marketing budget been spent on Pallas instead of Talk Talk maybe things would be different (for a few years)

No he went pro as a musician before they even signed to EMI, the Wedge was their second album with the label, they promoted the wedge for several months after its release.

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