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From the Front Lines-Backyard Tire Fire-part 3

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Submitted By: JohnMC | Added On: 5/7/2007 | Total Views (736) | Total Downloads: (0)

In my last column, I described how we’d wasted quite a bit of money on publicists who weren’t able to deliver anything, or in other words they delivered exactly what they promised. Anyway, lucky for us, the radio promoters we paid have done great work, getting us airplay on over 200 college stations, and the AAA non-commercial promoter got plays on the majority of those stations across the US. We’ve gotten a lot of airplay in various European countries too, especially Germany, where we’ve actually sold as many cds as in the US. Online radio is doing well for us too. (We’re all for pirate online radio, without regulation)… While we need the press too, it seems the radio success has made up for our lack press to a point. So what do you do when you get momentum in an area like radio? You spend more money…whether you have it or not. Labels are basically banks, that do something no regular bank would ever do, loan bands money based solely on talent, motivation, work ethic, and a gut feeling. When a band signs with a label, the label is agreeing to spend a certain amount to record, manufacture, and promote the band. The up-front costs are almost always 100% recoupable, meaning the label keeps 100% of the sales until they recover the money they’ve spent. So when we build any momentum at all for a band, no matter how much the original budget called for, we have to change plans. If there’s a promoter that can take what you’ve done and build on it, you find the money somewhere. So now we’re doing commercial radio promo for Backyard Tire Fire. They have a great tour schedule with Clutch through May, we’re in most indie and major retail stores across the nation, and the airplay continues, so we’ll know soon if we did the right thing. If the end-game is cd sales, that happens at the live shows 10-20 to 1 compared to retail sales, so it’s easy for us to track, and we don’t have to wait to get paid for them by our distributor. A band that tours like BTF (they were #13 in the US for dates played last year) builds a fanbase the old way, they earn it by word of mouth about the live show and the songs. A band that does that can have longevity that keeps them from being a flash-in-the-pan, they can pay the label back very quickly for a new release. That kind of cash flow allows the label to keep re-investing it in the band, and it becomes a machine that keeps running. If the label can keep costs down, and if the momentum continues to build, money can still be made in this business, but there’s got to be a team working hard all the time to make that happen. Stay tuned!

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