Music-sharing is music industry’s best hope for viability: Fading Ways label chief

Current music industry woes are partly the hangover of the excesses of the 1980s, argues the head of a small Toronto indie label hoping to reverse trends with a new business model. Neil Leyton, head of Fading Ways Records Ltd., says the amount of money being spent to promote artists is untenable in the current economic climate, but that record labels can effectively use the Internet and album-sharing by fans to build the long-term careers of artists. Toward that end, Fading Ways recently announced it would put out eight new releases this year under the so-called "Creative Commons" licence framework, essentially letting fans share, copy and trade the music however they want so long as the use is non-commercial. Fading Ways was founded in 1996 and has operated on an almost cooperative basis since then. Artists on the roster retain all rights to their music and Leyton takes no salary from the company. Instead he is also distributed on the label and makes his living from his music. He says the idea is not to pad the pockets of label executives but to plough money back into the bands Fading Ways represents. "There’s a bunch of us who feel that major label spending in order to push a product is just beyond the realm of what’s reasonable and acceptable. It makes the break-even point per release so unattainable in today’s business climate and economic environment that it’s just unrealistic to sort of try to make that model - which was basically an ’80s decade business model - to try to keep sustaining that business model with the salaries of the major label staff and the salaries of the record producers behind each release," Leyton says. Without the resources of a major label to promote a handful of artists to hundreds of thousands of record sales, Fading Ways is instead hoping the quality of its roster and word-of-mouth advertising will build long-term careers for its artists - a different approach from the current bubble-gum-pop-focused releases by the majors. "What I think happened is that the focus shifted when music sales started slowing down in the ’90s. Their focus went from career artists like Springsteen...they might have started hiring more accountants and lawyers to run the labels instead of more creative people. Their only concern was the so-called opening weekend sales, or the release sales. If something doesn’t go mega, if people don’t buy the million copies of a record in the first week of release, to them that’s a failure. To sign somebody like Springsteen or another singer/songwriter who may not make that million mark doesn’t make sense to them, so they’re going to find the younger girls who can expose some flesh and try to meet those unrealistic and unattainable over time sales marks. And they’re going to push those products not with a Springsteen who releases a record with 12 great songs on it, but they’re going to push it with one or two very, very catchy pop songs. "I think that may work over a certain period of time, but a lot of these kids who are buying these records - well, they’re either going to be sued by the (Recording Industry Association of America) and stop buying music altogether, or they’re going to grow up to be Springsteen fans in the long term." Leyton concedes that artists on his smaller scale, differently-focused label are making a choice to work outside the star system that promotes a handful of artists at the expense of the majority and that helping those artists survive requires special measures. To that end, Fading Ways will now begin releasing its albums under the Creative Commons licence - a way, Leyton says, to promote bands that fans might not otherwise hear. The label, for quality reasons, isn’t putting the tracks online - Leyton is a purist who prefers the sound of vinyl - but Fading Ways won’t try to stop people from sharing music files on networks such as Kazaa, or burning CD copies for their friends. "When people here hear these things what will make them go out and buy the record? It’s very simple…I think that the quality of the product is such that if somebody hears something for free, they’re going to go, wow, this is really amazing. I want this in my record collection. It’s the difference, again, between buying a record by a career artist like Elvis Costello, or Elliott Smith, or somebody who’s a songsmith, that are good at what they do, and recognizing it for what it is, instead of disposable pop." He adds: "We’re saying, hey, if you want to share this with people, feel free. We’re not going to go after you for it." The music isn’t entirely free for the taking, however. Fading Ways will help facilitate the placement of its artists’ music into film and television, commercial usages for which full rights are paid. Publishing rights are normally retained by the artists and Fading Ways functions only superficially as a publishing company, Leyton says. While most artists in the stable do their own recording, Fading Ways will offer producing services - normally with Steve Payne - but the company pays for the producer out of its 50% of the proceeds from the record. While an artist may only sell five or ten thousand copies of a record at a time, Leyton says the long-term relationship with the fans will be stronger and that the focus under Fading Ways has been put back on the music. "I’m 32 and when I grew up listening to my treasured vinyl records, I sort of took the copyright logo on the back to mean that I couldn’t go out, manufacture a vinyl record, and sell it for profit. But now kids these days are being called thieves. What does that do to the psyche of a 12-year-old who downloads something from the Internet and that’s now labeled stealing when, in fact, that’s not what copyright was intended for in the first place? You try opening a dialog with people in the industry about these concepts. I’ve been called everything from a communist to a fascist…It’s mind-boggling. You’d think that in today’s society, free speech blah blah - but when you threaten people’s livelihoods, people working in the industry making shitloads of money for very little actual work, it’s something else."

Music-sharing is music industry’s best hope for viability: Fading Ways label chief

News | 03/03/2004 5:00 am EST

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