Today we speak to Ivan Gospich of management firm Mandatory Music Group about music management, artist development and when a band should start considering hiring management.

RRR: How long has the Mandatory Music Group been in the business?

Mandatory Music Group officially launched in October 2008.

RRR: Where are you located?

San Jose, CA (USA)

RRR: What are some of the services you offer through the company?

Artist development, production/recording, marketing and management.

RRR: How are you different from other management companies out there?

We focus on nurturing the talents of the musicians we choose to represent, instead of trying to mold them into something we think the main stream will like and buy. When all is said and done, it truly is all about the music, not personalities.

RRR: Are there specific people you are looking for that can use your services? (Do you only accept certain people? Or if they can pay, you’ll take anyone on as a client?)

Our mission is to help great original rock artists who exhibit musicianship and meaningful messages in their music, get heard! We accept music submissions and only take on artists that we believe in.

RRR: About how many bands are currently on your roster? Give us a brief rundown of them.

The band WYLDSKY was the catalyst that inspired us to form. I first saw Tyler Nelson of WYLDSKY performing blues covers and mixing in some of his original songs in the Los Angeles area and was completely blow away by his talent, so I kept in contact with him. Speaking for myself, I’ve been growing tired of listening to the same rock music for the past 3 decades and how most current main stream music all sounds so similar. After doing a couple of years of research (thank goodness for the internet), I was pleased to discover that there are great artists out there, but with little to no representation and a lot of them ready to give up, because the entertainment business is so difficult, plus there are a lot of scammers in the business, bleeding artists pocket books and dreams. I contacted Mr. Nelson to see if he was interested in our debut, debuting him, which he accepted. Currently we have another band and artist we have our sites on, but since contracts are underway, I cannot mention their names until everything is official.

RRR: Some of the up-and-coming things that will be happening to your company?

We are currently working on marketspace marketing, partnerships with renowned booking agencies and building relationships with brick and mortar distributors in Europe & Asia. The marketspace is our biggest concern currently for the future, what works and what does not?

RRR: Who are you excited about and why?

Obviously the success of the musicians we choose to represent. Their success equals our success and WYLDSKY’s debut album has just been nominated by the founder of the LA Music Awards for a total of 4 Best-Of-2009 music awards, which is rewarding to us all.

RRR: In this world of the Internet and Web 2.0 where there are so many ways for bands to promote and book their own gigs, why do you think having a team like MMG matters?

The 3 M’s: money, management and marketing! A label is supposed to provide such to their artists, so the artists can focus on their music and performances.

RRR: At what point should a band consider signing with management?

It really depends on the band. If they’re hobbyists, do-it-yourself. Already a successful band, do-it-yourself, as long as they have good honest management, or try to workout a distribution deal with a successful label. If they are an unknown band that yearns to make music full-time, start soliciting there music to independent labels, larger labels nowadays usually only sign bands that are already a success, one of the downfalls of the industry. There are not many a&r reps willing to risk their jobs if they have their company invest in a band and the band is not a success, a sure thing is what they are looking for.

RRR: What should young bands be on the lookout for these days? What advice can you give them for avoiding common pitfalls?

Its so easy for bands to record their music nowadays, they need to record and copyright it and give the music to people who will provide them honest feedback. If the feedback is good, start working on their live performance and start playing at parties and local venues. Work on finding a good booking agent who wants to work with them, create a website and myspace page for possible fans and once they start building a fan base, start soliciting themselves to independent labels. Again, there are lots of scams and ways to throw away money in this business unfortunately. There are lots of great independent labels out there that are scouting for new talent and if they believe in the music, will handle most aspects of the 3 M’s.

http://www.mandatorymusic.com/

One such Battle of the Bands contest is Corus Radio’s 99.3 The Fox Vancouver Seeds, billed as Canada’s #1 Independent Talent Competition. With a history spanning 30 years and past winners including Bif Naked, Nickleback, Default and Matt Good amongst others, Vancouver Seeds has embraced Web 2.0 technology with the help of Toronto-based new music social network and concert production company Supernova.com.  Corina Newby from Supernova explained to me what they are doing with Vancouver Seeds:

“The Supernova white-label network created for Corus Radio’s 99.3 The FOX will host over 300 new band profiles of Fox Vancouver Seeds competitors, featuring new music tracks, artist photos and videos, as well as music exploration and voting modules.

The Supernova.com social network tools not only encourage participation from bands, but also from fans and listeners. Users can log in to listen to the competitors, share their favourite band’s music and video, and vote to help determine who wins Fox Vancouver Seeds 2009. The result is a musically immersive and interactive community, centered around the station’s talent search initiative.”

It is this kind of approach that we are seeing more and more these days and only makes sense in this Facebook/MySpace/YouTube world we are living in now. The cool thing is these Battle of the Bands allow us to all be engaged in listening and participating and voting on all these great bands which is why I am so impressed with all of this.

Some people may look down at any form of competition between bands as somehow a travesty to their art but I don’t look at it that way at all. At the very least it is a way for musicians to get a sense of where they stand from both a professional and creative standpoint and they can learn from that to build up their presence and songcraft to make for a healthy career. At the most they get a recording contract, some gear or a slot on a tour. Either way it is a win-win situation in my books.

By the way Supernova.com has compiled a radio channel with 10 awesome tracks from the finalists. You can check it out at http://www.supernova.com/music/RADIO/seeds.

So you are on the same page as I am, you can read the article at http://news.cnet.com/whats-the-real-cost-of-free-music/

Okay, so you’re back? Well, the first thing I can tell you is that as I was reading the article Mark sent me, I was listening to a CD by an artist known as Baby Huey I had ordered from a local record shop in the town where I live. There are a few of them still left here, and I try to shoot them all my business instead of hunting CDs on the web. It’s just my way – I don’t expect others to follow my lead, really, but that’s what I do. Baby Huey, just so you know, is a very obscure soul artist who released his first and only album on the Curtis Mayfield-owned Cur-Tom label back in the early ’70’s. He ended up passing away before the album was released due to health problems involving his massive girth. Due to these circumstances, the album was very rare up until Water re-issued the CD a few years ago. I have been interested in this CD since I heard some cuts on the Internet radio station Pandora about a week ago.

Just so you get the point – the article I was sent and that you just read is about Internet radio stations and I was reading the article while I was listening to a CD I first heard about through an Internet radio station, which, after I heard it, immediately put an order in for the CD and bought. In essence, I am saying that Internet radio works just like terrestrial radio used to, despite what some of these music business lunkheads are trying to make you believe. People hear the songs, they end up liking them and later buy the CDs, either from an Internet site or a store or wherever, because they want to hear more. It’s really fucking simple when you think about it. I mean, I can’t be the only one. I am not that original or that much of groundbreaking, visionary leader, quite frankly. And my point is that for some reason, the labels are fighting Internet radio tooth and nail. Unfair to artists they say, doesn’t lead to sales they say – so they try to extract a huge royalty rate from the stations – either to put them under or to offset the losses they are facing by the fall of the CD.

IT’S BULLSHIT! and just another one of the reasons that the FUCKING RECORD LABELS JUST DON’T FUCKING GET IT.

Before you say, “but Scott, the artists and labels deserve to get paid when their songs get played” – let me tell you: I agree. The old royalty system is there for a reason, and a sound one in most respects – it serves as a way for an artist and songwriter to get money when someone uses their song for their own purpose – playing on their radio station, using it in their movie, attracting someone to their product when used in a commercial etc. I agree with it.

But, in this day and age of artists/small labels having to go DIY because their is no label that wants them or the label that they’re on cannot offer support etc is that airplay on these stations is more an ADVERTISEMENT for their album and themselves than it should be for a source of revenue. Sure, if someone stands to make money by use of the artist’s work (commercial, movie use, etc) then they deserve to get paid, no question. Someone’s making some profit and the artist/songwriter deserves to share. But the average Internet radio station owner is making very little (if any) money from their endeavor. Sure, they probably get money from an advertiser here and there, but you’re talking barely enough to pay hosting fees. Pandora has tons of ads, but they can barely stay afloat. There are no DJ’s to support, but there are costs with programming the site and adding the bells and whistles that make their playlist so huge and their system so cool. Pandora is a larger system than most, but the problem is the same with Jimmy Joe’s Redneck Podcast that gets shut down because of the huge royalty fees. Internet stations have owners that are doing this for the pure love of the music they play. They are not in it for the money, they are in it to promote the music they love.

The fact that some artists and most labels fight them boggles my mind. How are people supposed to hear this music? No one is podcasting the same music heard on regular radio. Why should they? It’s either classic rock stuff that’s been programmed for the last forty years or so or new stuff that’s so obviously crap that no one who has ever really loved music would ever play any of it anyway. By and large, the stuff being played on Internet radio is underground stuff. Rare music by obscure or unsigned artists or artists so far under the radar no one could possibly hear their music except for these stations. What these stations are, instead of the so-called thieves, grave-robbers and art-stealers that major labels would have you believe they are, is the modern equivalent of someone inviting you over to their house to smoke pot and listen to music. These Internet radio people invite you over to their blogs etc. and play you the music they love in hopes you will love it too and seek to acquire the music for yourself.

But, instead of taking such airplay for the great advertisement it could be for the unreleased musical treasures buried in their vaults, voluminous back catalogs, new artists and renewed interest in artists with music unfortunately obscured by whatever bad luck befell them or, more accurately, the shitty marketing plan put in place by these same clueless labels, they seek to destroy what could ultimately save them. Just think what sales could be genereated for these labels if they used this basically new fangled word-of-mouth system correctly? Isn’t that how record-labels originally promoted their products? Word of mouth? At one time it involved listening parties and promos given to journalists and powerful tastemakers, then went to radio whenpowerful DJ’s broke songs and bands. Think of the buzz that could be generated for new artists and how many money-losers could finally turn a profit from the re-exposure if they used Internet radio correctly? But still the labels pound these pioneers and potential saviours down. That is, when they aren’t suing their very own customers when they could be spending time promoting their music.

Shit, don’t even get me started on how labels promote their releases now. All labels want to do at this point is send journalists compressed digital files that sound like shit and then they expect these music journalists (who often aren’t paid and are only doing it because they love music and are born proselytizers who want you to check out the music they dig) to write glowing reviews when they don’t even get a good representation of how the music is going to sound. Isn’t that ridiculous as hell? Imagine if the movie industry, instead of holding screenings and previews for review writers, decided to just tell every writer that reviews movies to just watch the film over the web at work on their little computer screens. Sure, it can be done, but they know better. They want to give the reviewer the same experience as the consumer without scrimping on it so the reviewer gets the “full impact” of the movie and can tell their readers the true experience. Now, it’s really not about what reviewers get and get to do, it’s the fact that the record labels are devaluing the art. When the art was valued and the music being released was treated as a “big deal”, the consumers responded in kind. With the removal of the tangible aspect, it’s more like insurance. Who gets a big buzz about buying insurance?

NO ONE.

Again, think about the lack of logic: Sending someone who loves music the crappiest version available of the music and expect them to just love it to death. Whether you’re talking about tastemakers or consumers, that makes NO FUCKING SENSE. Yeah, I would buy music at I-tunes, but you know what? It sounds like shit compared to vinyl, CD and even cassette. Why do they expect people who love music to listen to a crappy version of it?

I am not even talking about somehow discontinuing making music available on the Internet for sale. That genie is out of the bottle. Too late for that. I am talking about the music business being able to find ways to make music valuable again, to instill some sort of “value” into their products. It can be done. The massive marketing arm of the labels can do it. They know how. They’ve promoted the vinyl renaissance up the wazoo. Now, they’re even trying to kill that with their greed by pricing new vinyl at $39.99. Can you believe it? I can. They’ve just forgotten WHY music is important to people and WHY it needs to be kept affordable and tangible. Another thing they’ve forgotten is Why they have to create legacy artists instead of flash in the pans they abandon after the hit is off the charts or because their first album doesn’t see three million copies. You’d think in this day and age when albums aren’t selling that well anymore, big labels would take more chances, try to create the next Beatles.

Again, THEY KNOW HOW TO DO IT. It’s been done before. THEY’VE DONE IT. They know “how” it’s the “why” they’ve forgotten about. Why the business needs to be about long-term results instead of the short term. The short term greed is killing them the same way it has killed the financial business. The labels have forgotten how to WORK. They just want the fast money that comes from the immediate success, the big one-hit, and the fad.

And Internet radio plays against that particular business plan.

So what’s the future for these stations? How do they survive? For one, I believe artists/labels should forgo royalties for any song played on Internet podcasts or radio stations like Pandora. Radical thought, huh? But a long as the owner of said stations do not earn profits, they should not have to pay. The radio Another suggestion would be to charge subscription fees, though we know this is not the cure, as XM radio is still struggling despite having one of the most ambitious, wide-ranging playlists ever and millions of subscribers paying for the service. No, artists and labels need to realize that if they want to restore the system the way it was, or better yet, create a better system to get people to buy music – they need to find ways for people to buy music. To buy music, people need to hear the music. Since terrestrial radio is irretrievably broken, the music business must realise the pioneers of music on the Internet: the Podcasters, the radio stations – need to be allowed to play music without penalty.

I have always been in favor of the artist getting their rightful place at the table. Just as I am for the label who helps put them in the public conciousness and funds their releases. Both should profit immensely from their hard work. Each needs to other in most cases. Artists are best served by concentrating on their art and the businessmen need to leave artists alone and concentrate on maximizing what their artists create to turn each release into a moneymaker. By destroying what could lead to the renaissance of the music business, is the biggest mistake they can make. And, since the music business is being fucked up so badly now in many ways, someone needs to wise up and realize it’s time to destroy the old model and try some new things to create a new system. A system with the cornerstone in the only place their releases have a chance at being heard: Internet radio.

What do you think? Do you agree with Scott? Let’s get the debate started! Scott will respond to all comments so make your voices heard!

Seeing how this was my first SXSW, I wasn’t sure what to be prepared for, but I will say this, the amount of talent I saw was purely amazing. I spent 5 days and 5 nights checking out wicked amounts of music as I was at SXSW filming episodes for a tv show I work on for an artist I do pr with Empire ISIS.

When arriving in Austin be prepared for overcrowded streets and music blazing out every bar, street corner and outdoor stage that is setup in the downtown core. I spent some of my days walking around hitting various tents that offered free booze, food and cigarettes. I was quite overwhelmed everywhere I went.

In my opinion, SXSW is the Mecca of all Music conferences and festivals, where music enthusiasts, industry and artists gather for one week of enjoying music and networking 24/7.

And 24/7 it was for me, there wasn’t a night where I got back to the house where I was staying and it be 6am and I had to be up by 10am to start the day all over again. I ended up everywhere you can imagine, everything from the Canadian Blast to back stage access at the Fader Fort and Afro Punk showcase in the Austin Music Hall.

Where to start about my adventures, I’m not too sure, so let me mention what I saw, who I met and who impressed me. On one of the days , I ended up at the Canadian Blast mostly because of the free grub and I knew friends of mine would be there for sure. I have to say that Two Hour Traffic and The Arkells were awesome to watch while I was stuffing my face with food and began drinking a little early. Note to everyone! There is free booze everywhere and it can be dangerous in the hot Austin sun! A good amount of showcases I had scheduled of who I wanted to see never went as planned. I soon realized on my first day, nothing would work out because you go to one showcase and you stay there longer than planned because you make new friends and would listen to one great band after another. I sometimes felt I needed a twin to go everywhere else I couldn’t.

So during SXSW, I ended up to be at the right place at the right time as I was also down filming episodes for Empire ISIS’ tv show on Musique Plus , which helped in getting access to some great shows and artists. The list is long but just to round it up where I was and who I met this list sums a good amount.

One artist I bumped into was Lady Sovereign who is even smaller than me and if you ever knew me you know I’m a short guy but taller than guitarist Mikey of the Leather Arms Experiment. That one’s for you Mikey!

I have to say the top three places I ended up during my SXSW were mostly urban and electro music due to the priority of the tv show, but these were some happening places. The Levi’s Fader Fort was probably the best spot of all of SXSW even though it really wasn’t officially part of the festival. But I did have chance to check out Kanye West, Common, Jada Kiss, Kid Cudi, Janelle Monae. My next top spot was the Afro Punk showcase where I hung backstage and got to meet K’Naan who is a phenomenal and talented artist from Somalia and now calls Toronto his home. I also met fellow Canadian Colin Munroe who is mix of Indie Rock and Hip Hop Influence and was quite interesting to see. But the biggest artist of all was BIG BOI! Who most people know from OutKast rocked out a show that was just incredible. He’s a true artist that had an amazing kick ass rock band with him and I even got two feet away from legendary producer Quincy Jones, who was hanging backstage too. WOW!! The third top spot was the Valient Thorr show, this was just amazing and crazy, but what really impressed me was the band before them, Big Elf. I caught their last two songs and they blew me away with their old school rock influences and huge organs.

My honourable mentions go to the following other spots I hit while at SXSW. On my first night I stumbled into a bar called Troubadour where I saw this amazing jam band called Forrest Day. These guys were just so entertaining with a big band sound that they had the room dancing. Another honourable mention goes to the Live Lounge showcase which showcased rock talent from Ottawa and I ended up checking it out because I heard great things about the band St. Joe’s Mission and I have to say I wasn’t disappointed at all. These guys have put together a kick ass stage set and a lot of great rock n roll tunes with a variety of influences. I got a copy of their album and haven’t stopped listening to it, especially their song “The Reigns”. I just can’t stop listening to it!

Overall, the SXSW experience was well worth it and I’m looking forward to next year’s. From meeting industry to meeting artists this is have to be on the to do music industry list. I really enjoyed meeting artists and industry who were so genuine and serious about the music business. My favourite was probably Sam Roberts who was extremely relaxed and excited about his showcases when I met him for an interview for the tv show. One last thing I like to mention is that I noticed at SXSW that there were popularity contests going for showcases and parties. It’s all about who can bring the most people and most important people to their showcases and it ranged from the Perez Hilton party, which I attended and wasn’t too amazed by, to the Red Bull Party, which was so much fun, full of energy (maybe due to red bull) and full of great amount of artists performing.

I recommend to everyone to check out SXSW at least few times in their life. It’s well worth it!

Jon Asher – Music Publicist
www.ashermediarelations.com
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“In the music world, doing it yourself is essential at the moment, and so I’m looking forward to seeing what will be discussed.” – Huw Stephens

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