We’re always on the lookout for new websites featuring unsigned music and opportunities for unsigned bands to promote themselves. EyeSeeSound.tv came to our attention a couple of months ago and have been releasing a stream of internet TV shows, mixtapes and specially recorded live performances. We caught up with one of the founders, Julian Bowman.
[IndieLab] The site has everything from mixtapes to live sessions, how do you discover the artists you feature and how can artists get in contact with you with music for you to review etc?
[Julian from EyeSeeSound.tv] Ah, the pain and joy of discovering the bands that we’ve managed to feature. Initially we simply trawled through MySpace and a couple of other sites of that ilk, working through the friends of bands we had found and liked, simply listening to lots and lots AND LOTS of music on a poorly coded social networking platform (cheers MySpace!). Unfortunately a lot of what we heard was either not really ready yet, simply not to our taste or in keeping with our ethos and vision of ESS. But, and this is the joyous side of things, after spending ages clicking, listening, clicking, listening, ad-infinitum, when you do find an amazing DIY, independent or unsigned band that is different, musically articulate and intelligent, and exhilaratingly exciting then it makes all those previous hours melt away. Truly.
Since things have taken off a bit more we do get PR companies popping bands through to us, though I think we’ve only shown an interest in 4 or 5 as mostly I think we’re just seen as another possible media outlet and, well I guess every PR company has to believe in who they’re pushing but we don’t always see it… Sometimes the bands are good, but just not our cup of tea.
As for bands getting in touch: some do, they send us links to their MySpace, which is great and flattering, but again I don’t think they actually look at the site and what we do but rather see us another potential publicity platform and so almost all the bands who have contacted us simply haven’t been ready and/or right. A recent exception though, just to prove it isn’t a closed shop, are Varney & Sons, unsigned students at the University of Birmingham who heard about us and we simply adored. We put their song Snobs onto one of our mix tapes (an adorable indie pop gem vaguely reminiscent of Nothing But Flowers in places) and they came down and did a live session with us .
[IL] How & where do you record the live sessions? Any tips for people wanting to do something similar to promote their music?
[Julian] We hire out The Luminaire in Kilburn. It’s a proper (and wonderful) live venue with a great space both on stage and off it. We get a soundman thrown in with the costs (we love Amir) and record the live session onto an Alesis HD-24 digital recording desk. We then mix and master the wavs in Logic. We have been doing 5 bands in a 12 hour day but we’re about to drop it to 4 as it was a little too much.
This isn’t an ideal scenario for recording nice clean sound… there’s lots of spill into each mic, but the whole point is that we love live music and the energy and rawness of it and we want people to see that these bands can deliver live and hopefully go “yes, I want to see them”… so for us it works. And in fact most the bands we’ve recorded have been bloody exciting live. I can truly recommend going to watch them.
As for doing something similar: well, it’s costly. We shoot with 4 cameras and experimented with a 5th in the last session which we may keep. That costs a bit, even though we own 2 of them. The venue space costs and you need a decent stage and soundman who knows what’s he’s doing. Simon and I are lucky in the fact our skill sets allow us to mix, master, edit and then colour grade the footage to make it look like it does. If you need to hire people in to do this then that is going to cost a bit as it takes a fair bit of time.
We have discussed offering what we do as a paid service though if we were to record 5 songs with a band the whole deal would probably cost around £2500. Which is a lot of money but it does equate to 5 music videos, 5 mp3s and a sellable DVD.
[IL] The shows you do look like a lot of fun to produce, what’s the source of all of the ideas and do you think this sort of DIY niche internet music show is going to be the way of the future rather than mainstream media shows?
[Julian] There is a fair bit of headache involved in producing The Show, we got lucky finding Emily and Pete (presenters) and they are a joy to work with. Not that we are wishing them away but we hope that both go onto more mainstream bigger productions as they’re both great!
The ideas come from Simon and me… and our inability to forget we’re no longer of student age. We’re both culture lovers and love the theory of post modernity, referencing things from our cultural past & things that made us laugh or are just a bit random. I’m also quite obsessed with narrative, which is why each episode has a loose narrative arc and the first series has a loose narrative arc. If you watch all the bits with the presenters over the whole six shows we tell a slightly sardonic failed love story which ends in premeditated murder on Christmas day. The most important thing for us was to not use Emily and Pete as traditional presenters so an unwritten rule of thumb was “if it could be on T4, don’t do it!”
In my opinion DIY TV can, and should, be the next evolutionary step of media. The biggest current problem is the ability of DIYers to do something of quality with high production values on a low budget… and to find a way to pay for it. We haven’t tried to make a penny yet (although we’re about to start trying – did I mention we’re going to be selling DVDs?) but it is costly. For us we believe in the project as a whole so we have simply stuck our savings and earnings from real life into this project and muddled through with a business plan which can be boiled down to ‘build it and they will come’. So there are obstacles to the DIY scene. But it is already happening.
The most important thing to note about this discussion is that the way people consume their TV is changing. I no longer use my TV unless I’m watching a DVD. I will catch up with some on the iPlayer whilst other people will use You Tube or go to websites. Sure, watching TV on the sofa won’t become obsolete, but there is going to be a big shift away from it with younger and culturally aware audiences who are tired of the same sterile lowest common denominator product the mainstream delivers. DIY allows you to be riskier and more experimental because, on the whole, you’re doing it with your own cash and time and skills.
[IL] The website says “The web is enabling us, regular people, to compete with the establishment on a more level playing field. And in fact, we, regular people, have an advantage if we stop trying to follow the old business model and blag our way to fame and fortune. The value of music, in terms of pound and dollars for tangible goods has fallen… and well it should, but the value of music in terms of nourishing the mind and soul will never diminish… and now there is a chance to make that the most important value… and make a fair living at the same time.”
This is bold stuff! Do you think the leveling of the playing field has made it harder for fans to discover genuinely good music or made it harder to find now that literally anyone can publish a song to world in minutes? With the possibility of the value of recorded music being reduced to virtually nothing do you have any other ideas how artists can fund themselves and their creative projects? Are live shows and merchandise the way forward or have you any other ideas?
[Julian] Right, this is an important question for us, so thanks for asking it.
It is bold, but it’s also true. One of the fundamental flaws of modern capitalism is that it is based on a premise of, and need for, continual expansion, and with the possible exception of my ego (on occasion) nothing can perpetually expand!
The old music industry business model was based upon screwing people. Screwing artists by billing them for all advanced costs and paying them peanuts on the gross of the income that came in. Screwing punters by charging £15 a CD for years then belatedly coming down to £12 or £10 (which is still too high) and making 90% of those CDs fundamentally shit. There is this huge outcry from labels that P2P is killing the music business and causing a short-fall in sales and a huge loss of revenue, but this argument is much like most arguments from big corporations wanting to perpetuate a status quo that inflates their profits… a fallacy. The figures they band around about the lost revenue are fabricated and unrealistic, but more pertinently I believe that the reason CD sales have dropped is people are tired of getting shafted.
We have met a fair few bands who have produced albums of bloody high quality for very low costs. Sure, you’re still talking thousands, but not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. They prove you don’t need to spend ridiculous amounts to record something of value. If they then sell it themselves, or through some of the independent outlets who won’t mark it up 100% to cover their own costs, then their music can be available to buy at an appealing price. If you were offered a 10 track download album complete with artwork for £3.50 by a band you had seen or heard then you are far more likely to take the punt. If you offer the same person that download album for £8… well.
But the thing I think that bands and artists really need to get their head around is that in the long run, unless you’re ridiculously lucky recorded music isn’t where you will make your living. Gigging and merchandise will always give bands an opportunity to earn more money though the caveat to that is that the live music scene in this country has to stop thinking it’s a money making mafia and start treating bands more fairly and with more respect.
Bands should be giving away their singles. A single mp3 for free to promote the album or a 3 or 4 track downloadable EP for £1 where the other three songs aren’t on the album. They should want to get their songs onto peoples iPods. Embedding themselves into that person’s musical life. If their album is available at £3.50 for a download or £5 for a CD then they’ll probably buy it. Then maybe they’ll go to a gig. , buy a t-shirt, tell their friends, copy them the album and those friends will love them. It’s a slow business model & it takes a lot of graft. You won’t be on MTV’s cribs but you can carve a long-term career out of it .
[IL] What does 2010 hold for Eye See Sound? What plans are in the pipeline?
[Julian] Ulcers, poverty and a breakdown or two probably!
Actually, we have kind of a loose plan. We’ve been doing this for 8 or 9 months now and we knew that first and foremost we needed to get content onto the site, evolve our ideas and refine our execution of them. We feel that we’ve spent 8 months publicly getting ready to start, and now we’re ready. The site has 6 episodes of the Show (series one), 6 mix tapes and 14 live sessions with another 7 completed and 5 recorded. And we’re going to introduce a new format called Heads Up. So we’re ready. Now it’s all about letting people hear about us, and through us the bands we feature, and hopefully they’ll like what we’re doing and keep returning, and what some of the bands are doing and fall in love with them and help the DIY scene grow and flourish.
We are starting to sell DVDs of the Live Sessions, but they are a lot more than the three songs you get on the site. They are being designed and delivered as collectibles using good quality materials and Simon’s artwork is gorgeous. The bands have seen the value and are adding extras to make them collectible and we’re only going to sell them for £5 (50/50 deal with the bands). We remember how excited we got about bands as kids and how we’d buy the 7″, 10″, 12″ and LP if we loved a band, we’d like these DVDs to be something that people will see value in as collectibles from these acts.
We also would like to start putting gigs on under our name with bands we’ve done Live Sessions with. We know, as we’ve seen them, that these nights will be great musically, and again our hope is enough people will trust our love of music and musical tastes to think “yep, lets go to an ESS gig” not necessarily even knowing who is on.
When our ego’s are expanding we want to be a catalyst (one of many) for the DIY scene to expand and grow and for music lovers, who both make and listen to music, to reclaim music from Capitalism.