Digital Killed the Radio Star |
Pop Echo Records is taking a single-minded approach to marketing the next big thing
by Scott Messenger
Travis Dieterman and Graham Johnson once operated Edmonton-based Pop Echo Records with a mindset they call “the last big score.” Less business plan than exit strategy, it started in December 2004, when they released a vinyl single featuring a local band they hoped would sell well enough to let them (and now Vancouver-based partner Jeremy Franchuk) trade day jobs for full-time gigs running their independent record label.
“When we started out,” says label manager Dieterman, “we figured we’ll get an ad, we’ll get one little review and then we’ll just wait for the sales to roll in.”
Johnson laughs. “It’ll be the next Blue Monday,” the design manager recalls thinking, referencing the 1983 million-plus-selling single by British electro-pop group New Order. “It’s just that easy.”
It was not. Sales did, however, fund the following project, which fed the next and so on, until Pop Echo was releasing CDs for bands across Canada, two or three a year.
But by fall 2009, U.S. album sales were down nearly 24% from 2007, a slide that had begun around 2000, mostly due to digital downloads. Feeling the pinch, Pop Echo made a change.
“We’ve gone full circle,” says Johnson, “with revisions.”
Profit on a full-length disc depends on the band’s ability, and willingness, to perform. But as Pop Echo has experienced, many bands fail to tour; others jump labels or break up. And even if they draw mention from an influential music blog – the new radio, according to Dieterman – sales focus on referenced tracks, which buyers cherry-pick online, ignoring the rest of the album. In short, the average return on a CD tends to be far less than the $10,000 or so of front-end investment.
In response, Pop Echo has borrowed from the single-oriented industry of the 1950s and 60s, producing seven-inch, two- or three-track vinyl records, like its first release. “We’re finding the return is almost the same” as a CD release, says Dieterman. Requiring investment of about $1,200, the vinyl format eases cost recovery, especially when supported by download sales – “the free money,” as Dieterman puts it. “Break even on the first run of the physical and then the digital is all profit.”
The new model, based on sales of anywhere from $1 for a digital track to $7 for a seven-inch, probably rules out overnight success. So far, though, the current plan seems viable. Since last November, when Pop Echo produced a three-song record by another group of Edmonton up-and-comers, it has sold most of the first pressing in advance of a summer tour. At least six other singles are scheduled for release in 2010.
“There’s no last big score with this,” says Dieterman. To them, having been able to be creative enough to keep slightly ahead of trends in a volatile industry is sufficient accomplishment for now.
“That’s why we have survived,” says Johnson.
