And your ears shall hear…

Tunecore and Universal, Happy Ever After:)?

The Radstarr EP
The Radstarr EP

In a nutshell, Tunecore is a sort of record label, if you want to call it that,  for Independent Musicians.  You don’t get signed to them per say, but they offer a great way to get your music in front of people.  Whether it’s through the pressing of cheap CD’s for musicians/bands, or allowing them to put your single/album in countless digital music stores for a small fee, they offer a very smooth system for helping musicians accomplish some lofty goals.  Without Tunecore these goals are possible, but they are a lot harder to get your head around.  So, it’s no secret that Tunecore has blown up in the last year!  Now we find out a few days ago, the Tuncore has signed a deal with one of those major lables we love to hate, Universal Music Group.    Supposedly, it is designed to help all of us Independent Musicians, by offering up the power of a major (for another small fee), if we want their services.  This seems to be sort of a contradiction, seeing that the reason why most of us use Tunecore is because the majors want nothing to do with us little guys, like me, who aren’t putting up any big numbers, like Drake.   Secondly, the majors are having so many problems of their own right now, that in all honestly,  who knows how long this marraige will last, and what else they can really offer.  My biggest beef with this scenario is as follows: Tunecore brings in such an amazing variety of talent, and Universal just swoops in and poaches the talent that sells the most, or looks most promising on paper.  So what has really changed?  What will be different now that this merger has taken place?  Nothing, this deal is only in place to help Universal poach the artists who are already breaking, as opposed to helping some of the minors get major attention.  Universal are piggy backing off of Tunecore; especially after Drake did such big numbers recently, the majors had to take Tunecore seriously!  Drake sold something like 300,000 downloads through their service, and now, of course, the majors come running.  This model is not new, they are just trying to band-aid a wounded industry.  Now the majors want to get their feet wet with Tunecore so they can sign the artists who have already done the leg work , saving them the costs that the band has previously incurred promoting themselves to sell 300,000 singles!?  Of course they will back these guys.  But that is no different than what has gone on in the industry as far as I can see.  They majors never take risks, that’s why by the time a band like Death Cab For Cutie gets to the top, or gets signed by a major label, no one gives a shit anymore!  The people who care have been following Death Cab for ten years previously!  So the real fans see that as a sign of selling out, and are put off!  They burn the LP from a friend, or download that shit for free, and skip the show; feeling that it will be full of posers who dig the new overproduced single on some fucking conglomerate Clear Channel cookie cutter station!  This is just a broad example across the board, and luckily for Death Cab, their fans are very loyal.  Couple this with the fact that the band has stayed very true to it’s roots, which is hard once you are signed by a major and they are trying to polish your sound for all ears.  This is nothing new, just another stab at fixing a broken model.  I think Tunecore has a good thing going, I like the services they offer for the price, and I hope they don’t change because of this deal.  I don’t see how Universal will help them, and I do think in the long run they will just take food out of Tunecore’s mouth.  Thanks for listening…Cut Kid Out

One response to “Tunecore and Universal, Happy Ever After:)?”

  1. jameskwayman

    The major labels have been looking to avoid risk for nearly 20 years now. The alternative rock movement of the early ’90’s was one of the best things to happen to mainstream music in my lifetime, but it might have been the worst thing to happen to the music business.

    Until that point, bands either kissed the ring of the machinery in hopes of being selected to have a career; or they went the indie route and built up everything themselves to a point where they had to move up because they had outgrown the systems in place.

    Development was still a part of the deal with a major label, but bands like Nirvana, Offspring, Smoking Popes, Veruca Salt, Smashing Pumpkins, and Sugar were able to attract plenty of attention to labels like SubPop, Epitaph, MintyFresh, Caroline, Mammoth, and Rykodisc. Majors started raiding the cabinets of the indies and darn near killed the existing systems. The majors had reduced the risk by poaching the assets in which the indies had assumed most of the risk. Eventually, majors forestalled development already, and started killing the indie geese long before any of the artist eggs were ready to hatch. [And then began complaining about the taste of the omelets made from these eggs.]

    Majors then began thinking that musicians that can “sustain” themselves are the only safe bet; and we saw self-contained bands like Phish, Blues Traveler, Widespread Panic, and Dave Matthews Band sign to major labels. Most of these artists were touring and making their own albums years before they signed.

    Universal going after TuneCore is almost a continuation of this model 15 years later. If you can stand another analogy, it’s kind of like an aging “trophy” wife who has had to fend for herself for a few years (after a painful divorce) has finally found a place to pick up their next meal tickets.

    I don’t understand what TuneCore gets out of this deal, as they were likely far more credible without ties to a major. The one benefit may be if Universal put their “baby bands” on the site and a little money behind them to boost the overall quality of TuneCore. It’ll give TuneCore the chance to say they “helped” more bands find major-label contracts than any other indie service; and generate a little more interest in TuneCore. Though I’m more likely to think we’re going to get the same types of stories about future artists being discovered from their TuneCore pages, like we hear of artists getting discovered through their MySpace pages.

    Verdict: a win for Universal, a tie for TuneCore, and a loss for TuneCore’s audience [unless the music quality improves so much that it increases traffic and sales throughout the site].

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