How to help New Artists Make Records

How to help New Artists Make Records Mike Agerbo: Well the internet sure has changed the way musicians in the music industry have approached distributing their music. Well there's new ways to actually help bands record their music as well. We've got Mathew Ingram on the line from the Globe Technology. Thanks for joining us Mathew. Mathew Ingram: Thanks for having me. Mike Agerbo: I guess one of the challenges with up and coming bands is actually getting a recording contract or getting the money together to actually create their own album or their CD. But there’s a website I understand that is called SellaBand and now Amazon is kind in the game as well that helps artist raise money to do that. Mathew Ingram: Yeah, it's quite an interesting model actually. If you're artist and you want to sort of make your first recording, you don’t have to go begging at you know records labels to try and get them to finance you. You can actually get your fan base, build up a fan base that can help you do that. So the idea is you upload some songs and people can download them and pay $10.00. They not only get the song but they actually buy what amounts to a share in your future album. And so then once you raise a certain amount of money, I think its $50,000.00 SellaBand, the site helps you find producer for your album, helps you find sound engineers, helps you find a good studio and that type of thing and then they help you market it. The people who paid the $10.00 get a copy of the album obviously and then you can go on and raise more money and create more music. The idea if that first one does well, maybe then eventually you will get an actual contact. Mike Agerbo: Its interesting $50,000.00 seems like a lot of money to rise. Mathew Ingram: It is a fair a bit of money and surprisingly I think there's—the last time I look there were 12 or 13 artist who had raise that much. And two or three of them have already made an album. It's quite interesting to watch this sort of community of fans you know develop over time an artist that really strikes a chord with people I think they don’t mind paying $10.00 knowing that they're helping someone actually create an album, you know, you're going downloads and something from iTunes maybe it's a song by someone who you know is already rich and successful. This just has that much more too it, you're paying more but you're actually getting more as well. You're getting the knowledge that you’ve helped this artist sort of become successful. Mike Agerbo: You're part of it. Amazon is now involved with this as well I understand that they have opened up a store front for SellaBand on Amazon? Mathew Ingram: Yeah. SellaBand announced that a little while ago that Amazon is going to give them effectively a store front for their albums and Amazon is also going to chip in money once you get to a certain point. I think it's 30,000. They will actually put in a couple of thousand to help you make the album. So they're taking part in the actual selling of it but they're also helping artist get to that level where they can actually make and album. Mike Agerbo: What do you think it's in it for Amazon? Mathew Ingram: I think it's obviously they want to drive traffic to their retail store. They want people to see it as a place where they can go and get music. Amazon has got sort of competing you know service similar to iTunes except that it doesn’t have visual right managements on the songs. They're obviously trying to get people interested in that. So I see, this is kind of a marketing effort for them. We love music, we have artist that you might care about you know this is our effort to kind of pay some of that back to this music industry, I think it's a, it's good move for both sides. Mike Agerbo: I want to thank you for time Mathew. Mathew Ingram: Okay, thanks Mike. Mike Agerbo: Mathew here from the Globe Technology and check out more of his work, this articles bloging at Globetechnology.com.