RECENT COMMENTS RSS| 5 | Oceano Streaming New Music 11:44 pm |
| 3 | Courtney Love’s People Ripped Off Shelby Cinca, Everything’s OK Now 9:04 pm |
| 14 | Get Up Kids Get Back Together, Post Plenty of Videos 8:29 pm |
| 5 | The Roots To Become Jimmy Fallon’s House Band? 8:27 pm |
| 14 | Guns N’ Roses Streaming Chinese Democracy on MySpace 7:32 pm |
| 8 | A Grand Design: Jensen Sportag 6:41 pm |
| 5 | Brother Cesare, Italian Heavy Metal Monk 6:35 pm |
| 61 | A Grand Design: Becoming the Archetype 6:09 pm |
| 19 | Panic At The Disco Guitarist Must Like Message Boards 5:37 pm |
| 124 | Melissa Etheridge Speaks Out Against Proposition 8 4:51 pm |
| 4 | Andrew Bird Planning Tour in Early 2009 4:14 pm |
| 9 | Man Man Discusses Scams 2:59 pm |
| 5 | Featured Band: Cut The Red Wire 11:09 am |
| 1 | Killers Frontman Finally Tells Us What His Lyrics Are 10:22 am |
| 2 | Magnolia Electric Co. at Headliners 11:07 pm |
He’s released material from Cursive, Mineral, Boys Life, onelinedrawing, The Gloria Record, Last Days Of April and more. He’s Jeff Matlow, the owner of crank! Records, and he’s here to save the music industry.
To begin, what made you want to start a record company in the first place in 1994?
For years I’d wanted to start my own record company – it wasn’t so much a matter of “if” but of “when.” And I have to admit that I started the company sooner than I planned to as it was a matter of circumstance that led me to starting it. That said, right after I started crank!, I realized that I wished I’d done it years before. But I’m jumping ahead already. Let me take a few steps back.
I was drawn to the music business like a hooker to a john. As I was growing up, I played a lot of music and was in a variety of different bands. I was also a DJ on the local radio station when I was in high school. When I got to college I began to manage bands, produce and engineer. Shortly after I graduated college I realized I had two choices – either try to live out my dream and be a rock star, or go on the business side of things. After some serious consideration, I realized that when it came right down to it, I had a lot more business talent than musical talent. If I wanted to be a rock star, it probably meant a life of Ramen noodles. So I went on the business side and began working for record labels (EMI, A&M, etc.).
I was doing A&R, which pretty much entails trying to find what you consider to be the next big thing before anybody else finds them, helping them to make a record that almost sounds like the next big thing, and then trying desperately to convince the rest of the company that it really is the next big thing. I got to work with some really cool musicians and had a bunch of amazing experiences that are best discussed over a nice cold beer. Then in early 1994 I was introduced to a band from Kansas called Vitreous Humor. They blew me away. I tried to sign them to the label where I was working, but they didn’t get it. So I tried to get them signed to other labels – I thought they were so good, I just wanted to help them out. Still, no other labels really seemed to care about them. That’s when I decided to just put the record out myself.
And that was the start of crank!. Soon after releasing the record, I quit my job and began to build crank! full time from my little apartment. (Ironically, later in 1994 we released Vitreous Humor’s song Why Are You So Mean To Me? and all of the sudden every major label who didn’t want to sign them 6 months earlier was scrambling to get them on board).
What made you decide to shut it down?
Actually, this is all just a vicious rumor. crank! never shut down. Granted, I’ve decided not to sign any new bands at this time and to become a strictly digital label for a variety of reasons that include the state of the industry, the cost of pressing records, the cost of funding tours, the price of mangoes in Spain, and a variety of other miscellaneous factors. However, you can still find all the crank! releases in just about every single digital outlet out there. We’re still doing mail order for our remaining stock (http://www.crankthis.com/releases.html). We’re still doing a variety of new international licensing deals and you’ll still continue to hear the crank! releases in film and TV.
The music industry is changing very rapidly and, unless labels change their methods of doing business, they won’t survive. We’re trying to make sure we survive.
And what made you bring the label back again recently?
Don’t call it a comeback, we’ve been here for years.
How much worse has the music industry gotten since 1994, and who/what is to blame?
Now here’s a good question that I can probably write a book about what with all my opinions.
First of all, the music industry has gone into the toilet since 1994. Granted, nobody has officially flushed the toilet yet, but it’s still sitting there in the stanky water of the toilet bowl. As far as who is to blame? I’ll blame it on everybody. The labels, the consumers, the bands, the economy. Hell, even the aforementioned mango prices in Spain can be to blame.
But seriously, if we look at the trends of the music business since the 1960s, we can find one explanation for the rise and fall of the industry and that’s it’s ability to reinvent itself and force people to buy the same thing over and over again. In the 50s and 60s, the music industry was driven by 7” singles. Bands would just release singles rather than albums. People bought their favorite song on vinyl and that was it. That means there wasn’t a lot spent, since the price of a 7” single is relatively small. Take a few steps forward and all of the sudden the album gets more popular as bands compile all their songs onto an LP. This is where the music industry sees its first big growth spurt. From the 99 cent single to the $9.99 album – that turns into a much more profitably industry.
Fast forward to the 70s and all of the sudden we have this new format: the cassette tape. Not only is it a new format, but it enables you to listen to your music in new places (like the car). Well, it’s just not practical to record your favorite LPs onto cassette tape, so not only do people buy new releases on cassette, but they also replace all their vinyl records with cassette versions. What is the result? The music business has yet another huge spurt of growth.
Now we get to the 80s and the age of the CD. CDs are cheaper to make for the record labels, easier to store and longer lasting than vinyl or cassette. Plus, you can now charge $15-$20 for an album AND there are now even more places to listen to music (portable CD players, multi-CD holders, etc.). Again, it doesn’t make sense to record your cassettes onto CD, so now everybody has to go and buy even more CDs for even more money to replace everything they have yet again (and by this time, they have more in the collection). On top of that, there are more records being released than ever before which means more sales. The music business has reinvented itself again in the most ingenious way, forcing people to buy the same thing they’ve already bought before, but for a lot more money. And this is where the industry reached its heyday.
But what happens if a new format comes along that DOESN’T require you to buy everything again? What happens if it DOES make sense to convert your existing CD music to the new format yourself?
The growth of the music industry has relied on reinventing itself into new formats that force the consumer to keep buying the same thing over and over again. Digital entertainment is the brick wall of the music industry. Catalog sales (sales of old albums) have been driving the industry for decades – now that’s all just relegated to Joe Everyday popping a CD into his laptop and clicking a “record” button, then syncing it with his iPod. Every time somebody converts one of their CDs to a digital format on their own, that’s another $15 the music industry loses. That alone creates enormous losses. Add on top of that the music industry’s reluctance to define technology, as opposed to having technology define them. There is an arrogance in the music industry that has been there for decades. As an industry, they think they’re better than everybody else. They’re not, and it’s going to end up biting them in the ass. Right now the biggest record label in the world is Apple. Apple makes more money off the music business than any record company does. Why? Because they are smart and saw how to use technology as a profit center rather than as an enemy to avoid.
Alright, I’m going to shut up now… there is so much more I can say but I’ll save that for another discussion.
What will it take to make the industry better?
I’ve had my opinions about this for at least a decade and it makes me proud to see some things changing. First of all, I think they need to realize that they are marketing companies, not promotion companies. The money is in technology, consumer products and brand promotions. Music for music’s sake isn’t going to make the big cash anymore. But what if Universal Music and Toyota had a partnership? I’m sure there are an enormous amount of ways that relationships like that could end up selling millions of dollars of music.
At the same time, the industry needs to figure out their technology play and run with it. It seems the industry as a whole still has no idea what to do – they’re reactive, not proactive. And everyday they wait is another day that Apple gets a firmer stronghold on the industry. I’m waiting for the day when Steve Jobs calls in the heads of all the big labels and does a deal with them to take over the business. I exaggerate a little bit there, but my point is that the music industry needs to start working together and come up with a joint strategy on how to control technology.
Also, they need to restructure their artist deals into joint ventures. Right now major label deals are structured to benefit the label and not the artist. Still, the artist needs to sell millions and millions of records for it even to make sense for the label. But the music industry isn’t just about record sales. It’s about touring profits and merchandise and marketing and licensing and so many other things. Record labels can – and do – help with all of it. So shouldn’t it make sense that everybody profits? Give artists a bigger cut of record sales and, in turn, artists should give labels a bigger cut of the other revenue streams. If artists and labels can actually work together, there is so much more that can be done.
What labels out there are impressing you right now?
I’m really not in tune with what a lot of labels are doing, so I don’t think it’s fair for me to say anything. (Though I will give a shout out to the Saddle Creek and Team Love crew who do what they do and do it really really well.)
What are you doing these days instead of running Crank! full time?
I am still doing crank! quite a bit. But I also run a company called imATHLETE (www.imATHLETE.com). We’re launching the site in September. It’s a resource and community for amateur athletes around the world. (Music is one hobby of mine, sports is another. The fact that I can work in both makes me the luckiest guy around).
What do you have in store for Crank! in the upcoming future?
We’re doing some neat things in the digital marketplace. We’re about to ink a new digital distribution deal that is very exciting and will be doing some exclusive, not previously available releases with some of the more popular crank! titles.
Well said about the “how much worse has the music industry gotten since 1994″ question.
It’s nice to see a realistic label person who puts responsibility on the industry instead of just saying the only think brining down the music business is downloading.