The music industry won’t look at the big picture – Kevin Buckle

I was very surprised to hear this week that PledgeMusic was in trouble. For those who maybe have not come across the site it is a platform where artists old and new can pre-sell their music and often much more to fans.

I first came across PledgeMusic when I wrote about the fundraising for the 2014 film God Help the Girl written and directed by Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian. Many films or indeed theatre productions are financed by “angels” who invest knowing they will probably not recoup their money but with the promise of financial reward should the venture prove profitable whereas this film adopted more the methods of raising money for an album.

Fans could pay to be in the film and be involved in certain ways but there was no sharing out of any profits. Now this was a purely theoretical argument as nobody expected the film to make a huge amount of money but still the principle that normally applied was not there.

It was a pros and cons piece on my blog – neither for nor against – and it came to the attention of Benji Rogers one of the founders of PledgeMusic who messaged me to explain more about his fundraising platform. He also mentioned that his band had once played in Avalanche.

In fact it was Benji’s band that had caused him to found Pledge as a way that small bands could raise the funds in advance to make an album. By the time Benji got in touch things had move on considerably and artists of all sizes were using the platform to tempt fans to spend as much money as possible on bigger and bigger “bundles” and experiences had started to be sold along with unique items owned by the band.

Benji admitted that bands with record labels simply using the platform to target fans had never been his intention and not long after things reached a new level when record companies started selling Beatles and Bowie releases.

All of this was at the expense of independent record shops who had previously catered for an artist’s fans and to some extent created those fans in the first place. What this meant was that actually PledgeMusic became better for more established artists who had a fan base already rather than for newer bands trying to get started.

To be honest most of what happens in the music industry is quite predictable but I don’t think many people saw problems on the horizon with Pledge as their share of sales must easily cover their overheads and what has caused the financial problems with artists going months unpaid has not been explained.

Benji Rogers left some time ago to work on other projects but has just returned to try to put things right and hopefully for all concerned he will.

Even when these pre-sell platforms are working well there are still issues because by encouraging specific sales people don’t browse as they would in a shop. It was hoped that this might happen on Pledge but the truth is fans just go to the site to support their favourite artists and rarely browse actually looking for new bands to support.

With HMV’s future in the balance and now PledgeMusic in trouble all aspects of sales in the music industry need to be looked at to see which models work best for the artists but also for those who buy music and in particular those who may not be fans but still have a healthy interest in buying music both new and old.

It is not a simple balance and one major problem is every band and label will do what is best for them rather than look at any “big picture”. Independent shops lost the keen fans but now HMV are in trouble and they attracted the more casual fan who might pick up an album in store but would never go to the trouble of ordering online.

At least PledgeMusic is not the only site of that type but now the very people who took all that business away from HMV are worried they may close, even though they are the last chain standing.

I often mention that with vinyl in particular the cake got bigger but then more sellers wanted a slice but in this case it is simply that artists, labels and record companies can’t have their cake and eat it.

Seven divided by one ‘event’ still equals seven

The Summer Sessions gigs were announced this week – and gigs is the key word.

I can see things from both sides with regards to these concerts but what is guaranteed to annoy folk, and quite rightfully so, is that organisers and the council are making out that seven gigs by six artists including Florence + The Machine, Primal Scream and Madness over 12 days constitutes one “event”.

The reason for this, of course, is that consultation showed local residents wanted fewer than five events in Princes Street Gardens each year so to satisfy this all the gigs have been put together as one event.

Personally if they sorted out some of the other issues I wouldn’t be opposed to the number of gigs but to twist things in such a facile way is to add insult to injury for those who do object.

Podcast shoots and scores

Nutmeg is a Scottish football quarterly magazine that has built up a great roster of writers as well as having had a fantastic number of guest contributions.

Available physically by subscription “It’ll cost you less than the admission to most Scottish matches, will entertain you for longer than 90 minutes and there’s less risk of feeling morbidly depressed afterwards when your team’s been gubbed 3-0.”

They also have a podcast and I admit I’m not normally a podcast person but this month they have come up with the perfect combination of music meets football. James Graham (The Twilight Sad), Grant Hutchison (Frightened Rabbit) and Mike Palmer (We Were Promised Jetpacks) talk football, music and, so it says in their blurb, sausage rolls with host Daniel Gray. I won’t spoil it by saying any more but both the magazine and the podcast are highly recommended.