{"id":2169,"date":"2015-11-14T19:54:14","date_gmt":"2015-11-15T03:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=2169"},"modified":"2015-11-15T14:05:50","modified_gmt":"2015-11-15T22:05:50","slug":"the-future-of-music-is-self-distribution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/the-future-of-music-is-self-distribution\/","title":{"rendered":"The future of music is self-distribution"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By: Darien Campo (Staff Writer)<\/pre>\n
I discovered Snowmine largely by accident.<\/p>\n
Browsing the plethora of music on Bandcamp.com led me to their page, where I found a free download to their first album \u201cLaminate Pet Animal\u201d (a palindromic title.)<\/p>\n
Curious, I downloaded it and found that Snowmine was just the right amount of ambient indie-pop I\u2019d been looking for my whole life. I\u2019ve since bought all of their music and consider myself a lifetime follower.<\/p>\n
It was luck that I found Snowmine, since back then there was hardly any mention of them on the internet. See, Snowmine isn\u2019t signed to a major record label \u2013 in fact, they\u2019re not signed to any record label at all. It\u2019s not that they can\u2019t get a label contract, they\u2019re actively avoiding signing on to a label.<\/p>\n
If it\u2019s only going to lower their exposure, why would a band decide not to try and get a record label? Isn\u2019t that the ultimate goal of any musician?<\/p>\n
Not quite, anymore. In more recent years it\u2019s actually becoming quite common to see musicians around the globe sharing their music without ever seeing a record contract — all thanks to the internet.<\/p>\n
With websites like Bandcamp and Soundcloud, it\u2019s easier than ever to upload and share your music without major backing. Thousands of indie artists choose a more direct way of selling music to their fans, using the internet to grow their fan base.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not just indie artists that have spurned labels, major bands are trying it as well.<\/p>\n
In 2003, Radiohead, one of the world\u2019s biggest bands, finished their six-album contract with EMI and they\u2019ve never looked back. Since then they\u2019ve released two albums, \u201cIn Rainbows\u201d and \u201cThe King of Limbs\u201d on their own website, with a \u201cpay-what-you-want\u201d pricing model.<\/p>\n
Though it doesn\u2019t guarantee as much exposure, bands like Snowmine appreciate the personal relationship to their fans self-distribution can give.<\/p>\n
Their \u201cfrom-us-to-you\u201d campaign in promotion of their second album \u201cDialects\u201d was a huge success. Fans enjoy dealing directly with their favorite artists instead of buying through a label.<\/p>\n
The future of the music industry is coming fast, and it\u2019s hard to tell if record labels are going to be a part of it anymore.<\/p>\n
Like Radiohead vocalist Thom Yorke told Time in a 2005 interview, \u201cI like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By: Darien Campo (Staff Writer) I discovered Snowmine largely by accident. Browsing the plethora of music on Bandcamp.com led me to their page, where I found a free download to their first album \u201cLaminate Pet Animal\u201d (a palindromic title.) Curious, I downloaded it and found that Snowmine was just the right amount of ambient indie-pop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":823,"featured_media":2239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/823"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}