Marketing isn't the first thing one thinks about when dreaming about making an album. You think about the music, what you're going to have on the front cover and maybe what kind of biscuits you're going to have in the studio...wait, the studio. Ok, where are we going to get the money to record this album? In the past a record deal was your only option but now there are many more ways of doing this. Fans pre-buying the CD and sharing of the income from the album (through Sellaband) was how we financed "The Elements" and (if all goes well) it'll be how we finance our new project "The Lemon Tree".
When you've made your album how do you get people to hear it? We already had a fan-base by the time we released The Elements, one that had grown by word-of-mouth, people had listened to Chromatography and they'd told their friends. It wasn't a huge fan-base but enough to raise the target $50,000 on Sellaband.
Things have changed a great deal in the music industry over the last decade, it used to be that a record company would throw money at something and seemingly if they threw enough: the artist would become successful. Nowadays record labels are throwing millions at projects that only sell 800 copies and there are countless places people can go to find new music - it's almost impossible to know about them all, let alone try to control them - as they once did with the record stores. It seems like the major labels are having to shout even louder now just to be heard at all.
So, in this over-saturated, decentralised media marketplace, how does a small band from London get heard above the racket of everyone screaming as loud as they can?
The answer is we don't. We wouldn't be heard, and even if we could why would we want to be? As music lovers in our own right we certainly don't want to be shouted at, and the kind of people who listen to our music don't like being shouted at either.
It takes me a long time to trust a band enough to buy their music, trust they are are going to deliver something truly great and trust that they are going to keep delivering good music. Like most music lovers I've been burnt. I've trusted a magazine review paid for by a major record company that's told me that "this album will change my life" and it's not delivered. For many of us it's hard to trust the radio, TV and music magazines anymore - so where do we turn? To our friends. My friends know the music they like and can tell me honestly if they think I'll like something - and often they are right.
How do we get people to tell their friends about us?
We take the time to make the best music we can make, the way we've been working for nearly 7 years. We spend a great deal of time on the details, the little things that people DO notice and really appreciate. We make the music we want to listen to. We tell our friends, and our mailing list, and if they like the music - we leave it up to them to tell people.
We try to make great videos, again, concentrating on the little details that make something special. We use these videos not as an advertising tool, but as separate pieces of art for our own enjoyment and that of our friends.
We've tried "professional" industry management, we've tried PR people, neither worked for us. We don't like the way the old model of the music industry worked but luckily it'll have eaten itself up in five years. From the countless meetings we've had in the last few years we can see that there are very few people who seem to know what they're doing right now. So until we meet someone who comes up with a better way of spreading the word about Second Person - we're going to work in the only way we know how. If you make good music, and you give people access to it, they'll come to you.
If you shout at people they will stop listening to you. We're not going to shout and we are going to do things our way.
