Insiders in the music industry have been saying it for quite some time now in hushed and worried tones but, with the release of The Artist Life's new EP, Living, there's no doubt about it and musicians have caught on too: the music business—and more specifically the way in which people consume music—is changing. Not so long ago, the equation was simple: band X plays relentlessly for very small amounts of money, attempts to build a fan base and hopes to catch the attention of a record label who will proceed to lavish them with a contract that will allow said band to record an album and make a play to take the world by storm. Now, however, it's a little easier of a band to get started, according to Artist Life singer Ian Blackwood. Formed just two years ago, the members of The Artist Life had already put in their time learning the industry ropes in bands including The Fullblast, At The Mercy Of Inspiration and Jersey, so they already knew that:
a) being a poppy alt-punk band meant they were starting from scratch in an already crowded marketplace, but
b) they had the benefit of hindsight thanks to the members' tenures in those other bands.
They also knew the barrel that they were staring down and, rather than play the industry game on the industry's terms, The Artist Life elected to simply release Living online on their own and not bother to charge for it, in the name of getting a name for themselves.
"We just decided to make it a digital download for free and I could say there were a bunch of other reasons—Go Green, environmentally friendly, less waste in packaging, 'let's face it, everything's going on the internet anyway,' 'you can go online and download it for nothing and it comes with everything including liners so you can burn yourself a finished copy for free'—but the other reasons like manufacturing costs and the fact that we don't have a label weighed heavily," says Blackwood, as if explaining the obvious. "It seems like it's the new old-fashioned; sort of like in the '80s when punk rockers used to mail each other tapes and trade them from state to state and province to province and country to country. We felt like it had a similar vibe to that, except that it's the 'Generation Now' version.
"The internet has taken over a lot and we thought, 'Rather than press it, let's just put this thing up online and, while we're at it, why charge for it? We're a fresh band, let's put it out there and see how many people we can get to jump on the wagon.'"
In going a different route, the band has found that it has changed the game for them as well. As far as marketting themselves to the people at their shows goes, they're discovering that the absence of a hard-copy CD has increased hunger for one and bumped up T-shirt sales at the same time.
"When we looked at it, we had the choice of trying to find a record label and put a record on shelves, but we knew we'd be lucky if we'd have sold 100 by now because we're an indie band," says the singer frankly. "We figured we could boost that number a bit with the touring sales, but where we've been really successful is online; so far we've already hit 2266 downloads since we made the EP available three months ago.
"Merch is still a key point for us, but it does help with those sales too. I say it all the time at our shows: 'No man, I'm sorry, we don't have CDs for sale. You can download the music for free though and buy a T-shirt' and that approach actually works. It's cool because they want to do whatever they can to support the band."
Thus far, the band has limited themselves to touring around Ontario, Canada until guitarist Dean Richards finishes teacher's college but, in a few months when he graduates, The Artist Life has already agreed to take their show on the road for as long as they're able before coming back to hammer out their full-length debut album—most of which is already written according to Blackwood. "We're doing as much as we can while Dean finishes up and I think we're working pretty damned hard given that there's one of us living in Peterborough—we're going to hit the road as hard as we can and get out west, get out east and try to get overseas before we walk in to do another record," says Blackwood as he outlines The Artist Life's plan of attack in the coming months. "The writing machine never stops; ever since I got a Mac, I work with GarageBand and have been getting more and more songs together. We actually did the pre-production for the EP on GarageBand too and, the meantime, we're going to see how else we can get our name out there. We just finished shooting our first video—we've got a trailer up on our MySpace page for that right now—and one of our songs was just featured in a West 49 ad as well.
"We've been getting a lot of attention and we really want to get out there and show people what we can do," continues the singer. "It's hard because when you're in a touring band, you just want to go and hit everywhere you can but there's all the proof in the world that, even if you stay close to your market, if you show that work ethic you're going to get people interested in you. We've got this pretty cool little vibe going and are getting a bit of a buzz around us."
To download The Artist Life's Living EP, visit www.theartistlife.com, or for more information, visit myspace.com/theartistlife
