We’re delighted to present a Q&A with FAC members A Genuine Freakshow- an independent band wholeheartedly embracing DIY (do-it-yourself) and DTF (direct-to-fan) strategies, touring exhaustively and still finding time to create great music.
What stage is the band at and how did you get yourselves there?
We formed about five years ago and bumbled about in various forms before finally settling on our current line-up about two years ago. We wrote our first album ‘Oftentimes’ over the course of those two years and recorded it whilst continuing to tour almost constantly. We self-released it on our own label last November and have been touring ever since.
We’re currently beginning to write album two and exploring several different ways to pay for it. The initial lack of funding is definitely one of the biggest hurdles we have to overcome, but there are plenty of avenues to fund independent bands that haven’t been explored yet.
Such as…?
What we’d love to see in the future is some kind of artist-to-artist model. Put simply, established artists would form a collective fund to support new acts. The successfully funded bands would then repay a proportion of their earnings back into the fund to help the next generation of new bands. Of course it’s not just money that new bands need; the backing of a network of successful musicians would provide a wealth of knowledge and contacts and could grow to become a very credible source of new music.
With the emergence of artist bodies such as the FAC it would be interesting to see if anyone could explore ideas such as this to help new artists.
You have embraced the latest social media: which is your favourite/most rewarding platform and why?
There are plenty of social media formats that perform one or two tasks very well and if you have time to manage them all then that’s great. But I think a band’s bread-and-butter format should be a Facebook page because it’s an all-encompassing package of everything else.
Having said that, we make a point of always trying to steer fans to our official website first and social media platforms second whenever we can; the reason being that social media platforms will evolve and change with the times (see MySpace) but our website will always be there as the most content-rich, primary source of information about the band, whatever the current social media trends.
As a DIY band, how did you go about commissioning the video for ‘Hopscotch Machine Gun Madness’?
It was literally a case of scrolling through Vimeo and watching hours and hours of video clips. The quoted fees we had back from some established video production companies were completely unrealistic for our budget. Through Vimeo we managed to find Lee Citron, who runs his own independent film company in Los Angeles called Milkman Films. He was obviously talented and had experience, but was still relatively under-the-radar so he was a perfect fit for us.
He did an incredible job of delivering us a video that looks fantastic but cost very little to make (three figures) so we were able to simply use money from gig fees to fund it.
You’ve built a fanbase through tried-and-tested touring- do you know more about your fans than just their email addresses?
Yeah we know everything, we even know what you have on your toast in the morning! We collect all kinds of data when people sign up to download free music or buy a record direct from our website.
Presumably this helps you sell direct to fans more effectively?
For this last tour we’ve started selling e-tickets direct from our website which is a win-win situation really. We collect location information which helps us to plan future tours and show potential promoters how many people will come and see us. But it also means that the fans can avoid going through large ticket companies and getting stung for the hefty booking and postage fees. When fans buy a ticket directly from us they can sometimes save up to as much as 50%
How do you measure your own success?
The more time we’re able to spend being a band, and the less hours we have to work in other jobs to supplement our income, are probably the only true measures of what we would class as success.
Is there a particular metric you rely on more than others? e.g. number of Facebook fans
There are so many ways to try and measure your success, but I don’t think it’s possible to ever get a completely accurate picture from social networking figures alone. It’s possible to make statistics say whatever you want them to.
How much of a boost did you get from Tom Robinson playing your music on 6 Music?
Picking up support from 6 Music was a huge thing for us. Tom supported us with regular plays of our first self-released singles ‘We Are The Undercurrents’ and ‘Holding Hearts’, which he also put on his ‘Best of 2008’ compilation. We’d never had any type of support before that, and it did open quite a few doors: it helped us to secure a progressive, forward-thinking manager and get picked up by a booking agent.
Has it helped in the longer term?
Frustratingly, for whatever reasons, when we released the first single from ‘Oftentimes’ we didn’t succeed in breaking through onto the playlist or being picked up by any of the other 6 Music DJ’s. Tom’s support was great but it’s very hard to get ourselves to the next level without progressing onto the other platforms as well.
What made you decide to self-release by setting up your own label, Peartree Records?
It was largely the influence from our manager. He had managed to successfully create a DTF model with his previous band and prolonged their careers significantly, decades after they had mainstream success. There’s an endless list of bands that become very successful very quickly and then disappear after a few years. Record labels are understandably under pressure to see a return from their investment as quickly as possible.
No temptation to chase a label deal?
We wanted time to progress at our own pace and build ourselves a sustainable career that lasts. We felt that setting up our own label and self-releasing our first album was a good place to start. Setting up a DTF business for a band that’s already established is a different prospect to doing it with an act like us that’s relatively unknown. We have encountered a few problems over the past couple of years, but we now have a better idea of what to expect this time around.
Do you use a digital aggregator, and how easy/hard has that process been?
We have a direct distribution deal with PIAS and they’ve worked hard to get our records, both physical and digital, into just about everywhere possible. So for us as a band we haven’t actually had to worry about it too much and we’re really pleased with what PIAS managed to achieve on our behalf.
Have you come across any exciting trends or services as independent artists?
One of the most encouraging things I’ve seen is the brilliant work Paul Campbell has done with emergence of Amazing Radio, a national digital radio station that only plays music from emerging DIY artists. They have a rapidly expanding listener base and the quality of the music they have available to them is astounding. It’s quite unbelievable when you realise that nothing they play is from ‘established’ bands and it says something very positive about the healthy state of new, British music.
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