Corporate sponsorship used to be seen as detrimental to a band's credibility. Now it can be more attractive than signing to a major, as OK Go prove
On 20 April, manager Mike Rosenthal is coming to London's MusicConnex conference ? an event designed to help people develop a career in music ? to teach a seminar on how to DIY, OK Go style. Like many people, I first came across the LA-based band on YouTube performing an amusing choreography in a garden to their track A Million Ways. Most people probably know them from their treadmill video to Here It Goes Again. These videos were made while they were signed to Capitol Records, but as they were a minor band on a major label they had to be creative with small promo budgets ? nothing unusual there. As OK Go released their third album the band agreed to part ways with EMI. What happened next is the reason why their label manager is speaking at MusicConnex
Like many other bands who have been "released" from their former labels, OK Go set up their own imprint, Paracadute, and still tour, but Rosenthal says that these days most of his time is spent as a project rather than a label manager. The band has a list of creative projects they want to do and, as sponsors approach them, they go through it to see what would work for that particular sponsor. They recently teamed up with Range Rover as one of the car manufacturer's "city shapers". "The band always wanted to do a big New Orleans-style parade where you invite all your friends and they show up with instruments, marching all over town," says Rosenthal. As Range Rover was releasing a FourSquare-like iPhone app with its cars, the band thought they could use it for their march instead of an SUV, spelling OK Go across an 8-mile radius of downtown LA. They then put together a video documentation of the project.
Rosenthal won't go into details about the band's finances (though he says revenues from YouTube are insignificant), but says they just want to make "cool shit", and corporate sponsorship allows for a lot of it to happen. But the collaboration between bands and brands can go much further than sponsorship. These days ad agencies and corporations scour YouTube, picking up on user-generated trends and reproduce them for their ads in a more mainstream fashion, while artists who have seen revenue from record sales dwindle try to get advertising synchs. So why not produce the initial video with the support of corporations right from the start ? and make it an ad for both?
These collaborations are not always about product placement. American indie duo Pomplamoose made their own version of Lady Gaga's Telephone (unlike Gaga's video for the song, they didn't have product placement), which has received almost seven million views. Last Christmas they scored a national TV commercial for Hyundai, who wanted an ad in the vein of the band's video. While most acts only get their music featured in an ad, Pomplamoose were featured in the ad themselves. In the UK, the video for Faithless' Feelin' Good was funded by Fiat, whose Punto Evo cars featured in the promo. The three-minute video was even shown in full in the ad-break for Big Brother.
This is, of course, not a new concept. Classical composers have for centuries made music sponsored by rich and powerful people, and most labels have departments dedicated to brand partnerships. Decades ago most bands would have seen corporate sponsorship as detrimental to their credibility. Not so any more. But what do the fans say? Would a video featuring Thom Yorke driving a BMW or drinking a sponsored soft drink rub them the wrong way? We may never know, as Radiohead built a huge fanbase the old-fashioned way ? with the sponsorship of a record label.
When people ask Rosenthal how to make it as an indie band today, he jokes: "Be on a major label for 10 years first." Actually, he's only half joking, and maybe that's why a recent survey by ReverbNation and Digital Music News concluded that three out of four unsigned artists still want to get signed to a major. But with the opportunities that exist in the internet age, being dropped by a major label can be the best thing to happen to an artist ? especially for a band such as OK Go.
"OK Go really got the best of both worlds: they were able to be on a major label and get that support," says Rosenthal. "That was huge. They had a lot of marketing campaigns and support from Capitol Records that helped people focus on them, but now they can pursue whatever projects come into their heads instead of having to think about how you drive it back to the sale of recorded media. I don't think the band would consider ever signing another record deal ? or if that would even be an option. They're just too interested in other things. Especially now that it doesn't all have to culminate in the release of a piece of plastic that has their music on it. That model is dead for good."
? This article was amended on 1 April 2011. In the original we said the band had parted by agreement, according to Rosenthal. This has been corrected.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/apr/01/bands-brands-corporate-sponsorship
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