Interview with Kyle from Drop Dead, Gorgeous

Backround: Kyle is the lead guitarist in the professional heavy metal band Drop Dead, Gorgeous and is an original band member. The band has been together for over four years now and have headlined or been included on many world wide tours such as The Vans Warped Tour. Drop Dead, Gorgeous has put out three full length albums have been included in Billboard Music's Top 200 Album Chart.

Here are a few websites to better understand Kyle and the Band:

Band Website
Band Wikipedia Page
Band Myspace Page
Band Facebook Page

Here is the interview that I had done with Kyle Browning of Drop Dead, Gorgeous regarding band management, marketing, and the new work that has risen out of today's music industry:

Me: So exactly how long have you been in the music industry where you have recorded an album and played live shows?

Kyle: I have been playing live shows since I was a freshman in high school and we recorded a few demo's here and there but nothing my music career really took off durimg my Junior year of high school when I formed the band (Drop Dead, Gorgeous) and we put out our first EP which later got us signed by Rise Records.

Me: So you have been around the real music industry for about five years now? What changes have you seen in the past five years in regards to the way you get your music out to the fans?

Kyle: Yeah, about 4 or 5 years I would say. Um... I guess a lot has changed a lot over the years. Before we were signed, we used Myspace as a big marketing tool to get people to notice our music. Myspace was a lot more popular back when we were in high school and everyone had a Myspace account. Seems like Facebook has sort of killed Myspace... But yeah, Myspace was our main way to post our music, add friends, share news, display tours dates, give album updates, and just get our name out there. Once we started to get a big number of plays and "hits" each day off of our page, we got put on the "Myspace Music Top 10" page and then we sort of just took off after that. That's really how Rise Records found us and then later signed us to a contract.

Me: So the internet was the main tool for marketing? Was there any other websites that you guys used to help launch your career? If so, which websites were you guys using?

Kyle: Yep, the internet pretty much launched our career. We would obviously tell people at school about our band and then tell them to come out to our shows but we only got so many followers through that. I would say that Myspace was definitely the biggest website that we used because there were millions of people who looked on Myspace at the time. We used other websites like Pure Volume, Yahoo! Music and sometimes YouTube. Pure Volume was a popular website for us. We got a lot of plays and hits there as well.

Me: You mentioned Facebook earlier. Do you guys have a Facebook page and do you guys use it a lot? Does it have the same influence as Myspace because their is also millions of people who have a Facebook account?

Kyle: We do have a Facebook page and we post links to some music but Facebook hasn't nearly had the impact that Myspace had. Facebook doesn't have a media player where you can upload songs so it's hard to have a real music page if you can't post music on it!

Me: So now that Myspace has died down, how do you still reach your fans and the public? Also, has the decline of Myspace impacted your record sales?

Kyle: We still use Myspace quite a bit but we now have a small marketing team through our record label that helps us market ourselves. We now have a band website, a twitter account, and social networking sites like facebook, myspace, purevolume, etc. websites. A lot of our fans are people who have followed us for awhile but we still get a substantial amount of new fans. Our record sales have been about the same throughout the years. It's hard to really gauge how many people listen to you because a lot people illegally download our music.

Me: Has all the illegal downloading substantially hurt your career? Also, you mentioned Twitter. Twitter is becoming widely popular now so do you think that has been a big help?

Kyle: I actually don't even mind the people pirating our music for free off of the internet. To be honest, we don't make much money off of record sales. Sure they are nice but we make a living off of playing shows and selling merchandise. I believe that our shows and merchandise sales wouldn't be nearly as strong if people bought our music. A lot of times I say to myself "Hey, I like this band but I'm not about to spend ten dollars on their album. I'll just download it." I guess I am sort of a hypocrite but I have fallen in love with a lot of artists because I downloaded their album for free and then later loved it. By the way, I buy their album later on so technically I am not a music steal. Just a music barrower for a little bit! Twitter is cool because we can post something and then other can repost our "tweet." Its the first social network site that has ever allowed people to repost someone else's news. Once someone repost's our tweet than all of their Twitter followers get to see our "tweet." so it spreads the word on our band which is really cool.

Me: How has iTunes helped you guys sell records?

Kyle: iTunes just makes it easier for people to get our album and listen to it right away. They can hear a few sample songs on our website and then immediately download our album without having to go to a record store and search for our record. Many large record stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart only carry a few of our CD's in their selected stores so iTunes is the only consistent store that sells our album.

Me: How do you keep up with all these websites when you are on the road for so long? Also, do you have time to record any music while on the road and how does the band stay connected when you are on tour?

Kyle: Luckily we all have laptops and we can usually get WiFi in a lot of places we stop at. A lot of us have cell phones as well that have access to the internet. I write a lot of songs when we are on the road and play guitar. I use the music program Garage Band to record some simple beats and stuff but I later have to re-record because Garage Band's quality is just okay. We'll it is easy to stay in contact with my band mates because we are pretty much sleeping right next to each other for months at a time (chuckle) but other than that we all have cell phones. If we need to be somewhere as a group and someone is gone than we just call them or text them. We are all pretty responsible dudes, though.

Me: After having talked about a lot of new technologies and networking websites, how do you think these have changed or affected the your band has went about business?

Kyle: Well, like I have said, we have made a career out of these technologies. We honestly wouldn't have gotten where we have gotten without these tools. Our music genre has a small and particular fan base and it would have been really hard to reach out to this crowd of people without the internet. We haven't had a music video on MTV, we rarely get national radio play and our albums aren't headlining any major music store so without the use of the internet we wouldn't have been able to survive.

Me: Thanks Kyle for your time. You gave me a lot of great insight. I appreciate it.

Kyle: Any time buddy.

Here is Drop Dead, Gorgeous' latest music video from their last album:

Band Management as a New Workplace

The invention of high speed internet has forced the music industry to shift into a technological paradigm where music is being found, heard, bought, marketed, and shared through the world wide web. No longer does one have to buy a CD at a music store, search the newspaper to see when their favorite artists is coming to town, listen to the radio for new music acts, or even really try to figure out why type of music they like. So, why has all this changed in such a short amount of time when other generations were hesitant and slow to change (see video below)?



Well the answer lies solely on the vast expansion of the internet and the creation of music and social networking websites and digital music software. File sharing is at an all time high and the main bulk of these shared files come from music. But who is getting effecting by this? Well, it's effecting everyone! The artists, the record labels, the listeners, the software companies, and even the United States constitution (plagiarism laws). All of these players factor into the music game and it ultimately forces the artist to change the way they go about managing and marketing their music.

Organizing/Managing

Joining a band used to be about getting together with other musicians while you jammed out until you were lucky enough to land a gig at a local bar with hopes than one day you will get discovered by a music company who could allow you to produce an album. Well, a lot has changed since those time because managing and organizing a band these days seems more like a computer programming job. A band needs to have the computer savvy skills in order to succeed within the industry. Over the past few years, software programs have emerged as leading music making alternatives for artists to produce and record their own music without the need to have expensive hardware or a recording studio.

For instance, Apples' widely popular music making program GarageBand has given way to many artists and bands who have been able to use this program as an initial starting point to record and fine tune their music where they can later share with other. Kyle Browning (see full interview here), the lead guitarist for the popular metal band Drop Dead, Gorgeous gave praise to GarageBand by saying "I write a lot of songs when we are on the road and play guitar. I use the music program GarageBand" (Browning, 2010). In turn, GarageBand has transformed the musical workplace for a recording studio into a personal space (or tour bus) where all you need is a computer. GarageBand is an easy, user-friendly program where you don't need to be knowledgeable on high tech music boards in order to effectively use the program. This would not have been made possible a few years ago.
After a band record a song on the computer, how do they get people to hear it?

There are endless amounts of ways to share music over the internet and get people to hear what a band or artist has recorded. Websites like Myspace and Purevolume.com are two widely popular website where anyone can upload their tracks (for free) and share them with internet users. After the tracks are uploaded, anyone in the world can go to that band or artists music profile and listen to the tracks that the musician has uploaded. These websites are the first of their kind which allow artists to instantly share music with the world right after they invented it.

Why are these music sharing websites so important to organizing and managing a band?
These websites can act as career launching pads for musicians. They give the musicians music their first initial exposure to the real (or cyber) world, where the general public can listen, comment, critique, and even download the artists work. Kyle Browning owes a lot of Myspace Music, "Myspace was our main way to post our music. Once we started to get a big number of plays and "hits" each day off of our page, we got put on the "Myspace Music Top 10" page and then we sort of just took off after that. That's really how Rise Records found us and then later signed us to a contract." This clearly shows how the organization and success of band has changes throughout the past few years because it seems like that if a band doesn't have a music profile page than they won't have a good shot of getting signed because a record label won't know where to find them. Websites like these also give the artist or band a look at where they stand in the music world and determine what adjustments they need to make in order to succeed. Whether that means a band needs to change it's members, needs to change it's lyrics or even it's genre.

Marketing

How does a musician go about marketing their music website after the have uploaded songs?

Concert Flyers and word of mouth aren't going to cut it anymore in today's digital marketplace. Musicians need to be getting their name out to the public as much as they can and the use of social networking websites is the best way to go about that. Myspace, Twitter, and Facebook are social networking sites that have millions of users that are potential customers to the musician(s). If the band or artist can tap into these users their name will get exposed larger and quicker to music fans all around the globe. There is even a published book on using Myspace to market music and the author even guarantees that after reading the book the musician will be able to "Attract more fans, sell more music, bring more people to your shows — I guarantee it!" (Baker, 2007). Kyle Browning explained to me the benefit of a Myspace Music profile by saying, "Myspace was our main way to post our music, add friends, share news, display tours dates, give album updates, and just get our name out there." These profiles are like personalized websites where musicians can share all their news to the world without setting up a complicated website or taking out an expensive add in the paper. Twitter is a new popular networking tool as well. This article here explains the major advantages to having a Twitter account and using it to network.

"Twitter is cool because we can post something and then other can repost our "tweet." Its the first social network site that has ever allowed people to repost someone else's news. Once someone repost's our tweet than all of their Twitter followers get to see our "tweet." So it spreads the word on our band which is really cool." - Kyle Browning

Social networking sites are changing the way that music is being marketed to the mass public. Marketing is cheaper, easier, and more effective than what was even being done five years ago. Marketing doesn't need to be an expensive task that is performed by marketing "professionals." All it takes is a little bit of persistence, time, and creativity in order to market yourself.

Listening

How are the fans listening to the bands music?

Five years ago, the internet was fairly slow, Pandora wasn't invented, iTunes and iPods were just taking off and it seemed fairly logical to the general public that the good ole' compact disc from the music store was still a good source for listening to music. Well, in today's world, a lot has changed and it has all gone digital.


According to musicindustryreort.org study, iTunes digital music sales in the first two quarters of 2009 had accounted for 25 percent of total CD sales in the US. Amazon MP3, iTunes’ biggest competitor, only accounted for eight percent of U.S. digital music sales. Besides iTunes, internet radio web-sites like Pandora are also changing the way music is listened to. Pandora streams songs for free and provides real time music recommendations to listeners. Although, illegal downloading on music is still popular, the trend of iTunes digital music and Pandora is gaining in popularity each year and are the two leading technologies in the way that people acquire music. These new technologies are shaking up the industry because they are putting convention music distributing companies in jeopardy. Besides iTunes, the other top leaders in CD sales, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target and Amazon, lagged behind iTunes with 20, 16, 10 and 10 percent shares in the U.S. CD market. iTunes music sales now represent a whooping 69 percent of the U.S. digital music market. Other companies like Wal-Mart are going to need to act fast and get on the digital train because otherwise they might lose the whole music sectors on their business. Not just distribution businesses' but the bands themselves aren't making a lot of profit from these free music providing websites and are having to rethink and reorganize the way that they are going to make money in order to survive. When I asked Kyle about the decline in album sales throughout the industry, he responded by saying "To be honest, we don't make much money off of record sales. Sure they are nice but we make a living off of playing shows and selling merchandise." This shows the way that the industry is shifting from CD sales being the predominant money making asset to merchandise and concerts being the predominant money maker. Wired.com agree in their article because CD sales have dropped over 20% in the United States since 2000. The drop isn’t because of lack of interest in music, though because since 1999 concert ticket sales have increased 100%. But there are future implication that suggest the artists will start to get their money back off of these "free" music websites because lawsuits and settlements have been getting filed to protect the artists and allow them to get the royalties they deserve. As was the case during the merger that YouTube had with independent music branding and licensing agency Rumblefish that ultimately let YouTube users add Rumblefish content to their videos. Rumblefish buys the rights to songs and then in turn, YouTube video makers can use the song in their video without getting persecuted with copyright infringement - "This deal is exciting for indie filmmakers because it connects them directly to the same pre-licensed, quality indie music but at a price that they afford" explained Rumblefish CEO Paul Anthony. Settlements like these have implications for the future because they could lead to a shift back in the industry where album sales become more important to the artists career and possible lead to the end of free music websites like Pandora.

Conclusion

After doing all the research, I think that the new aspects of the music industry are in the form of transformation. This is the first time that musicians can reaches out to millions of fans by just the use of the internet once and allow fans to follow the artists every move.

Resources

Baker, Bob. MySpace Music Marketing: How to Promote & Sell Your Music on the World's Biggest Networking Web Site. Buzz Printing. Paperback

Kyle, Browning. Personal Interview.

http://newworkplacecomm.blogspot.com/2010/07/interview-with-kyle-from-drop-dead.html

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/211801/myspace_is_changing_the_music_industry.html

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2336258,00.asp

http://musicindustryreport.org/?p=12007

http://www.applematters.com/article/itunes-inspires-changes-in-music-industry/

http://www.musicmarketing.com/2009/02/best-business-practices-for-twitter.html