COMM 150: Record labels, then and now - Peggy Lee, Cara Dillon and Pierre Bensusan

John Vivian says one of the things new media and advanced technology have made possible is to break the dominance of "A&R" people at the major record labels (119). It was very limiting to artists, who often didn't even pick their own songs. He quotes a Capitol Records executive who told sociologist Serge Denisoff, who writes a lot about the music industry:

The company would pick out 12 songs for Peggy Lee and tell her to be at the studio Wednesday at 8, and she'd show up and sing what you told her. And she'd leave three hours later and Capitol'd take her songs and do anything it wanted with them. That was a time when the artist was supposed to shut up and put up with anything the almighty recording company wanted.

Peggy Lee is all but forgotten today, but her songs sold well from the 1950s onward, even after she left Capitol in the 1970s. She is best known, perhaps, for the lyrics to a Disney movie "Lady and the Tramp." (And for suing Disney. According to Wikipedia, "In the early 1990s she retained famed entertainment attorney Neil Papiano to sue Disney for royalties on Lady and the Tramp. Lee's lawsuit claimed that she was due royalties for video tapes, a technology that did not exist when she agreed to write and perform for Disney." She died in 2002.

Compare her career to that of a singer from the North of Ireland named Cara Dillon.

Here's what the official biography on Dillon's website says about her dealings with Warner Music Group (one of the major labels, as I'm sure we all remember from Vivian's discussion of sound recordings) and the indie labels she's recorded with since she left Warner 10 years ago.

Dillon and husband Sam Lakeman, who backs her on acoustic guitar and produces her records, have this to say about the time they spent with Warner during the 1990s:

... although they look back on that period as an essential step towards affirming their strong musical tastes and developing their songwriting craft, it was full of frustration and the constant pressure from the label to have commercial success. ... But by 2000 they had parted company with Warners without releasing a single track and in stark contrast to their recent recordings with the label began working on an album of mostly traditional material which they quietly released on an unsuspecting audience via Rough Trade Records.

Their contract with Rough Trade, an indie label, lasted until 2008 and gave them more creative control. During those years Dillon's career took off. She has won awards including the Irish Meteor Award for Best Female Singer, and her concert tours have taken her to the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, South Korea and Singapore.

Would it be going too far to say Cara Dillon's career really took off as she went with smaller labels where she had more artistic control? You don't have to be into Irish music to appreciate Cara Dillon's career (altho' it probably helps)! Where would Dillon's blend of Irish traditional music and acoustic guitar fit on the cute little long tail frequency distribution graph with the dinosaur that we looked at in class? Up toward the head? Out on the tail? How far out? How does she use the Internet to market her music downloads and CDs to a niche market scattered worldwide?

Let's visit Dillon's website at http://www.caradillon.co.uk/ (the UK, as no doubt you already know, stands for United Kingdom). How many ways does she use to promote her brand? How does she use the website to sell her artistic product? Other ways of communicating with her fanbase? How does she use her Myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/caradillon to promote her brand and sell product?

Even more sophisticated is a French singer, songwriter and acoustic guitar player named Pierre Bensusan. He was born in North Africa, he lives in France and his music mixes African, French and Irish influences in what is very much a niche market. He also is recognized as an expert in a D modal guitar tuning (DADGAD) that appeals to Irish musicians. Call it a niche market inside a niche market.

Let's look at Bensusan's official webpage at http://www.pierrebensusan.com/. (Click on the British/American flags for the English version.) How does he use it to promote his brand, nurture his fanbase and sell his product? How many different products is he selling? Surf around his website, and I guarantee you'll learn something about marketing. It's quite sophisticated. You'll learn something about music and the nature of art, too.

Then let's check out the following:

• Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pierrebensusan. How, specifically, does Bensusan use feature of Facebook to nurture his fanbase?
  
• Myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/pierrebensusan. How does Bensusan use specific Myspace features to sell product and nurture fanbase?
  
• YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/bensusanhq. Same question: How does he use it to sell product and communicate with fans? What purpose does it serve to mark fan videos as favorites?

http://www.youtube.com/user/bensusanhq#p/a/u/0/AwDemwF3Mg8 Pierre Bensusan US Tour Diary (Part 2) | Florida, Pennsylvania, Maine

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/19/133875793/pierre-bensusan-creating-vividly

"It was not a project I was aware of beforehand," he tells Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon. "All the tunes were saying, 'Play me! Play me! No, me first! Me first!' And I said, 'Wait a minute. I hear you, but I'm going to take my time.' "