One minute we are on the stage at the Venice festival of media discussing the impact of a DIY revolution on the music business, and a few days later the Sunday Times Style magazine is running an article about the very same topic!
And as if by serendipity, the article is about Manchester band the Ting Tings, who recent signed to Sony BMG, whose European CEO Maarten Steinkamp was one of our speakers at Venice. We promise that neither of these two events were connected.
The key for the Ting Tings was to ensure that no matter who the signed to, they would retain complete creative control of there music. This may seem to an outsider as only a small concession on the label’s part, but this a a big leap of faith for any major record company when it comes to a totally unproven new act.
And in true DIY spirit, the album cost pretty much nothing to make. No expensive recording studio in the south of France for these guy’s, with the band using Pro Tools and Garageband (an application that comes free with your Mac laptop) to record the album in their own home studio. While they also decided to use their home-made lo-fi video for their single, That’s Not My Name, in preference to the usual big budget record company promo.
Encouragingly the Sunday Times not only suggested that the DIY revolution would allow artists to take control of their own destiny, but also suggested we should all go out and make our own DIY music, movies, fanzines, novels and fashion labels. Let’s hope this hasn’t given Peaches Geldof or Paris Hilton any new ideas!
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