{"id":10625,"date":"2013-08-12T18:08:02","date_gmt":"2013-08-13T01:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=10625"},"modified":"2013-08-12T18:08:02","modified_gmt":"2013-08-13T01:08:02","slug":"the-suburbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2013\/08\/the-suburbs\/","title":{"rendered":"THE SUBURBS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The_Suburbs_Kickstarter\"THE SUBURBS<\/b><\/h1>\n

Fans Crowd-Funding Through Kickstarter<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Seems lately like every other day brings a new Kickstarter campaign to my Inbox, and while I\u2019m all in favor of keeping my favorite artists going in this era of declining CD sales and record labels and opportunities to produce a professional music product and get it out there, I had to shake my head at the news that even Spike Lee is looking for a $1.25 million Kickstarter handout for his next film.<\/p>\n

And while I usually don\u2019t bother with New York Post<\/i> ultra right-wing essayist\/film critic Kyle Smith, I did give his sneering takedown of Lee\u2019s panhandling a good look-see, and am almost embarrassed to admit I came to full agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cGot a great investment opportunity for you,\u201d Smith began. \u201cYou come up with X amount of money, with a guaranteed los of 100 percent of whatever you put in. All of the cash goes to an Upper East Side zillionaire. Interested? Spike Lee\u2019s operators are standing by, begging you to Do the Dumb Thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith went on to assess Lee\u2019s worth at $40 million, \u201cso the easiest way for him to raise $1.25 million would be to spend one-thirtieth of what he\u2019s got in the bank.\u201d Instead, he\u2019s \u201cplaying reverse Robin Hood and asking hoi polloi for donations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Compare this to the just-concluded Kickstarter campaign for The Suburbs\u2019 new album. The legendary Suburbs, you may not<\/i> know, is the punk\/dance band that built Minneapolis\u2019 Twin\/Tone label\u2014later home of The Replacements, Soul Asylum, The Jayhawks and Ween.<\/p>\n

Called one of the \u201c100 Most Influential Minnesota Musical Entities of the Twentieth Century,\u201d according to The Minneapolis Star Tribune<\/i>, the band last released a new studio album\u2014Suburbs<\/i>, on A&M in 1986, then disbanded a year later. They\u2019ve reunited sporadically since, and in June, announced a Kickstarter campaign to fund Si Sauvage<\/i>, their first new album in nearly three decades.<\/p>\n

\"The_Suburbs_album_art\"The goal was to raise $65,000 in 30 days ending July 26.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnderstandably, some people have raised questions regarding why we are asking fans to raise money for our new album,\u201d wrote the band\u2019s keyboardist\/vocalist Chan Poling two days before the end of the campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cProfessional musicians earn money mainly by performing or selling their recorded music,\u201d Poling explained. \u201cSome have suggested that we pay for the album out of our gig money. Seems reasonable, however you have to understand: Producing, marketing, and distributing studio-recorded albums is a completely different animal than producing live shows. They are distinct ventures that come with their own separate expenditures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Performing live requires payment of everything from musicians to sound and lights and hall rental, Poling noted. Album production costs, meanwhile, include musicians, the studio rental, the engineer, the mixer and masterer, the manufacturer, the art designer, the distributor, the publicist, etc.<\/p>\n

\u201cSure, this \u2018prepayment\u2019 model is attractive to us because it acts as a form of insurance that offsets the considerable costs of making a professional sounding album,\u201d wrote Poling. \u201cYes, we could invest our cash in the product and let the market play out as it may. But, Kickstarter exists for a very real reason: Musicians\u2019 recorded product revenues from album sales have plummeted alarmingly, drastically and fatally over the last decade. To have the money in the bank before we go to pressing is nothing short of a miracle and a relief and we are more than happy this new crowd-funding thing exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201czeitgeist,\u201d Poling concluded, has changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople feel good about supporting the artists they love. They know that record labels aren\u2019t the best thing for recording artists like us, and want to be supportive.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not \u201casking for a handout,\u201d he maintains. Rather, \u201cit\u2019s simply a way for us to gather \u2018prepayments\u2019 for the record.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Kickstarter, Poling related, \u201cYou can buy the CD today and receive bonus tracks [and other merchandise incentives], or you can wait and buy it later through Amazon or iTunes\u2014where we will receive less, after Apple\u2019s cut. Most importantly, all the while, we retain ownership and control of our music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lucky for us Suburbs fans, the band assembled 1,051 backers in raising $73,199, well surpassing the $65,000 goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who have heard advance mixes, say it sounds like a culmination of the entire history of The Suburbs, and thoroughly contemporary at the same time. It’s surprisingly upbeat, with plenty of dance grooves, yet also contains the beauty of older songs. It\u2019s mature and fun, and it’s obvious that The Suburbs\u2019 audience has grown along with the band. Crowds are already cheering and singing along at recent shows to new songs like \u2018Turn the Radio On.\u2019”<\/p>\n

Jim Bessman<\/p>\n

\"3-The_Suburbs_photo_by_Kii_Arens\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE SUBURBS Fans Crowd-Funding Through Kickstarter Seems lately like every other day brings a new Kickstarter campaign to my Inbox, and while I\u2019m all in favor of keeping my favorite artists going in this era of declining CD sales and record labels and opportunities to produce a professional music product and get it out there, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4976,1058],"tags":[7051,7044,7043,7046,7045,7053,7049,445,7052,7048,7042,7054,7047,7050],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10625"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10625"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10630,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10625\/revisions\/10630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}