Today, artists enjoy the benefits of affordable recordings and releases, but face a much bigger challenge than earlier generations when it comes to breaking through the noise to reach new fans. In a more limited media landscape, the paths to attention were well-mapped roads. Whether you were selling cereal or rock and roll, you relied on the same radio, tv and newspapers, working with simple ad-based models. For a known, fixed sum, anyone’s work could be put before the public, who would either rally or ignore it entirely. Those days are gone. Anyone with an internet connection can put their work on a blog or YouTube, and anyone with a credit card can make public bets on their careers with Google AdWords. While everyone can play, the net effect is a noisy marketplace, crowded not only with thousands of competing artists, but literally hundreds of microniches all vying for the same eyes and ears. This places a premium on true originality, which is one of the only sure ways to get attention.
Fortunately companies like The All Night Party are springing up to meet this challenge. We help indie artists leverage new media to create and expand their visibility and opportunities to engage fans. New media-based music products are in our DNA:
- ANP Chief Dave Davis authored the first Enhanced CDs featuring regional artists (from his own band Sex Device to Ditchweed), way back in the mid 90s when he formed UltraInteractive with partners Michelle and John Curley
- Davis chaired the Mastering workshop of the 113th AES Convention, focusing on New Media for Music with colleagues including Bob Ludwig, Bobby Owsinski, Mike Sokol and Bill McQuay.
- The DVD-Music format provided a platform for Davis’ work through the 2000s, including Bridges, his Grammy-Nominated recording of clarinetist Eddie Daniels, Skillet’s Alien Youth, a reissue of a classic Soft Machine performance for DVD and countless others.
The All Night Party was created to push things much farther for regional indie artists.
Out of the box we released The Sundresses’ Motel and F*ck Yeah I’m With the Sundresses (pictured at left)… These download cards are fun and affordable, not to mention collectible and buzz-worthy. If you attended Midpoint Music Festival in 2009 you probably saw people walking around town wearing I’m With the Sundresses.
The Big Idea: Create products at more and different price points so fans can engage with the band, and reward artists for memorable performance.
When everything on your merch table costs $10, fans with $1-9 are cut out of the fun. Dollars they might prefer to spend on something memorable and tangible get left as tips or spent at the bar. If you’re on Ohio band playing in NYC and counting on fans mentioning your name at the door, this can be crucial – merch sales might represent the majority of your pay for that show! By adding 2 items for $2 and $5, The Sundresses began making as much for merch as they previously earned at the door on some nights.
Cools as these products are, we knew we could do better. We reinvented the back-end and download mechanisms, and built the next redeemable download card from scratch, hosting from our own website. This led to three new products for mallory: a reissue of the band’s sold out debut, the first one hundred years, a download version of their brand new ANP release, …before it grows, and a digisingle featuring the songs kopvriet and gratis.
With mallory we began our push towards “musicated merch.” Admittedly, $2 buttons are a modest introduction, but you’ve gotta start somewhere, right? Besides: the “product” is the music, not the button!
Ultimately the difference between our musicated merch and competing redeemable download cards is the music itself. Whether delivered on buttons, stickers, name-tags, posters or key-cards, the look, feel and form reflect the ideas and sounds contained in the music in collectible wrappers. There are many companies who can bang out attractive cards in every shape, color or size. The All Night Party creates vehicles that reflect your music and attitude.
People go to shows because music and performance touch them emotionally. There’s a social aspect too – a shared experience with friends is often richer than the same experience alone. Souvenirs evoke strong memories long after the event, but music, like smell, touches our emotional core. So getting your music into a fan’s ears is much more important than getting a t-shirt on her back! The real power of new media is it’s ability to attach songs to any and everything.
Creative digital design is The All Night Party’s niche. And we’re just getting started: We’re already working on the first regional iTunes LPs and other cutting edge products, including iApps for iPhones and iPods. A new middle class is springing up in music – artists able to make a living doing what they love, minus a label deal. If you’re serious about your music, you should call us. Seriously!
In the age of iTunes, artists can’t afford to wait until they’ve completed a full length album to release their latest material. New songs are crowd-tested at shows, making composition and the recording process more interactive — fan reactions are one part of a process we call “
Fuck Yeah I’m With The Sundresses was another, more modest release, based on the cheesy nametags you often get at conventions and festivals. Built around tracks from Thedresses albums and EPs, the idea was to make an affordable sampler to hook casual fans… complete with a clear tag frame, this one sells for just $2. But $2 is still more than $1, and the plastic card is hardly environmentally friendly. We had to do better.
