Hear
I sit, listening to downloaded
clips from one of Edmonton’s new
rock bands Living Illusion. My editor
forwarded a press release he received from the bands 21
year old marketing director, band manager and lead guitarist Shane
Lamotte titled “The Future Of Today’s
Musician”.
Interestingly, the gist of
the release was not directly promoting the recently released
album by the band, but was a discourse on musicians taking
business into their own hands by choosing to be independent
of multi-million dollar corporations. “ Musicians are becoming successful
self-employed business owners, not just talented artists” states Lamotte and
he goes on the technological advancements in video, music
recording and the growth of the internet that have made
it possible for musicians to get songs to the market without “a
lucrative bank roll”. The press release ends with
its first mention of the band and again is not a direct
sell for the album, which probably wouldn’t have
attracted my editor’s attention, but rather reads
like a article or a mission statement for indie bands and
labels. “If we’ve written, produced, engineered,
marketed, promoted, managed and sold records for our own
band, what sense would it make to have someone else take
over so we receive 5 cents per CD we sell? All we’re
doing is cutting out the middle man and taking the power
back.”
Living Illusion definitely
takes its own advise to heart with all the manufacturing
and promoting of the album being done ‘in house’.
Design, layout and printing of the CD cover and insert
is now possible with a good personal computer, web site
design and management facilitates the bands needs on
many levels such as booking tour dates, building a data
base of fans, press, distribution and generally making
the whole band package accessible to the world.
I called Lamotte for
an interview and was struck by the industry savvy displayed
by the young musician, though his day gig as a marketing
rep has clearly helped him in the various hats he wears
in the band. Their CD release party at the Sidetrack
Café in
Edmonton was well received and was captured for an upcoming
video release. The video already has a destination for
release, YNN (Your Music Network)
is a video broadcaster focused exclusively on independent
videos and are awaiting Living Illusion’s first
video.
As any good marketer would do Shane got
around to trying to place product here in Edson.
As we SCENERS know, Scribes & Vibes
Books & Music has a great Indie CD section
and even brings live bands to the store so you can look
for look for Living Illusions to be on
sale here in our SCENE soon. If you can’t
wait that long, and why would you when the band experience
can be had right now by going to their website at www.livingillusion.com.
Click on to the future of today’s musicians yourself
and remember that it’s great to be SCENE and
heard, here and there, everywhere on the world wide web.
By Lee Frezen
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