D.I.Y.

Sellaband Shifts Gears, Drops $50K Minimum

GUEST POST: Indie singer songwriter Mathew Ebel  is carving out a living with a mixture of live performances, CD sales, subscriptions and more.  But he caught my eye with his weekly series of live net performances via Ustream.

One of the keys  to Ebel's survival has been his ability to embrace new ideas and technologies that might connect him to fans and move his carreer forward. Fan funding enabler Sellaband was just that kind of concept, except for one thing; he couldn't imagine raising the $50,000 minimum required. Then he got a phone call  that could change everything.

Sellaband Title

Earlier this week I received a call (yes, a voice from the Netherlands) about the future of Sellaband. If you’re not already aware, Sellaband was set up to help independent artists (like me) finance albums with real producers, real studios, and real promotion. I posted a more detailed explanation back in February, but the major drawback was the budget goal: $50,000 USD. Crikey.

That’s all changing. Sellaband is becoming less like a make-your-own record deal and more like a straight-up micro-financing site for musicians. I’m excited about this and more convinced that this is how I want to finance my next album. Read on for details…

Major Changes at Sellaband

They finally posted their plans on The Sellaband Site, but I’ll give you a breakdown of how this will affect you (my fans and investors) and me (the guy making all the noises in the studio)…

The Goal Is Now $10,000

Actually, the goal can be anything from $10k to $100k, it’s up to me (and you). I made Goodbye Planet Earth for about $5,000 including duplication, so two or three times the budget would mean I could hire a real engineer, more than one other musician, and maybe even a producer to help me improve my sound.

I Can Set My Own Incentives

Now I can add things like remixable tracks, posters, stickers, house concerts, or whatever I want as incentives to invest. Want to contribute $500 to the cause? You’ll get the deluxe box set with a video documentary about the album’s creation. $1,000? I’ll write you a custom song. It’s all up to me (and you) now!

Revenue Sharing Is Optional

Most of you who signed up have already told me you don’t care about the .01% (or whatever) of the net revenue you’ll get from album sales. Good, ’cause that posed two problems: It’s an accounting nightmare to keep track of all that. Also, it meant I had to sell exclusively through SellaBand’s store so they could do the payment processing. Fortunately…

I Can Use CD Baby, iTunes, and Amazon

I can distribute the album any way I want, which means it’ll still be available via iTunes, CD Baby, and at live concerts when it comes out. If there’s revenue sharing involved, it’ll be up to me to handle the accounting, but SellaBand is now willing to trust the artists to run their own business. Shocking, no?

“Artists will always own the master recordings and keep 100% of publishing rights.”

I put that in quotes ’cause the direct line from SellaBand is explanation enough.

Sellaband’s Fee: 10% of the goal

They will not keep any revenue from CD sales, just a tenth of whatever goal I set. Sounds fair to me considering I’m already at $5,000.

That last comment is the important one…Your contributions have put me at about $5,000 right now -  exactly what it cost me to produce my last album. If we can double or triple that budget, I could create something truly stunning. I think Sellaband could be the best thing to happen to indie albums since the iTunes Music Store.

These changes won’t be enacted for another month or so, but I’m assuming it’ll take me longer than that to generate enough cash to produce “Songs for Geeks” (or whatever I’m calling the next disc).

Matthew Ebel Live at FWA 2009

Photo by Barton Creative

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11 Comments

  1. Hey nice review of the new SellaBand model…
    One correction – under the old Model you could still release through other labels and sell at gigs etc – I manage Electric Eel Shock who are releasing their SellaBand album through Universal in Japan and a bunch of Independents around the world…
    BUT the new terms gets rid of all restrictions – we will return to SellaBand for future projects and we will have total control and ownership over the music created.
    We are looking into giving all the music away… and only selling special limited editions…
    See what Trent Reznor thinks about this
    http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?30,767183
    The new SellaBand is going to be fantastic for artists
    And it is up to them to keep their believers (fans) happy – By incentivising them properly and keeping their promises. This is exciting times for the music industry.
    Fan Funded = more artists in control of their own sustainable career = more artistic freedom = more interesting artists being able to stick around and keep creating their own individual sound.
    Hats off to SellaBand – I believe that Fan Funding will soon become an integral part of the music industry.

  2. Indeed, the only reason I got involved with the first incarnation of SellaBand was because my investors (“Believers”) would get a refund if I backed out. Now I don’t need to, I just need to double what I’ve already got going for me.
    It’s a good move, I just hope my fans see it as such.

  3. Just take a listen to a few Sellaband CD’s , and you know why nobody buys them . I don’t think that dropping the budget will change anything 😛 .

  4. we’re trying a new model here at the school in Chicago – a weekend gets you: set up, 2 days recording, engineer, production, editing and mastering, 100 cds duplicated, 25 t-shirts too!….its something like $1500 and gets a band exactly what they need to start monetising, promoting right away. We are tweaking the model – the first band wanted 2 different shirt designs and wanted us to spend more time mixing and I ended up doing a free remix for the german dance floor crowd…….but i’m excited….feels like we made a difference.
    Martin Atkins

  5. I would imagine that’s really a matter of taste. I personally can’t stand anything Jack White has ever done in his entire career, but obviously the public and the music industry love the shit out of him. Yet I’ve heard indie albums made for less than $2,000 that blow my mind.
    I guess the point is that Sellaband’s appeal is not that it’s a measure of talent, just a measure of ability to organize. Imagine what might happen when a band with some talent gets $10,000 to record an album…

  6. I wouldn’t often recommend SellaBand because that 50k minimum really made it useless for a lot of smaller bands. Dropping it was a smart move. It should open it up to a lot more artists.

  7. this is perfect, but i wonder how hip hop artist could benefit, anything is better than sitting in front of Fat Beats or Times Square, now just do the showcases and say, if you believe go to this site, have it on a card or something and boom, there you go

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