Listeners take control as music industry changes

Right now, a German video gamer could be jamming out to the music of Asheville's Luzius Stone as he executes an especially difficult move in some space-age virtual world. He's making a video of his Xbox prowess to post on YouTube, and he'll credit the band in the notes section below the video.

It's not just European gamers who are drawn to Luzius Stone. Dozens of people — snowboarders, travelers, makeup artists and a Russian blogger named Olga — use his music in their YouTube videos because they can download it for free.

The musician behind the Luzius Stone project, Justin Miles, says he's grateful for the unsolicited and unconventional exposure, which he received by posting his songs to the free download site Jamendo.

For decades, the music industry was controlled by artists and their record labels, but now, with the proliferation of online music outlets, the balance is shifting, and consumers are in control. That means musicians like Miles have to think about their priorities as they release new music and determine which medium best reaches their audience.

In Asheville, local bands create their own strategies for navigating the global soundscape, weighing the effects of digital distribution and exploring old ways of sharing music, including the vinyl record.

Free for all

"It's a completely different way of consuming music than what I grew up with," Miles says. "It's my first album; nobody knows who Luzius Stone is. So instead of trying to hold on to this thing and sell it, people can get it with the touch of a button if I just give it away. Everybody's doing that these days."

This make-it-free tactic is one way bands connect with audiences in a changing music industry. Listeners are migrating away from CDs, which Miles calls "dinosaur disks." Sales have fallen 27 percent since 2013, according to Nielsen.

Miles does sell CDs at his shows, usually for a nominal fee of $5, but the dinosaur disc format isn't that relevant anymore, he says, pointing out that many new laptops don't even have disc drives.

Instead of mailing CDs to radio stations and hoping for airtime, he'll try to reach people across platforms and through lots of different distribution channels, a scatter-shot approach. "I think the way to really get music out there today ... is to put it in every avenue that you can," Miles says.

And often, getting it out there means making it free. Listeners just don't buy music like they used to. Album sales are plummeting — even digitally. Since 2013, sales have fallen about 19 percent across all formats, according to Nielsen.

People are still listening to music, of course, but increasingly, they're streaming it through online services such as Spotify, Google Play Music, Pandora and Rhapsody. That means they never own a file of the music at all; they access it through the Internet. Streaming sites are legal and free, although users can pay a subscription fee for more control over what they hear.

Nielsen reported 163.9 billion song streams last year on the aforementioned audio platforms and video services such as YouTube and Vevo. Overall, streams were up 54.5 percent in 2014.

Asheville bands have captured some of that web traffic, but streams don't equate to financial gain. The Honeycutters, one of Asheville's most renowned bands, have garnered more than 60,000 combined streams for their five most popular tracks on Spotify, but lead singer Amanda Platt says the resulting gains are negligible.

"The money artists get from being played on Spotify is so miniscule," she says. "I wouldn't even notice."

To decide how much to pay an artist, the streaming service uses a formula that has to do with the number of premium subscribers (who pay a monthly membership fee), the number of users with free accounts and the royalty rate of the artist. The number of users is always changing, so the rate at which artists are paid changes too.

According to Spotify's website, the average payout is between $0.006 and $0.0084 per song. So the Honeycutters might have received a few hundred dollars from the streaming service over the years.

The Honeycutters' new album, Me Oh My, comes out in digital and CD formats this week. (The release party is on April 17 at Isis Restaurant & Music Hall.)

For the band members, who are full-time musicians, those CDs are still a moneymaker. But Platt acknowledges the era of the CD might be ending, and she's experienced the change in preferences first hand.

At a recent show, a young fan — probably in her early 20s and probably drunk, Platt recalls — approached her to gush over the music. She was going to buy the album but then she discovered it was on Spotify. The fan was delighted she could listen to the music for free, but Platt lost a sale to the streaming service.

Platt says that fan's get-it-for-free attitude is common among younger listeners; older fans usually buy the CD. Perhaps those demographics are a sign of CDs' declining edge.

"Right now, the whole music industry is in limbo with this question mark hanging in the air," she says. "I feel a little bit panicked by that because I hate change. I'm old-school; I want a CD."

The past is the future

But maybe Platt isn't old-school enough. For many local artists, vinyl records are the strongest sellers. The Honeycutters don't produce vinyls because they cost too much to create, but Platt says fans ask for them all the time. And other local bands are already capitalizing on the format.

"I would say more people order the vinyl than the digital download," says Derrick Johnson, who plays trombone and sings in the beloved Asheville act Yo Mama's Big Fat Booty Band. "They see vinyl there, and they've got to have it."

Nationwide, this analog format has gained popularity for nine consecutive years, and in 2014, vinyl accounted for more than 6 percent of all U.S. album sales. That number might sound insignificant, but a niche product with a similar market share has been transforming Asheville's economy: craft beer, which accounted for 6.5 percent of the beer market in 2012, although in 2014, that share grew to 11 percent.

The Booty Band's forthcoming album, "Funk Life," will come out on vinyl as well as CD and digital formats on June 2. Johnson is optimistic about the record sales since they've been so popular in the past.

For the 2012 release "Doin' It Hard," the Booty Band ordered a run of 500 vinyl records. They've sold almost all of them, a noteworthy accomplishment, according to Jon Hency, who co-owns The Mothlight venue and the label Bathetic Records.

"I think vinyl is king," he says. "With so many more bands and micro-labels pressing vinyl now, the pattern has shifted — 300 is the new 1,000 ... It's odd to think that selling only 300 copies weighs success in this day, but it is what it is."

So Booty Band produced a small run of records because music lovers have lots of choices when they're shopping, but the band also wanted to maintain exclusivity. Fans prefer to buy records that feel special, and once those records sell out, they can actually increase in value over time. The Booty Band is keeping about 30 records in reserve in hopes they'll be worth more in a few years.

"The limited quality is attractive to people," says Matt Schnable, co-owner of Harvest Records in West Asheville. He founded the shop with partner Mark Capon in 2004, and since that time, it has seen huge increases in the number of people seeking records, especially in the past two or three years. Although the store moves plenty of CDs and used vinyl, freshly pressed records are its biggest sellers.

For Record Store Day on April 18, music lovers will flock to Harvest for those limited vinyls. The store will stock hundreds of limited edition records for sale on that day only.

Harvest isn't a hole-in-the-wall record store; it's an institution. Over the years, Schnable and Capon have created a label and a festival associated with their store, and they've built relationships with musicians all over the country. They understand the artistry behind the music, but they also know it's a business, so they try to cater to everyone.

Rare jazz singles? Sure. Want Taylor Swift records? They've got them. (Not even Spotify can offer those tracks —Swift pulled all of her music from the streaming service last year.)

"At this point, people who probably never expected to care about records, care about records," Schnable said. "Maybe before you could make assumptions about certain people, certain heads. But at this point, those people might have e-readers and do everything digitally in their lives — except they like vinyl."

Tracks from the periphery

The appeal of vinyl is pretty straightforward, the Harvest partners agree. Listeners can hold records in their hands and display them in their houses. The format is physical and durable, and the thick black disks make CDs seem flimsy.

That physical presence appeals to musicians, too. "It's kind of a reward to have a record," says Tashi Dorji, an experimental guitarist who has gained national attention. He released a new record, "Appa," on Hency's Bathetic label last week.

When fans buy Dorji's records, they also get a code they can use to access a free digital download, he explains. That way, listeners get the best of both formats: the warm sound of a record to listen to at home and the portability of a digital file to take on the go.

Vinyl has been good to Dorji. When he released a self-titled record last year, his sales spiked in part because of coverage from Pitchfork and The Wire magazine, but his distributor gets most of that money. Records are so expensive to produce that it takes a long time for investors to get their money back, and they get first dibs on the cash flow. Dorji will see revenue from records after his partners take their cuts.

Dorji makes more money by playing shows — big ones can bring in $700 — and working a day job at the French Broad Food Co-Op. If he sells a record or digital download, that's a bonus.

For him, records aren't really a business decision; rather, they match his aesthetic as a musician, and that's why he makes them.

"My priorities are different as an experimental musician," he says. "I want to be exploratory and forward, and I want to be excited."

Sometimes being forward means looking backward. Dorji also makes cassette tapes. They're fun and very inexpensive, he explains, and like vinyl, they're an analog format. (What that means for the resulting sound is complicated and widely debated, but many listeners report a warmer, richer experience.) Is he selling cassettes? Not really. Does he care? Not particularly.

And because he isn't that interested in sales, he has a lot of creative control, he explains. He often records music in his house and releases it for low or no cost on Bandcamp. If he were more commercially successful, his record label would probably prohibit him from these casual releases.

"When you work on such a small-scale venture, that's the best part about it," he says. "I can put out as much and as often as I want."

There are definitely full-time musicians in Asheville, he acknowledges. The Honeycutters and Yo Mama's Big Fat Booty Band are among them. But Dorji thinks a lot of musicians who are navigating the changing formats of the music industry are seeking the one that represents them the best.

"At this level, we are on the periphery of the larger industry," he says. "We're all artists in the sense that we are deeply committed to making the sound that we're more interested in."

The great tape debate

Are cassettes dead? Sales numbers reported by Nielsen dropped from 55,000 in 2012 to 11,000 in 2013 but then rose to more than 29,000 in 2014. Some independent musicians report a fast underground trade in tapes.

The shine has worn off

CDs were once hailed as the music medium of the future, but now, listeners have turned away from the format. Sales have dropped 27 percent since 2013, according to Nielsen.

Turning to the past

Interest in vinyl records has increased for nine consecutive years. Sales leaped more than 51 percent last year, and the form now accounts for 6 percent of all album sales, according to Nielsen.

Digital is fickle

Downloads were in, but now they're declining — last year, at a rate of about 10 percent. Streaming is the new way to listen online. More than 163 billion songs were streamed in the US in 2014, up 54.5 percent from 2013, Nielsen reports.