Branch Records: A Sustainable Business

I’ve been thinking a lot about the music business in practical terms lately. There’s a lot of theorizing being thrown about, and it’s all swell, but at some point we have to get out of our heads and into the streets. Yes, the music business is a strange landscape at the moment, but it’s not innavigable by any means, and there ARE people doing it. So, I thought I’d highlight a group of people who are doing it right. Dustin Ragland turned me onto Branch Records and wrote up this nice piece about what they’re doing. If this rings true to you, hit them up on on twitter and say so: http://www.twitter.com/branchrecords

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Branch Records

written by Dustin Ragland

There are many new models and paths that record labels are attempting to adjust to and pioneer in light of the macro-economic nosedive, and the specifically tricky and shifty business side of music making and promotion.

Branch Records, based in Panama City, FL, is attempting to combine several of the models being touted by many in the music industry as forward-looking and sustainable. As lead partner Josh Street says: “we just threw everything that wasn’t us out of the window.” This includes trying to throw gobs of money at traditional marketing practices, and digital distributors, which are still cordoned off from many independents by sheer cost, even so-called “independent outlets.”

So Branch began to slough off trying to act like a normal label, and began to find ways to get creative in the details of supporting artists, and getting their music in people’s hands. An emphasis on digital sales and marketing not only embraces the ubiquity of the internet, but also keeps physical waste down. This is fitting for a label whose symbol is a tree and whose download cards turn into flowers when planted!

From the artist’s perspective, there are a few fascinating details to take in:
1. Branch works from a debt-free artist model. How they do this is by working with a tiered approach to selling individual records. As you sell more, more comes to you from the label, but there is no large advance to recoup, and no pressure for the artist to tour massively, record expensively, or create a record based on label expectations of creativity or lack thereof.

2. Branch works to develop digital distribution and social media outlets. Helping to create a vibrant Myspace/Twitter presence, and including each artist on their subscription service are just two ways Branch pushes the newest outlets of musical distribution.

3. Branch also works as an environmentally aware and active label, from the construction of their offices in an affordable and energy-efficient manner, to the offsetting of each record sold with a tree planted by Sustainable Harvest (http://www.sustainableharvest.org), to the use of organic cotton t-shirts, to the emphasis on digital delivery of records. Being a smaller label helps them to look for detailed ways to work sustainably.

So what are the drawbacks to this process?

The lack of traditional marketing funds and connections does create a workload for the artist to do plenty of self-promotion and legwork normally reserved for artist development wings of major labels. Getting the record on shelves in music stores and getting ads abounding in magazines and what not still does help spread the word, but Branch hopes to save the artist and themselves the debt on marketing pushes, while helping the artist to connect directly to fans, in the myriad ways one can online, for cheap or free. More marketing comes as the artist sells more, so as widespread distribution becomes necessary, it is then implemented, versus beginning with wide distribution for an artist who may or may not need it. As Pat Douglas of The Cries Of, who has been with Branch since its beginning puts it: “I have realized that Branch has grown so fast based on the members’ artists and non-artists alike all being excellent marketers. Every one from the people performing, down to the guy that handles the phone calls, they all have their niche and really work it well.”

Lack of traditional product is a big one for folks like myself, who enjoy the process of going to a local store and picking up the artwork of a record during its release week. This is one point that the whole of the music world may have to adjust into: an increasing paucity of physical albums. However, Branch does print records, and perhaps a good way of promoting them is to emphasize the CDs for the fans who are most obsessed with the album format, as I am for my favorite artists. Lest Branch seem too digitally ghettoized, they do offer vinyl LP services as the artist grows, and this is something even old-school LP fans can respect.

Unfamiliarity with the subscription model is another difficulty, as moderately successful and unsuccessful launches by Microsoft, Napster, and others seem to denote an irrelevance to subscription, but Branch is attempting to build a label brand with the quality of music it releases, the affordability of the service ($10 a month for two albums), and its simplicity (direct downloads from its site of .zip files, with mp3s and artwork).

All in all, what Branch, and other labels working to promote new forms of artist management and support are trying to do is at least promising in the philosophy of the label as an organic part of the creative process. The promise of a debt-free label beginning is very healthy for many artists, and it might not be for everyone. The detailed environmental sustainability of the label is another important and natural piece of the business of music, one that has been neglected by otherwise savvy artists and labels. The push to build on a wide network of digital media is balanced with a desire to promote “direct contact between the artist and fans,” as Street says, “which is the largest advantage indie artists have over the majors.”

Branch is young enough to still make plenty of mistakes, and its models might not be for every kind of artist. Yet the mindset the promote, and the hard work they, and so many labels do to help their artists make a living creating is vital to the big picture, and will continue to change and grow in the years to come. As Lee Baker, parter and engineer at Branch, puts it on their blog: “We may never be on CRIBS, but we’ll experience the very things that make art so great; honesty, creativity, and community.”

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Bio:
Dustin Ragland is a full-time musician and producer living in Oklahoma City with his lovely wife Becca. Between traveling as a drummer and working as a producer/instrumentalist, Ragland releases his own music as Eutopian Accident, whose first album for Branch Records, The Red Land Tradition, is out this month.

http://www.BranchRecords.com
http://www.EutopianAccident.com
http://www.myspace.com/thecriesof