Jari's rant about Wintersun, Nuclear Blast, and crowdfunding

[PureXul]

https://www.facebook.com/wintersun/posts/10152607037652402

I'm not sure how many people have already read it, but it was an interesting read as it touches on a lot of topics that are becoming bigger and bigger issues with how crowd funding will affect the traditional label model.

On one hand, I respect his artistic vision and can agree that the music industry is fundamentally breaking, if not broken. Crowdfunding is allowing bands to be far less reliant on labels, which is a scary proposition - Ne Obliviscaris has raised almost $70k for a world tour, blowing well past their stated goal, and more and more bands are funding recording via crowdfunding. If labels can no longer lord advances over bands, their control and power diminish, so they're heavily invested in making sure bands play by the labels' rules for as long as possible.

On the other hand, small bands the world over have figured out how to release great music with far fewer resources than Jari has at his disposal, and many of them probably live in apartments that are just as shitty, with time constraints and logistical nightmares just as bad. But they get it done. Jari crafts some incredibly complex music but if eliminating a couple hundred keyboard layers would allow him to complete the album and get it out there, is it a worthwhile compromise? Obviously he doesn't think so, but it begins to tread into the realm of a pity party when you consider exactly why he's in this position.

I'm not sure exactly what Jari's goal was in writing that, but he has managed to get some of his fans to start spamming Nuclear Blast's Facebook page about the issue. Considering we only have one side of the story, it seems like a terrible idea to start messing with NB's promotion of other bands.

Any thoughts on Jari's complaints and/or the greater topic of crowdfunding and label politics?

 

[jem777az]

I read this earlier today and was wondering if someone would bring it up here on the forum. I totally agree with a lot of what he's saying, but I can also understand the labels stance from a business standpoint. If what he says is true I think NB could have handled it a bit better. I mean if the band can raise money on their own and the label still gets the profits from the release of the album, I don't see what the issue is. It seems fundamentally and morally wrong that the label would be entitled to a chunk of the crowd funding money if the band were to do all the work to raise the money. Legally that's a whole another ball of wax. It just sucks either way and I really feel for the guy and Wintersun. Oh and I don't think he should have to sacrifice his artistic vision just to release the album, I.E. - cutting out some of the 50 layers of keyboards or whatever the case may be.

 

[PureXul]

I read this earlier today and was wondering if someone would bring it up here on the forum.

The level of discussion here is usually a lot more rational than certain other music forums, and the fact that we have people on various sides of the business - artists, management, and labels - means that there are people who can probably add some context to what Jari has said.

I mean if the band can raise money on their own and the label still gets the profits from the release of the album, I don't see what the issue is. It seems fundamentally and morally wrong that the label would be entitled to a chunk of the crowd funding money if the band were to do all the work to raise the money. Legally that's a whole another ball of wax.

That's the most interesting part to me, and I suspect that a lot of bands are on contracts that were written before the idea of crowdfunding was even conceived.

In general, I agree with the sentiment that a band should be able to go out and source more money to complete recordings, but to play devil's advocate, Nuclear Blast has already invested $X in Wintersun to complete Time II - from their perspective, they want to get it back ASAP, regardless of whether it's income via record sales or income via a Kickstarter. There's a certain longterm value in letting the band keep all of the Kickstarter and then just collecting the profits from the record, but that's predicated on Jari actually finishing the record - considering his track record, it's hardly a given that a successful crowdfunding campaign would lead directly or quickly to a finished record.

For Jari, not being on a label and funding his recordings independently would probably be optimal since 1) he doesn't work in anything resembling a normal timeline and doesn't play well with restrictions and 2) he has a fanbase who apparently would be willing to throw money at him. If nothing else, I suspect that this will serve as an interesting cautionary tale, although I hope to see some positive resolution. In spite of the fact that I think Jari is at least partly at fault here, I'm still a fan and would love to see more output from him.

 

[General Zod]

He signed a contract. If he didn't read that contract, shame on him. Although I have no sympathy for labels, I also have no sympathy for musicians who wish to bite the hand that's fed them. Fulfill your contract and then move on to the crowd funding model if you so desire. But he should least acknowledge that the only reason there are fans willing to fund his next album, is because of the label model that put him in that position. Furthermore, his position sounds greedy. His solution isn't just that his fans should pay for more studio time for the next album, but that they should buy him his own studio. Really? Are fans now suppose to buy every artist their own recording studio?

And not for nothing, when an artist says, "I've got probably 5 long albums worth of new insanely good material! And there´s no filler material at all!", I'm calling bullshit.

 

[AeonicSlumber]

He signed a contract. If he didn't read that contract, shame on him. Although I have no sympathy for labels, I also have no sympathy for musicians who wish to bite the hand that's fed them. Fulfill your contract and then move on to the crowd funding model if you so desire. But he should least acknowledge that the only reason there are fans willing to fund his next album, is because of the label model that put him in that position. Furthermore, his position sounds greedy. His solution isn't just that his fans should pay for more studio time for the next album, but that they should buy him his own studio. Really? Are fans now suppose to buy every artist their own recording studio?

And not for nothing, when an artist says, "I've got probably 5 long albums worth of new insanely good material! And there´s no filler material at all!", I'm calling bullshit.

I've heard quite a lot about Nuclear Blast going above and beyond out of good will giving him money they don't owe him to work on these records and he's still coming up short? Sounds like somethings not right here. It's absurd that his solution is that people buy him his own recording studio.

It seems fundamentally and morally wrong that the label would be entitled to a chunk of the crowd funding money if the band were to do all the work to raise the money.

In general, I agree with the sentiment that a band should be able to go out and source more money to complete recordings, but to play devil's advocate, Nuclear Blast has already invested in Wintersun to complete Time II - from their perspective, they want to get it back ASAP, regardless of whether it's income via record sales or income via a Kickstarter. There's a certain longterm value in letting the band keep all of the Kickstarter and then just collecting the profits from the record, but that's predicated on Jari actually finishing the record - considering his track record, it's hardly a given that a successful crowdfunding campaign would lead directly or quickly to a finished record.

For Jari, not being on a label and funding his recordings independently would probably be optimal since 1) he doesn't work in anything resembling a normal timeline and doesn't play well with restrictions and 2) he has a fanbase who apparently would be willing to throw money at him. If nothing else, I suspect that this will serve as an interesting cautionary tale, although I hope to see some positive resolution. In spite of the fact that I think Jari is at least partly at fault here, I'm still a fan and would love to see more output from him.

When bands sign record deals, it's a deal in which the label owns the rights to the record. This means, they get exclusive rights to manufacture the record and sell it. A crowdfunding campaign of this nature would allow for the band to ostensibly "sell" Time II to fans. Fans would donate, and in exchange they would get a copy of the album as the reward - but the label is manufacturing and distributing that record.

The "easy" way out would be if Jari set up a deal with Nuclear Blast so that he sets up this crowd funding campaign and uses some of the donation money to wholesale order Time II when it comes out to satisfy the label and the backers with a legit reward - but of course, this would mean Jari would have to considerably set a very very VERY high goal that I doubt he could reach.

On top of this, doing this would also fuck up PR and marketing schedules, as well as their standing with their distributors.

 

[PureXul]

I've heard quite a lot about Nuclear Blast going above and beyond out of good will giving him money they don't owe him to work on these records and he's still coming up short? Sounds like somethings not right here. It's absurd that his solution is that people buy him his own recording studio.

Another tangential factor to that - it seems like Jari has tried to handle a lot of this himself and has run into a LOT of issues because of it. Building his own studio seems like a great way to deal with exponentially more problems and delays. At what point does someone point out to him that he'd be better off letting someone else deal with the technology problems in a professional studio and let him just focus on music?

When bands sign record deals, it's a deal in which the label owns the rights to the record. This means, they get exclusive rights to manufacture the record and sell it. A crowdfunding campaign of this nature would allow for the band to ostensibly "sell" Time II to fans. Fans would donate, and in exchange they would get a copy of the album as the reward - but the label is manufacturing and distributing that record.

The "easy" way out would be if Jari set up a deal with Nuclear Blast so that he sets up this crowd funding campaign and uses some of the donation money to wholesale order Time II when it comes out to satisfy the label and the backers with a legit reward - but of course, this would mean Jari would have to considerably set a very very VERY high goal that I doubt he could reach.

On top of this, doing this would also fuck up PR and marketing schedules, as well as their standing with their distributors.

Thanks for clarifying - I have a pretty good grasp of contract law in general due to my business experience but have virtually no specific knowledge of the intricacies of music industry contracts and how crowdfunding would fit into or violate those contracts.

Do you think that we'll eventually see contracts that are written with crowdfunding in mind - ie, some sort of uneasy coexistence where labels help bands harness the power of crowdfunding - or is crowdfunding too disruptive to labels' business models for them to even partially embrace it?

 

[AeonicSlumber]

For the record by the way, Devin Townsend gets around all of this by owning the rights to all of his music and then licensing it to Century Media/Inside Out. For Casualties, he was able to crowdfund it because he has the rights to it already and just decided to self release it without a label.

 

[AeonicSlumber]

Do you think that we'll eventually see contracts that are written with crowdfunding in mind - ie, some sort of uneasy coexistence where labels help bands harness the power of crowdfunding - or is crowdfunding too disruptive to labels' business models for them to even partially embrace it?

I don't really see why labels would hire lawyers to drum up crowdfunding clauses when they could just pre-arange with the band how the band plans to finance the record. In the case of Wintersun, NB already put a ton of money into the release, so the whole thing is no good.

But like I said, if that wasn't the case, they could just promise NB they would order copies from them as giveaways (with the donations money of course) and just time everything to the street date so as not to fuck up the marketing for the record or the label's standing with their distros. Normally it's an easy fix, but Wintersun is so tied up with so much money given to them that it's not going to happen.

My understanding is that Wintersun is a big seller for NB, which is why they're not dropped in the first place.

 

[TENTH DREAMER DECEIVER]

This Jari fellow should write a concept album on how life really isn't fair. Let's face it, he really wants his own studio so he can start up his own business outside of his art. It ain't going to be used primarily for his own music.

 

[AeonicSlumber]

This Jari fellow should write a concept album on how life really isn't fair.

actually lol'd. agreed.

 

[Dustin]

Welcome to the music business in the digital age Jari.

There are a few misconceptions and misunderstandings on his part. I think Zod said it best... simply, Jari signed a contract, he should fulfill it and move on.

From what I gather, Jari is wanting funding to create his own studio so he no longer has to "outsource" his time and work. This would allow him to work anytime he wants, and apply his creative energy in a less-costly, and more economical fashion. This is something I can totally sympathize on. However, even if he gets the funding, The problem here is it will only be a short term band-aid for a long term wound that will continue to bleed red ink. It will ALWAYS cost money to produce competitive sounding albums. There will be software updates, hardware updates, he will need to afford to keep up his gear and instruments , and then you have the final product expenses. Artwork? graphics? Distro costs? physical copy pressing if any? ...promotion and publicity? These are things the label generally handles.

Sure, if he keeps in ALL in house, he could pull it off. But, how many artists can do that successfully? I suppose it's a choice of working with a label and getting the lions share of what they offer (whatever that is), or breaking ties and doing it all himself. It seems like a case of having his cake and eating it too.

He doesn't go into much of what NB is giving him with his contract, only on what they are wanting to take if he try's to crowd source the next album, so it's hard to be to critical of either side. Again ,I can partially sympathize with his intentions, then again... he seems to have a bit of wishful thinking going on.

As for crowd sourcing... I have my own opinion on that creature.

http://thetrichordist.com/2014/07/1...-guest-post-by-dustin-mitchell-of-katagory-v/

In the words of Michael Douglas from the movie Falling Down, it is not "economically viable".

 

[OrionSon]

For the record by the way, Devin Townsend gets around all of this by owning the rights to all of his music and then licensing it to Century Media/Inside Out. For Casualties, he was able to crowdfund it because he has the rights to it already and just decided to self release it without a label.

Also about Devin Townsend, he mentioned something similar to Jari's position. His PledgeMusic campaign will have most of the money go towards the Ziltoid sequel, so a fan asked why he couldn't offer the album itself as a reward. Devin responded that since Ziltoid 2 is on a contract with Century Media/InsideOut Music, he couldn't give that as a reward on his independent crowdfunding campaign. This is like Jari with a Time II Kickstarter

On the topic of Jari, it does seem a little pretentious that he refuses to work in rented studios. Sure, there's his artistic vision and such, but I think he should suck it up and finish out his contract in rented studios, then go independent and release crowdfunded solo albums, or under a new band name. Wintersun is one of my alltime favorite bands, so I can't wait to hear Time II and those other albums Jari mentioned, it just sucks that it's in this terrible situation. Hopefully now that he went public with this, he and Nuclear Blast can come to some form of agreement.

 

[batmura]

Ne Obliviscaris has raised almost $70k for a world tour, blowing well past their stated goal

Wow, are you serious? Do you have a link for that? Ne Obliviscaris are an amazing band. Good for them.

I had no idea Wintersun had such 'loyal' fans willing to support the band. Look at Wintersun's reviews on Amazon. I've never seen so many positive reviews for a band of that calibre before. Obviously they're not so underground anymore. I remember hearing their debut album and thinking it was okay at best. I actually remember thinking bands like Children of Bodom and Norther were much better in that style. I must have missed something. This Jari guy has become god to these fans.

One of the commentors suggested faking his own death and then releasing the album under a different name. I had to lol at that. If being on NB sucks so much, though, he should release several of those 'ambient' noisescape discs with plasticky synth tones a la new Burzum and then get his fans to support him all the way through. Or he could just form a new band and do his crowd sourcing. Would NB be able to stop that too?

 

[OrionSon]

From what little I understand of label contracts, there's nothing stopping him from making a new band or releasing solo albums, but he couldn't release Time II because that one is under contract. I could be wrong though.

 

[skyrefuge]

Seems like there's a pretty easy solution. Deliver 'Time II' to NB, as an album of solo acoustic guitar songs recorded in his apartment (or, less-minimally, with only 50 keyboard tracks instead of 200). Then he's done with NB and can start over independently with his "5 long albums worth of new insanely good material". If 'Time II' was all he had in the tank, then his conundrum would be more understandable, but since he's already thinking of it as his old crappy stuff, who cares? If there are additional albums left in the deal (which would be surprising given what NB must have known about his rate of output), well, maybe he can look again and find some filler after all in those 5 albums.

And heck, a get-out-of-contract album might even be really good. There are only two ways that he could actually know that his new material is "insanely good": either it's already recorded in all its intricacy (obviously not, given his plea for a studio!), or his demos/sounds in his head prove that it doesn't actually need all that recording intricacy to be "insanely good". It's the basic melodies and rhythms that people care about. After a second or third harmony line, more layers really start reaching a point of diminishing returns.

Or just talk to Amanda Palmer. She famously got out of her contract with Roadrunner, and then raised $1.2M for herself on Kickstarter. Though unfortunately for him, it sounds like Nuclear Blast has read that cautionary tale for labels! There's no way Amanda Palmer would have reached anything near $1.2M if not for all the work Roadrunner did while she was under contract with them, so RR probably now regrets giving up on their investment after seeing that big payoff that they couldn't share in. Nuclear Blast surely doesn't want to see the same thing happen to them, hence their entirely understandable "fear" of crowdfunding.

I'm not aware of any of these big crowdfunding stories ever coming for a band that didn't initially have a big push from a label to make them well-known enough for a crowdfunding campaign to work. "We're going to spend a bunch of money to make you popular, and then just let you go" would be a completely terrible business model for labels today. In the past, "just let you go" wasn't too big of a concern for labels, because on their own, an artist didn't have too many avenues to continue making a lot of money. But now, it can actually be the record label that ironically is the "kickstarter" to an artist's career, and if the label isn't careful, they won't get nearly the perks in return that they were counting on. That makes me think that, if anything, label contracts going forward will start making even wider-reaching claims to an artist's future income.

 

[PureXul]

Wow, are you serious? Do you have a link for that? Ne Obliviscaris are an amazing band. Good for them.

http://www.pozible.com/project/183510

Pretty amazing for a band with only one album out.

 

[batmura]

Pretty amazing for a band with only one album out.

Indeed. But before they released their album, they took their time to grow and improve from their demo days. I had heard the demos in 2007 or something and fell in love with them. Then, five years later or so, when I heard the album, I was floored. In those five years they obviouosly honed their sound to perfection.

 

[AeonicSlumber]

Seems like there's a pretty easy solution. Deliver 'Time II' to NB, as an album of solo acoustic guitar songs recorded in his apartment (or, less-minimally, with only 50 keyboard tracks instead of 200). Then he's done with NB and can start over independently with his "5 long albums worth of new insanely good material". If 'Time II' was all he had in the tank, then his conundrum would be more understandable, but since he's already thinking of it as his old crappy stuff, who cares? If there are additional albums left in the deal (which would be surprising given what NB must have known about his rate of output), well, maybe he can look again and find some filler after all in those 5 albums.

I agree with this wholesale to be honest, but the problem is that he sounds like one of these stubborn artists that would rather go through all this hell than put out a record he feels is half assed.

I'm not aware of any of these big crowdfunding stories ever coming for a band that didn't initially have a big push from a label to make them well-known enough for a crowdfunding campaign to work. "We're going to spend a bunch of money to make you popular, and then just let you go" would be a completely terrible business model for labels today. In the past, "just let you go" wasn't too big of a concern for labels, because on their own, an artist didn't have too many avenues to continue making a lot of money. But now, it can actually be the record label that ironically is the "kickstarter" to an artist's career, and if the label isn't careful, they won't get nearly the perks in return that they were counting on. That makes me think that, if anything, label contracts going forward will start making even wider-reaching claims to an artist's future income.

Yes, a bunch of baby bands would never be able to launch crowdfunding campaigns. Which as you point out, is ironic since crowdfunding campaigns are successful off the backs of labels that invested large amounts of capital into an act.

 

[Harvester]

The label responds...

http://www.metalsucks.net/2014/08/01/nuclear-blast-responds-wintersuns-jari-maenpaa/

 

[TENTH DREAMER DECEIVER]

The label responds...

http://www.metalsucks.net/2014/08/01/nuclear-blast-responds-wintersuns-jari-maenpaa/

Nuclear Blast should have a Kickstarter campaign to hire Mutt Lange to produce.