NEW YORK -- With 44 mainstream rock acts in its Internet pocket, ARTISTdirect is building a revolutionary new electronic bridge between bands and their fans.
Or, depending on how you look at it, it's just another place for known bands to sell CDs and T-shirts and concert tickets. In either case, don't mistake it for an Internet music site stealing Aerosmith and the Beastie Boys away from their real-world record companies.
"Digital downloading isn't a business right now -- the business models are not ready yet," said Marc Geiger, CEO and co-founder of ARTISTdirect.
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Instead, Geiger said the Net right now is ripe for setting up the artist as his or her own brand, for "establishing the artist's 'channel' as one of their primary distribution points."
That includes distribution of anything the artist may want to offer: label-made CDs, concert tickets, mailing lists, and, sure, maybe a digital download or two.
At the Jupiter Communications Plug.In conference, the company had Beastie Boy Mike D on hand for a media luncheon to expound on an announcement made the day before.
ARTISTdirect said Monday it had signed a total of 44 big-name bands, including the Beastie Boys. The latter has been with the company for more than a year.
Geiger is a 15-year veteran of the music industry and an ex-Warner Brothers A&R man credited with co-creating Lollapalooza. With that background, Geiger had the relationships necessary to gather the big-name acts under one Internet tent. Artists and labels have set up band sites á la carte, but Geiger is out to make ARTISTdirect their main channel on the Net.
Signed artists represent all "big five" music labels and include Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Aerosmith, Tori Amos, Beck, Counting Crows, Cypress Hill, Marilyn Manson, Stevie Nicks, Ozzy Osbourne, Tom Petty, Rage Against The Machine, Korn, Rolling Stones, and Dwight Yoakam. The deals don't mean the bands are all jumping ship on their labels and moving to the Net -- just that they'll be setting up a direct sales shop of their own.
"It's going to be a totally legitimate channel for retailing [bands]," said Jupiter analyst Mark Mooradian.
In part, the idea is that artists, who may feel shortchanged by their contracts, can make money in new ways.
"We look at this as a new opportunity," Mike D said. In the case of the Beastie Boys, who have, as the group joked, "spent all our money," ARTISTdirect's main appeal is "undiluted" communication with fans.
With mailing lists connecting everybody, bands can build relationships with fans like never before, he said.
But if artists are becoming their own resellers, are labels going to remain calm?
Geiger said that not one label has voiced concern over a band's ARTISTdirect contracts. "I think the labels want anything that will help market the artist, deep down."
Furthermore, Geiger added, the labels own no rights that would keep artists from establishing a business relationship with ARTISTdirect.
But Mooradian said the labels are likely to become ARTISTdirect's first competitors if the two-year-old start-up produces a hit.
"The downside for them is that labels absolutely need to get into the same business [ARTISTdirect is] in," Mooradian said. Labels will be driven to do this as a backdoor way to get in on retail profits that are now the exclusive domain of resellers like Tower Records.
Whoever ends up making a success of the ARTISTdirect business model -- Mooradian doesn't rule out a buyout of the company by a major label -- the flip side of ARTISTdirect's value is a database.
The band sites will help build a collection of data on fans that's never before existed. With it, targeted marketing to fans becomes a gold mine of possibilities to whoever owns it.
"A lot of this is about collecting data," Mooradian said. "If you know every Red Hot Chili Peppers fan out there, [there's a lot] you can do with that information."
Editor's note: This story has been corrected. The original article incorrectly stated that Public Enemy and Chuck D had signed with ARTISTdirect. In fact, the Beastie Boys and Mike D spoke at the ARTISTdirect event. Wired News regrets the error.
