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AFTER THE
GOLD RUSH
ILLEGAL DOWNLOADING HAS BROUGHT THE MUSIC INDUSTRY TO ITS KNEES.
BUT, AS STEVE YATES REPORTS, IF YOU THINK DIFFERENTLY AND
PLAY THE GAME ON YOUR OWN TERMS, THERE IS MONEY TO BE MADE

When the banks collapsed and the world
woke up to recession, the record business
afforded itself a sardonic grin. As an
industry for whom the bell had been tolling for years,
financial doom was old news. Across the world, record
labels spent the last decade downsizing drastically, but
if you looked hard enough it was just about possible to
spot signs of growth.
In the US, deep into flyover country, on the eastern
side of the Kansas-Missouri border, for instance, lies
a label that’s expanding like it’s 1989. Having just
moved into their new headquarters last January, they’ve
already bought the adjoining land in preparation for
another 18,000-square foot complex, a doubling of
capacity in little over a year. Other labels may cast an
envious eye in the direction of Kansas City’s Strange
Music, but the only secret is… that there is no secret.
“We take Business 101 and apply it to music,” says
Travis O’Guin, Strange co-founder and CEO. “Our model
is based on being profitable, using our own money,
sensible spending. We don’t live in the fake la-la world of
music execs, these artsy dudes. ‘Oh, he’s a great A&R
and he knows all these people and they’re making cool
music.’ Three-quarters of you motherfuckers don’t know
what you’re doing.”
O’Guin couldn’t be further removed, geographically
or figuratively, from the US music business’ New York-
Los Angeles axis. A 38-year-old native Missourian, he
made his first million in the more-spit-than-polish world
of furniture restoration before diversifying into property
and clothing. The latter line brought him into contact
with Tech N9ne, a rapper of local renown but negligible
sales. A decade later, Tech is the flagship artist and co-
owner of a label that now earns an annual eight-figure
sum. In 2008, his annual touring schedule of 200-plus
shows meant the only hip hop acts to gross more concert
revenue were Jay-Z and Kanye West. Yet unlike those
artists, Tech, born Aaron Yates 38 years ago, has never
been on networked chat shows, or had a sniff of a top
ten hit. The week we meet he’s just won his first national
award of note, the mtvU Woodie for Best Leftfield Video,
a category for artists who don’t quite fit.
But it’s this lack of a proper fit that has proven the
bedrock of his success. Aspiring rap stars traditionally
speculate to accumulate, wasting fortunes on glossy
videos and expensive productions. Strange Music’s
model is closer to that of rock music. Tech visits out-of-
the-way towns, relying on industrious live performances
to make fans out of the merely curious. Once committed,
they can be expected to spend money on future tours, or
the merchandise from which a Tech N9ne show takes an
average of over $10,000. They might even fork out on
a $99 VIP package, which includes an armful of CDs,
DVDs, posters, stickers and a pre-show meet-and-greet
with Tech to get them all autographed.
Everything is run in-house. Strange Music owns its
own trucks, vinyl-wrapping them all with catalogue
artwork. Local street teams bombard target areas with
posters and stickers. They store and ship their own
merchandise, run their own tours, publishing and
licensing. At the Strange HQ, the label’s snake and bat-
wings logo is branded on almost every surface and the
guided tour includes introductions to the road manager,
mail order, online promotions and video editor. While
major labels use 360 deals as a means to a slice of the
more lucrative side of an artist’s business, Strange offer
their artists access to the complete package.

But the artists didn’t get here from the get-go.
O’Guin admits his and Tech’s initial business plan was
to score a hit album and cut a joint venture deal with an
established rap powerhouse. Unfortunately his first
effort went bad; the second, with Priority, venerable
imprint behind NWA and Ice Cube, relied on the
traditional, but expensive, model. Says O’Guin, “They
lived in a world where it was ‘throw money at it, throw
money at it’. You’re spending $1.6m on a radio campaign
over four songs off one record and half of it is mine.
I need to make some money, you’re fucking it off to these
arseholes in the radio game.”
Strange had experience of guerrilla promotion. In
response to a series of ads featuring Britney Spears and
Sheryl Crow pleading with people not to steal music,
Tech N9ne, his face painted with the letters ‘FTI’ (fuck/
free the industry, depending on who was listening),
recorded an ad inviting all-comers to download his 2002
album Absolute Power for free. The ‘fuck the industry’
campaign was born in anger (TV and radio had ignored
Tech’s Slacker single), but as with Radiohead six years
later, the publicity boosted sales, more than
compensating for any freeloaders.
It was the beginning of the outsider status Strange
revels in. Tech N9ne insists the drawbacks to the lack of
mass coverage are offset. “It’s difficult, but doing it this
way gives me a better connection with my fans,” he says.
“I can just get in there and do what I want to do and say
what I want to say and if I say ‘fuck the industry’ they’ll
say ‘fuck it’ with me, fuck the motherfuckers who are
driving it, the people who dictate what goes on TV and
radio but won’t take a chance on new music.”
However, as a desperate industry looks for a life-
raft, Strange is attracting attention. Former stars DMX
and Bizzy Bone have approached them, Oscar-winners
Three 6 Mafia have played support slots for Tech N9ne,
while O’Guin recently rejected a consultancy role with
Warners. After an admiring article in Billboard, Berklee
College lecturer and influential blogger Eric Beall
contrasted Strange’s ethos of “hard work and common
sense” with “the fantasy land” of the music business.
“We didn’t design this model to be the ideal model,
we did it out of necessity,” laughs O’Guin. “I did touring
because we had to get paid, we did merchandising
because we needed some money. Street marketing is
something a lot of majors have forgotten about now.
They stopped doing grassroots stuff, they spent it all on
video, even though MTV doesn’t play them anymore.”
Strange’s success is singularly rooted in its Midwest
location. The people O’Guin sees as pioneers are Kid
Rock, the Michigan rock-rapper who sold 22 million
records without ever once being hip, or Ohio’s Kiss.
“Kiss had a lot of bullshit music, but they had great stage
presence, relentless touring, merchandising like no
other. Now imagine throwing great music on top.”
His model calls for more work, fewer parties and a
heftier measure of discipline than your average rapper
is used to. Artists touring with Strange find poor
punctuality is punished; smoking weed on the bus is
barred. But the rewards are evident. “There’s a lot of
people who admire what we’re doing and flip out when
they come here and see what we’ve built,” O’Guin says.
“Like Joe Budden (formerly Def Jam’s new hope, now a
Tech N9ne tour support), he comes here and says, ‘All I
wanna know man, where’s the dope buried?’ There’s no
dope here, I’m not a drug dealer. I apply business
principles to the music industry.”

[SnareeWer]

You may have a fan..

Quick sue his ass..