Pipe Dreams, Part 3

The Team Targeting Program

(As Published on birdlives.com August 2001)

By Hal Galper

In this series, as well as in other articles, I've discussed at length my concerns about jazz education and the current state of the music business. The monopolistic influence big record companies and their media bed partners exert upon the music business will resist change as adamantly as the jazz education bureaucracy. In an effort to enhance and incorporate, rather than challange and change these bureaucracies, The Jazz Master's Guild concept can be an non-threatening and potential profit making adjunct to both. Techniques can be developed to solve the problems endemic to the teaching and business of jazz but not without a clear understanding of the problems that educators and musicians face in regards to the music business.

The music business is comprised of the following components: Musicians, Agents, Record Companies, Media, Promotion, Record Retailers and Distributors and Audiences. The audience's role in the business of music was addressed in part two and is excluded from this particular discussion.

Each of the above components exerts thier own area of influence upon the success or failure of any artist's career. The problems that many musicians encounter in career and music development are the direct result of the fact that each of these components are disparate. As control over each's domain is thier central concern they have become territorial, costly, exclusive, and inefficient. Each component has it's own set of problems as well.

Musicians:

Musicians are fiercely independent. Organizing them into any kind of coherent and effective lobbying group is generally considered an impossible and fruitless task. They've been passive when it comes to taking a hand in developing their own careers, often to the point where they exhibit a bias against knowing their own business, as if they were above all that prosaic stuff. Musicians are often their own worst enemies. Convinced that there is not enough available work, they rarely share information among themselves. As the apprenticeship system is now more or less moribund, students who graduate from college jazz departments, have nowhere to go hone and develop their art.

Agents:

Agents, the good ones, are busy. A good agent, working alone, can handle only a limited number of clients. Too many clients and an agent's works suffers. Each will take only as many as are profitable. Like musicians, but for reasons of economy and lack available time, agents are passive as well. They don't have the time to allocate nor can handle the expenses an aggressive approach to booking their clients would entail. Venues come to them more than they bring the artists to the venue. Agents create a roster of their artists that will have enough of marquee value to attract venues to call them, send the list out and wait for the calls to come in. If you're not on the list or don't have a big enough name, you don't get called for and are dropped from the list.

An agent once confessed to me that working alone, the most artists an agent can handle is five. If an agent's artist roster shows a list of twenty, it would then take four people working full time to keep them working.

Even in this passive situation, an agent's telephone bills will be their biggest expense. When I was aggressively booking my own groups, working alone, I spent about $6,000 a year on telephone calls. As most agents and venues book a year in advance, is it no wonder that an agent would be hesitant to add an unproven artist to their roster? They'd have to take on the risk of investing their time and money without hoping to see any return on their investment for a year.

Agents who have been in business for a long time control access to those venues that offer the exposure that musicians need to build their audiences such as jazz festivals. Independent artists cannot compete with them.

Record Companies:

Most emerging or mid-career musicians don't have access to big record companies with large budgets and organizations that can make or break an artist. Their budgets insure that only a select few gain access to the media exposure that is an absolute requirement for audience building. They can and often do, buy high exposure gigs for their artists.

Often subsidiaries of larger corporations, these record companies can survive when they are losing money. Capital expenses are a valuable tax write-off for corporations and for that very reason often prefer that some of their subsidiaries lose money. Independent artists cannot compete and afford to function at a loss. They are denied media access because the big record companies can outspend them when purchasing media advertising and promotion.

Media:

The media, no matter the form, survives on advertising revenue and cater to those who have the biggest advertising budgets. Print advertising is very expensive. A full page ad in a monthly popular music magazine may cost $10,000 or more per issue. No magazine is going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Recording and performance reviews of their biggest advertiser's artists will be given exposure preference over independent artists.

Radio suffers from the same predilection. Some radio stations now charge a fee if you want your name mentioned when your record is aired. One price for being mentioned before being played on the air and another for after. Big record companies have staffs of employees who's only function is to call radio programmers to influence what artists they select for their play lists.

Promotion:

It's expensive and labor intensive. Most independent musicians can't afford even the most minimal promotional services nor would have time to spend promoting themselves. It can be a black hole down which you pour money with out having any way to check how well the work is being done and whether you're getting any results. You can be shown call lists and clippings but how can you be sure those calls were made and demonstrate the clippings had any affect? Promotion is based on personal contacts. Most musicians haven't invested the time to get to know those who control media output and don't usually travel in those circles.

Record Retailers:

Again, whoever has the biggest pocket books wins. Most major record retailers now charge a fee to have a record placed in a bin. If you want it prominently placed in a store, you pay more. If you want the record played in the store you pay even more. Independent record companies usually can't afford these fees. Record companies often barter for print and radio advertising by offering free product to the stores and give-a-ways to the radio stations. Reorders are essential to high record sales. Record company sales reps establish personal relationships with store purchasing agents and repeatedly visit them to make sure reorders are up to date.

Distributors:

Record distributors exert an inordinate amount influence over how thoroughly a recording is made available to the public. I was once in negotiations to sell a master to a prominent independent record company. I was told, "we have to check with our distributors to see if they think the record would sell." Here we have a case of accountants making decisions about an artist's fate.

Distributors are notorious for not remitting accounts receivable to the record companies in a timely fashion. They are often so far behind their payments that only those record companies with big budgets can afford to keep excessive accounts receivable on thier books and stay in business. Tales about independent labels that went out of business because thier distributor went bankrupt before paying accounts due are not unusual. Further stifling competiton, some distributors have been bought by the big record companies.

As insoluble as the above problems may seem, there may be a way independent artists can survive in this climate and even hope to become successful. The concept of Team Targeting offers that hope.

The Team Targeting Program

Team Targeting was originally conceived by an American businessman in the 30's. Don't ask me who as I read about it over ten years ago. It was later successfully adopted by Japanese manufacturers as an alternative to the common vertical, top - down problem solving device. Usually, when a manufacturing problem occurred, it was kicked upstairs to the executive level and solutions were handed down from above. Team Targeting realized this vertical approach ignored any input from those on the lower levels of the manufacturing process who might have hands-on solutions as they were directly involved with the process and the problem. Team Targeting's lateral approach to problem solving created a highly focused team of those who had the expertise and know-how to solve a particular problem. Solutions were then sent upward to the higher levels for implementation. Key to this concept's success was the idea of synergy, the power that a small team of highly focused cross-trained experts can generate. This concept can be successfully applied to the problems musicians now face.

The idea is to create a team for each Jazz Master. To organize, under one roof, the disparate components of the music business. The Team would consist of three cross-trained people: The Jazz Master, an information manager and a promotion manager, using information in music business data bases collected by The Guild for it's members.

The Master makes all initial calls to potential clients and runs his or her band.

The information manager does venue research, manages new client data and all documents pertaining to the various aspects of the music business including contracts, tour itineraries, transportation & housing, royalties, etc.

The promotion manager handles all promotion, collects promotion information, mailings, interviews, etc.

Each team member is cross trained to handle the other's job when needed.

Positions for information and promotion managers can be staffed by interns, those who graduate a music school but prefer to be in the music business in areas other than performing. These graduates number close to 99% of music school graduates and are a valuable resource. The Guild would establish a music business training school teaching: booking, management, promotion, recording, tour transportation, internet technology, etc.

Funding.

Whether set up as a profit or non-profit organization, The Jazz Masters Guild cannot survive unless it is economically viable. Most large corporations concentrate their efforts upon mass numbers. The success of The Guild concept is that it focusses on maximizing the potential of what professional niche marketers call "small numbers." Limitations of space preclude a thorough discussion of niche marketing techniques in this article but parts 1 & 2 have previously alluded to some of these techniques.

All income from whatever source goes to the Guild's Central Fund from which disbursements for salaries and expenses would be distributed.

Some of the sources of funding and profit can come from the following sources:

Investors.

Jazz education has become big business. A visit to any I.A.J.E. Convention proves the point. It has become so profitable that in one instance a friend of mine was approached by a couple of wall street financiers who were looking to buy a jazz school. They had millions to invest but didn't it follow through because there were none for sale and no one had created a business plan that would give investors an idea of jazz education's profit potential. Doing the number crunching and creating a feasibility study and business plan would be the first step in establishing The Guild. That could be followed by a two year test pilot program of five Jazz Master's groups in five major US cities.

Jazz Master's Groups.

Each Master's Group would be booked by it's own Team. All income would be remitted to the Guild's Central Fund for further distribution.

Record Sales.

Mail order and on-site sales are now the backbone of the success of many independent record labels. Master's groups can sell their CD's at their performances. A Guild web site could promote and market Jazz Master's Groups (and their apprentices) recordings.

Memberships.

College and university jazz departments graduates can be eligible for placement in Jazz Masters Groups by paying a yearly membership fee to the Guild.

Master-Apprenticeship Agreements.

Masters and Apprentices sign exclusive management contracts with The Guild for set number of years. During that period The Guild negotiates all recording contracts for those who have attracted the attention of record companies. As in most typical management agreements, a percentage of all income from these agreements goes into the Central Fund. This is only fair as The Guild will be dedicating it resources toward build the reputations of both Masters and Apprentices. The more contracts The Guild signs and controls the more protection for The Guild's members.

Tuition:

The possibility of tuition could be examined. As The guild will be partially decentralized and won't offer liberal arts courses, it's expenses will be lower and tuitions could be set at half the cost of college tuitions. As each Jazz Masters group becomes profitable, a formula could be developed for reimbursing tuitions back to each apprentice. Reimbursable tuition for Business of Music school for Team interns can be added to the mix.

A Jazz Masters Convention.

A Jazz Masters Convention can add additional profit and exposure for Guild members. No need to delineate all the possible sources of convention revenue here.

Guild fan memberships could be offered that would include discounts for Guild product and performances. A newsletter could be offered as well.

These are just a few of the many possible revenue sources that might make such a venture profitable.

Is The Jazz Masters Guild a workable proposition? I've done some preliminary number crunching and it looks like it could. The first step toward creating The Guild would be securing financing for a feasability study and a business plan to submit to investors for a pilot program.

Any takers?