The digital music revolution is coming to your television.
With the help of the Burly Bear cable network, which reaches over 5 million subscribers in college towns across the United States, independent music website Riffage.com finished shooting 13 episodes of its new series, Riffage Live, set to air at the end of the month.
"We looked at the music ecosystem – how bands get popular – and only the first part of the life cycle had been tapped on the Internet," said Riffage.com CEO Ken Wirt, referring to band's finding ways to get music to their fans.
"The next thing that usually happens is that bands play live. That's a big part of connecting with the band. We thought that doing the television show and the webcast would really help us get them to the next level."
The show, hosted by Bijou Phillips, is a half-hour showcase for Riffage.com bands. Fans had some say about which bands will appear on the showcase, but Wirt wanted to make sure the show's music represented a mix of music styles.
"There is a perception in the public that while there is a lot of music on the Web, most of it isn't any good," said Wirt. "This show is a way to let people know that hey, there really is good music here and it's not that difficult to find."
The webcasts stream live over the Web and are then archived for on-demand use by consumers. Unlike traditional webcasts that feature one or two stationary cameras, Wirt brought in the director of HBO's The Chris Rock Show, Linda Mendoza, to create a unique experience for consumers.
"The Internet is very intimate," Mendoza said. "You really need to know why you are cutting and moving with the music, and not just cutting for no reason. There is a structure to music and it is structured that way for a reason. Ultimately, I want this show to be about the band."
Wirt's television show will go head-to-head this fall with another dot com music program, Farmclub.com, which has connections to Universal Music Group. While Wirt doesn't have the same major label connections as Farmclub founder's producer Jimmy Iovine and former Universal executive Doug Morris, he said that allows him more freedom to promote unknown bands.
"We focus on the independent artists," he said. "Farmclub.com is an hour-long television show, and maybe 10 minutes is devoted to independent artists. The rest of the show is showcasing Universal artists. Our show is 30 minutes of music along with lengthy interviews so you get to know each of the bands."
But Epitonic.com president Aaron Newton said Farmclub's show is geared more towards the music fan. Farmclub gives consumers a very obvious reason to watch a show – such as seeing NWA play – and then peppers in new artists.
"When you build a site like Riffage.com, your target audience is really the artists and that leaves the consumers out in the cold," said Newton. "When Riffage.com buys out the Great American Music Hall to put on a show and webcast it, their audience has to be the unsigned artists and not the consumers, because how interested are people going to be in watching a showcase of a band they've never heard of?"
Newton said digital music projects that aren't consumer-friendly only lead people to get confused about what content is actually available on the Web.
A bigger problem facing Wirt is avoiding the stumbling block that plagued Farmclub. One of the bands that was to appear on Farmclub, the Rosenbergs, refused to sign the contract because of a dispute over the control of digital rights and created a hail of controversy, using the Internet to air their gripes.
So Wirt had to make sure that the Riffage Live contracts were artist-friendly.
Bands do not share in revenues from the webcast or the television show, but they do retain the rights to their music and websites. For the opportunity to appear on a showcase, that was a deal that all 13 bands were willing to take for a chance to strike out on their own.
"The one really important thing about this is [that it's] a whole new tool for rock and roll," said Michael Ferentino, singer for New Jersey-based Amazing Meet Project, one of the featured acts. "Now it's possible for me to say that I'll never sign with a major label again unless they come with an enormous amount of money and let me do whatever I want to do creatively."
