UNITED KINGDOM: Unsigned British band "The Skies" tries a new business model in an attempt to break into the music industry using the Internet and fans.

A British band has funded its first album entirely via a new Web site which allows up-and-coming acts to bypass record labels and gives fans the chance to buy into their success. The Skies, a four-piece rock band from the English city of Reading, raised the 15,000 British sterling (30,000 U.S. dollars) they needed to make their debut album with the help of a new music site, www.slicethepie.com. We were basically just another struggling band," Rikki Lee, lead singer of The Skies told Reuters. "We caught up with different musicians, just travelling about, but we had nothing really going on until we got involved with these guys and basically that helped us gain our stronger fan base and liaise with them as well." The minimum pledge has been revised to 10 pounds, which buys the investor a copy of the album and the right to purchase a "contract" which can then be traded on the site. Pop bands like Marillion have successfully appealed directly to fans for funds online before, but Slicethepie.com offers a neutral arena for new talent and allows people who invest in bands and trade contracts as on a stock market. Slicethepie.com sees themselves as an enabler. "The way we actually present it and the way the business model has been constructed, very deliberately, is to turn every music fan into a record label." As the music industry continues to struggle to work out where it should go next, Slicethepie.com believe they have seen a gap in the market; seizing on the idea that millions of bands and fans are get there music from a handful of people in the middle who decide who will play in bands and what will be listened too. "If you mentally say I am a record label, what do record labels do? They go out, they scout for music. They do it for free? No they get paid. So we pay people to scout for music. They sign acts, they get involved with the production, they get involved with the band, they do that on slicethepie on a very one to one basis with the band. And then what do record labels do, they release the album and they share in the royalties. That is exactly what we do on slicethepie, every contract you buy in the band entitles you to a share of the album sold," said the site's CEO David Courtier-Dutton The Skies early breakthrough, are the latest examples of how the Internet is opening up music to fans by bypassing labels and their scouts. The world's major record companies have struggled to harness digital sales and are concerned about illegal downloads, which the industry estimates totaled 20 billion in 2005. Many bands have benefited, with acts like Lily Allen building an Internet following and the Arctic Monkeys rising to prominence through fans sharing song files online. Record labels are still seen as crucial to a band's success, particularly if they want to make it big, but Rikki Lee said Slicethepie.com was still an attractive starting point. "You cannot go out as a band and just play in clubs as you did 30-40 years ago and expect to get signed, it doesn't work like that now, and that is why we have taken the DIY approach which is through this website. Basically it is just a thing of the past, people don't have these budgets, the music industry is changing because of digital downloads etc, etc. So bands need to think for themselves on how they are going to do it. And if I am honest, if we just carried on the circuit I don't think we would have got anywhere." The Skies first single, "Bring it On", went on sale it made it to number 27 on the UK HMV download chart, and their album is expected later in the year. "This is a great stepping stone for us, to go through the Web site and then it opens us up to labels and people will know about The Skies now," Lee said. Courtier-Dutton said that Slicethepie.com gives bands a no-strings-attached contract to work within. "The bands pay us two pounds (GBP) royalties for a two year period. They keep their copyright, publishing and they can do anything creatively with anyone they want. They just have to pay us their two pounds per album sold. From the bands point of view, there really isn't a catch and if you ask any band on Slicethepie that has gone through the business model, that is the long and the short of it.". Unknown artists can advance to the showcase stage, where they can raise funds, by uploading tracks which are reviewed by the fan community. Established acts can bypass the scout room.

ITN Source | August 16, 2007

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