On Arcade Fire: Are They Showing Us The Way?

It's as if the entire music industry - bands, labels, distributors, consumers - have been trudging through a mucky swamp at permanent midnight for the last few years, looking for a way to detangle the digital mess of bigger audiences but shrinking revenues. The wandering party is so sweaty, dirty and tired that any new model or streaming service is too easily mistaken for a way out into a lasting dawn. It may be that we're so fixated on the answer to industry woes being something "new," that the real signposts toward future success go unnoticed or under-hyped.

It's hard to ignore Arcade Fire this week after they sold out Madison Square Garden and their new album The Suburbs reached #1 on both the UK and US charts. Their total US sales figure of 156,000 may be a bitter pill for record industry honchos who still entertain weepy recollections of million-unit debuts circa 2000, but for the rest of us the band is the kind of middle class success story we'd like to see more of in the digital age. In fact, Arcade Fire may have stumbled upon that elusive model for digital success while simultaneously offering lessons to consumers who are struggling to define their role in the industry in the wake of freeloading.

As Sasha Frere-Jones points out in this week's New Yorker, as much as Arcade Fire are thought of as an Indie band, the designation is more one of scale and attitude than business reality. The band released The Suburbs with the "major indie" Merge Records who has helped to build the band's career ever since their first LP, Funeral. Frere-Jones writes:

Watching an independent band sell out the Garden and top the charts while compromising very little—Arcade Fire released eight different album covers for “The Suburbs”—is inspiring, but it isn’t a complete revolution. The band still has a manager and a label who work on its behalf, commercially and artistically. Scott Rodger, Arcade Fire’s manager, described the label’s role as “manufacturing and distribution—floating the expense, executing the marketing and retail plans that we have approved, and insuring that the music is available on all credible D.S.P.s,” or digital service platforms.

The band is unusually independent in the fact that they retain the rights to their recordings and license them to Merge. That says a lot about the self-determination of the band but also the flexibility of Merge. The parties share profits and focus on the physical product, demonstrated by the printing of multiple covers for the album which helped consumers to feel they were investing in a unique piece of art. But their fearlessness in engaging with the digital platforms available is what's really striking and even inspiring as the music industry searches for clues.

The $10 price for digital albums remains fair in many peoples eyes but it isn't driving the volume and market growth that most expected from digital. Arcade Fire took this into account while resoundingly maintaining the intrinsic value of their recorded music. The album is offered on iTunes for the usual dime rate, but on their website they offer high quality (FLAC and lossless) digital versions of the album for just $8 through Topspin (whose CEO blew yet another hole in the digital DIY mythology today). The band's most aggressive and brilliant move was to allow a limited time download of the album for $4 from Amazon's MP3 store. It will be interesting to get the exact figures, but that deal certainly helped to drive their first week sales and all the free publicity they're getting along with it. So, here we see a fiercely independent band that is making it on their terms with the critical help of a record label that is big enough to give the band the support they need, but small enough to adjust and evolve in the marketplace. Though I doubt whether we'll ever settle on a digital "ideal," this looks awfully close.

But who is ultimately responsible for this success? It's not the band or their label, neither of whom were in control of the outcome. No, the fans and consumers who rewarded the band and label's work by happily paying for the album made this happen. In this discussion of freeloading, my elemental angle is that industry can make all the changes and innovations in the world, but ultimately its up to the consumer to accept their responsibility to invest in the cultural voices they value and that's certainly what happened here. For a week, we can all see what happens when rights holders and their fans manage to meet one another half way. The healthy first week sales will build the band's name recognition, help their subsequent touring, and build the foundation for the band's long-term success. This also rewards Merge for their investment and increases the likelihood of them being able to find and promote the next Arcade Fire, currently languishing out in Myspace land.

Something to keep in mind is the immense popularity of Arcade Fire relative to nearly any other Indie band. They are certainly an exception to the rule and have an unusually large audience to draw upon for support. Who knows what number of their fans freeloaded the album with no intention of paying compared to those 156,000 who actually rewarded them for their work. It wouldn't be too hard to find negatives here, but what animates me in this debate is the potential the Arcade Fire case taps into. Given the efficiencies of the internet and the expanded market it provides, the degree to which our culture can become sustainably diverse, stimulating and democratic is limited only by the willingness of consumers to recognize their role in the matter, step up to greet it, and turn that potential into a sudden reality.