then you just have to face the fact that you might have to, gulp, "get a proper job". Eek!

..sell 3-5000 copies. My band does that, and we do it all ourselves.

I'm with Colin on this one. Technology will allow Linda to make a quality sounding album for the kind of audience that she has. She wants an organic sounding thing that is not too shiny sheeny. It's a distribution/promotion issue really. Graham Parker seems to do quite well with this.

Isn't part of the problem that artists are married to the idea of an album? When they think about expressing themselves on record it's always at album length. That involves an investment of time and expense that may not be appropriate. I listen to hundreds of new albums a year and I know that most of them are two proper songs and a load of other stuff that is there to ensure the two proper songs don't feel lonely and to make it look as if the artist has done Something Of Substance. Record companies know this too and so, though they don't admit it, do the artists.

I've said this until I'm blue in the mouth but you would never believe the record business is "on the bones of its arse" (copyright Eamonn Forde) if you saw the amount of new CDs we get sent for review every day. Most of them are produced primarily so that the people playing on them have got something to show their mother when she asks what they have been doing with their lives. If somebody has got a couple of songs worth recording I would have thought that in this day and age these can be recorded for next to nothing and distributed for even less. But that might not answer the function that Linda Thompson, like most artists, expects a record to fulfil; that of reminding the world that she's still there. In every field of endeavour connected with show business and the media the number of practitioners grows exponentially as the demand for their services declines. The thing that everyone's fighting for is attention. Putting out a new album is a way of doing this while hanging on to your dignity.

if your primary skill is a creative one, the opportunities to have your work heard or seen - potentially - are expanding. But how the sweet f one might make any money from one's endeavours are less self-evident.

Treading water in stormy seas, hoping that some kindly soul will build a boat underneath you is a gamble that might not pay off. You will probably drown first.

In the early 1980s, trailblazing hardcore punk groups actively created social networks that stretched across the United States, and allowed the bands to generate revenue from tours and record sales. The Dischord label was born out of this movement and involves itself in every element of the record-making process, from production to distribution and pricing. No doubt contemporary variations on this paper and glue DIY ethic exist, but they require the artist to get their hands dirty and broaden their skill-set.

The question that musicians need to ask themselves is : Am I happy to enjoy what I do as an end in itself, or do I want to make a career out of it?

If you make music and write songs, then you are a musician and a songwriter regardless of whether you get paid or not. What you create doesn’t gain in aesthetic value by existing in a permanent format that can bought in shops; Nor does your music become any less valid if you make it free online, or if it isn’t heard beyond the walls of your living room.

If you get into the business of selling your music then economic forces enter into the equation. Marginal artists with small, loyal followings owe it to themselves and their continued careers to put as much effort and commitment into marketing their work as they do into creating it.

I'm pretty certain this has been covered before, but why don't artists offer subscriptions? The fans pay a fiver a month for exclusive access to new recordings and to a handful of nominally free subscriber-only shows. I'm sure there are numerous other benefits that could be offered.

If the artist has 500 fans willing to pay £5 a month then your looking at £2,500 which even after deducting overheads is still not a bad income for someone getting to do what they love doing.

Would it be too costly to run such a system? Or is it simply that someone like Linda Thompson couldn't get 500 folk to pay her £5 a month for doing something that brings them joy?

And you do very well not to get obviously sniffy and cranky when people criticize your output. The critical barrage that the excellent monthly CD receives would test the most durable of temperaments. Your average 'artist' is simply not up for that for that kind of relationship with the punters. They love their fans but they don't really want to have to deal with them.

I think by being so brazen, so 'Oh, what the hell, it's my last shot at it, who cares if the reputation sinks as a result', Linda has flagged up an approach that probably a lot of - in particular, 'heritage' - artists are now considering in order to pay for 'a new album' (in the old style) - irrespective of whether that format is still valid or, indeed, whether there is any viable market or demand for it.

I know Marillion have an ongoing 'suibscription' type arrangement with core fans hich effectively underwrites their new recordings - and I'm sure there are other 'top of the second division' type cult acts who do likewise, through intense social networking etc, but I think Wishbone Ash, with 'Illuminations' in the late 90s, might have been the first '70s act to essentially mount a comeback (after longish sabbatical) via fan club largesse and a list of several hundred 'executive producers' credited in the inlay. But I just don't see Linda T as an intense social networking/IT-focused type, let alone an active touring artist. She just wants a limited-time, finite-interaction situation with a few well-monied old fans she can have dinner with or tolerate fan-boy phone calls from, and hopefully a few tens of thousands of dollars to make records like it was 1974 again.

Everyone has made good points so far - I hope you don't mind me responding one by one to some of them?

* Shane's idea that LT could sell 3-5000 units because his own band does: frankly, I'd be amazed if she did - and your band is doing really well to do so! You must be pretty proactive on the gigging and internet/PR front, and/or do a style of music that appeals to a core 'genre' of fans. Linda may have a potentially larger 'latent' fanbase from a 40 year cult career, but there's been long, long gaps in activity and these people aren't getting any younger, aren't all eagerly waiting for a new LT record and don't all read the same papers/magazines/listen to the same radio shows/etc (as David H says, there are SO many people with product fighting for a moment of attention these days)

* Everygoodboy... says its a distrib/promo issue: yes indeed, at least partly (the other part is frankly 'are there enough fans left?'). Graham Parker may do the cottage industry bit well, as you say, but he strikes me as still angry and energetic - not attributes we would associate with Linda T. Rather, I sense she 'vants to be alone', to make a lavish album and to interact in a very limited way with the great unwashed in order to fund her artistry.

* David says she, like other artists of a certain age, may be wedded anachronistically to the 'idea' of the album. I'm sure that's right to an extent, but more pragmatically, even in this era of the single-song MP3, MySpace streaming, et al, 'the album' is STILL the only truly valid and effective currency the mainstream media will deal with. I'm sure there are magazines who review downloads and 'singles', but the broadsheets and the likes of Word/Q/Uncut/Mojo and, indeed, the Radio 2 evening shows (Bob H, Mike Harding, Rad & Mac, Paul Jones etc) are still, as far as I can see, focused on 'the album' as an artist's yearly appraisal opportunity. Maybe it's a chicken & egg thing? Also, the remnants of the old-school music industry are still themselves clinging onto the 'album' as an artefact - because, frankly, they still need to sell physical units of things to make any money at all. So it's not JUST Linda being a fuddy-duddy...

* Backwards flags up the artist/fan synergy thing as evidence that such interfaces CAN allow artists to bypass 'The Man'. But it seems to me this only works, as I said above, for certain kinds of artists - in fact, there may well be a very very useful PhD thesis to be researched on what type of artist can/cannot make a success of this business model (marginal, one-off personalities like John Otway having nothing in common with the likes of Marillion, a cultish 'genre' band, each being successful in 'harnessing' the fanbase where many 'bigger' acts may well not be). And besides, the problem for acts like Linda Thompson these days is that 'The Man' - big record label guys with loads of cash to blow - is more or less extinct.

But I think the most profound comment has come from Backwards, and deserves repeating:

"If you make music and write songs, then you are a musician and a songwriter regardless of whether you get paid or not. What you create doesn’t gain in aesthetic value by existing in a permanent format that can bought in shops; Nor does your music become any less valid if you make it free online, or if it isn’t heard beyond the walls of your living room. [But] If you get into the business of selling your music then economic forces enter into the equation."

Long live rock!

American singer Jill Sobule (not exactly a mainstream act) financed her latest album with a plan similar to Linda Thompson's. In a recent interview she said she was surprised about the amount of feedback and how soon she got the required sum. And she invested it in an "old-fashioned" album production: hired Don Was as a producer, some fine session musicians like Jim Keltner, and recorded in a good studio. The fans (investors?) got - according to the amount they paid - a CD, a personal song written & recorded by Jill, or the chance to sing backing vocals on an album track.

As for the "outdated album format" - it's the artist's decision. Maybe he doesn't want to record random songs, but a well considered set of tunes, enhanced by a title, artwork and a specific sequence! You wouldn't berate an author for writing a novel, as opposed to a blog or a newspaper column, would you? Or say to Rembrandt "Oil on canvas isn't economic anymore, do more pencil sketches instead!"

Todd was even more extreme. He needed support to pay off the cost of his house in Hawaii. Rewards included dinner with him after a show in your neck of the woods. And the top prize was a draw to spend the week with him and his wife in the actual house. It has sold out.

This is precisely the kind of thing some bright economics graduate should do. A doctoral thesis on the reality of new models for the music business would find lots of interest and probably also get a publisher. We all blithely point to possible new directions and hail what this artist or that artist did or said they were going to do. There's very little hard evidence of how any of these initiatives turned out and not much sign of anyone doing one of these stunts more than once. There must be somebody out there who could do that.

...that to get access to most artists to interview them (as any such economics graduate might wish to), they'd likely have to wait until the artist has a new album to promote - given that, by and large, acts of a certain size limit their interview access until they've something to sell. But I'm only being half serious!

If I were in the economics thesis biz I would certainly be wanting to gather data or failing that (as bona fide data on, say, Radiohead's name-your-price stunt is tellingly thin on the ground - as if opening the curtain would reveal a rather threadbare loss-making excuse for a wizard working the levers) anecotal material to at least try and collect in one study/book the various paths towards new business models that artists have tried - with at least some suggestion of which might (yet) work, what factors are important (type of audience, age demographic, style of music, type of artist - new/heritage, cult/mainstream - whatever), what pitfalls to avoid... It's bound to happen sooner or later, but at the moment I suspect every artist is keen to maintain commercial sensitivity whether their method worked or didn't...

As for the album as a format, I personally like it - but I accept that it's no longer robust as a commercial entity and agree that most albums are patchy collections of good and bad.

On the novel writing analagy made above, the book trade is wedded to its own absurdity - its near impossible for a new author to get a collection of short stories published whereas it's considerably easier to get one 100,000 wd novel published. And yet, I'd argue, that more writers are capable of crafting terrific 10,000 word stories against the more demanding narrative arc required for full length novel. But me, I don't care - I'm about to downsize my soul-destroying day job to 3 days a week to write fiction (short stories appeal most, but if I feel I CAN do justice to a novel I'll certainly try) in my extra time. Thinking commercially is not a top priority. You do it because you have to, because you only live once, because of all sorts of reasons. I might end up self publishing a few things in short runs if I can afford it (glad if 20 people like what I do), and I won't feel remotely stigmatised if I do - the world is changed. But rest assured I won't be offering people dinner dates or telephone anecdotes about interviewing Richard Thompson to fund it....

The original "1000 True Fans" theory, very relevant in this context: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php

...very kind of you: moral support's always good! :-)

...when the time is right I may do so, though where I'm 'at', if you can pardon the hippie-drippy expression, at the moment is still crossing a huge psychological chasm from failed librarian to free-spirited author. I'm gestating ideas but determinedly not putting pen to paper until the first of my 'free' weekdays comes around - hopefully in a week or two. One needs to there is still some glimmer of 'possibility' in one's life, however slender...

Hello all,

Jumping into the fray here...first off, Linda's last record sold 50K copies; she does have an audience of fans, and that audience-yes, they skew older-want albums. Linda is making a full-length because that's what she does; it's not about stubbornly sticking to a tired old model but rather an artist propagating her artistry in the manner she prefers. This is not some last-gasp gambit because no label wanted her. Linda CHOSE to work with us because of the relationship with her fans. 40 years into her career or not, Linda is keen on new approaches to the music industry; how and with whom she makes music is her choice as an artist.
Sincerely,
David Ginsburg
www.thehectorfund.com

..me.

...everything you read!

50,000 does seem a lot, admittedly.

Linda's right to make her own choices, but going to LA to record an album with a load of top session musicians and producer seems like a bit of a 'Jolly' to me.

If Linda (or anyone else) feels the need to underline their credentials or 'credibility' as a serious artist, sure, spend the money on packaging and presenting the music, but the music itself is what matters ultimately.

If the songs are of good quality and are well-played and produced, it's only industry insiders and anoraks(like me) who are going to read the track listing and dramatis personae. I am sure that there are plenty of UK players who could fulfil the appropriate requirements to play on her album.

Using new technology shouldn't be frowned upon because it is now globally available relatively cheaply. Using Pro-Tools (not that I would particularly want to) is the same in a luxury air-conditioned LA studio as it would be, I suspect, in Linda's front room. I have no idea what her front room looks or sounds like, in the same way that I can only imagine the ambience of the studio. Recording is an artifice,and all we consumers see is the result, however it was produced.

The need to be signed to a major has lost its lustre (unless you are young, pretty and fame-driven). This seems to be more of an issue of vanity to me rather than necessity.