FIRST THE ALBUM WAS AVAILABLE ONLY AS A DOWNLOAD THROUGH YOUR WEBSITE AND IT'S NOW OUT IN PHYSICAL FORM. YOU'VE BEEN ON A BIG LABEL, YOU'VE EVEN RUN YOUR OWN LABEL, BUT NOW WE'RE IN THIS WORLD WHERE YOU CAN MAKE A RECORDING WITHOUT SPENDING A DIME ON MANUFACTURING OR PACKAGING. THERE MUST BE BENEFITS TO HAVING SUCH FULL CONTROL, BUT ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WITH THIS MODEL? ANDIS THIS THE NEW MODEL?
I'm comfortable with it. In a way, it's experimental. There are certain things we're figuring out as we go. By nature, we're not going to sell as much as the U2 or Coldplay records that Brian works on. So he's not going to get that kind of income.
BUT AT THE SAME TIME, YOU DON'T HAVE TO SHARE IT WITH AS MANY PEOPLE.
That's true. So you can sell a lot less and pay your rent. So in a certain way, that model, for us, seems to be working. We're still trying to figure out things as we go along. There have been no ads. Usually, if there's a rec-ord company, there are ads in the magazines or newspapers. There's been nothing.
IT'S BEEN SORT OF A VIRAL INTERNET CAMPAIGN, WHERE THE FIRST SINGLE WAS POSTED AND EVERY WEB MAGAZINE OR BLOG PICKED IT UP, AND THEN PEOPLE START TALKING ABOUT IT TO THEIR FRIENDS AND ON MESSAGE BOARDS.
We're lucky. That didn't cost us a cent. I mean, it cost us to set up our own little marketing thing and hire some marketing people and set up the website and credit card accounts and all that kind of stuff. And that cost a considerable amount of money, more than a starting-out band could afford. That's really important, because a lot of starting-out bands are thinking, "I could do this." And we have the advantage of having some money in our pockets to fund that, and we have the names, so that if we say that we did a record together, people are automatically going to be curious. We knew that we'd get some attention, so we weren't taking too much of a risk. It's a little bit unfair that way, but that's the way things are right now with everything kind of up in the air. Everyone is kind of figuring out, "Well, this kind of approach will work for this project, but it's not going to work for this project." But the major thing is, especially with being able to sell things online yourself, or dealing directly with iTunes, Amazon, and all that kind of stuff, it's pretty hard after you've done that to go back to a record company — "Wait a minute. You're going to take 75 percent of everything? For what? What are you doing for that?"
EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS ISN'T THE ONLY ALBUM YOU'VE RELEASED THIS YEAR. YOU ALSO SCORED THE SECOND SEASON OF THE HBO SERIESBIG LOVE, AND THAT MUSIC HAS BEEN RELEASED ASBIG LOVE: HYMNAL. IT'S NOTHING LIKE THE MUSIC MOST PEOPLE ASSOCIATE YOU WITH.
Yeah, the guy at the New York Times thought there was a connection. He thought that they both had kind of vaguely spiritual, gospelly kinds of harmonies.
