JUNE 4 — One of the biggest dilemmas facing independent musicians right now is the ongoing albums vs. singles debate. With the Internet pretty much entrenched as an essential part of everyday life nowadays, what this has meant for most struggling independent acts is that while it may be easier to spread the word regarding your music because of the increased accessibility afforded by the world wide web, it has also meant that business-wise, making money from albums can now be considered as an obsolete practice.

In reality, most articles about the albums vs. singles debate or the effects of the Internet on marketing and business plans of independent acts do not even apply to the real life dilemmas facing the average independent act out there, simply because most of the case studies used as examples are acts that never had to face the same dilemmas as the average independent act.

Take the much lauded move by Radiohead to go independent and sell digital downloads on their own website on a pay-whatever-you-like basis for example. The reason it’ll undoubtedly work out well for them is that they’re already a world famous band with a devoted following, a result of years of hard work (and surely much expenditure) by their former major label departments.

If they’re an unknown band, releasing the same album with the exact same method (with the same expensive limited edition boxsets also offered), would it have worked out as well? Personally, I doubt it.

Take most other examples of Internet independent marketing success stories, and more often than not a label’s financial muscle would have been involved there somehow.

Arcade Fire? Well, they’re on Merge Records. An independent label they may be, but they’ve had previous big successes with bands like Spoon, which have surely enhanced their budgets. The Shins? Well, everyone knows of Sub Pop Records by now. Vampire Weekend? Well, they signed to XL Recordings to release their albums.

These are examples that would’ve meant nothing to an independent band in Malaysia trying to make music and who are also hoping not to lose that much money in the process.

True, nowadays you can record everything on a computer or laptop (a pirated recording software CD would cost you no more than RM10), but anyone who’s done home recording before will tell you that to amass the proper soundcards or interface, pre-amps, mixers and proper microphones (not to mention guitar and bass amps) would still cost you an arm and a leg and is something that the average new band can never afford.

You can cheat a bit by using drum programming and all sorts of sonic software, but I can assure you the results would still not be as authentic and as warm as what you’ll get in a proper studio with proper recording equipment.

And to use a proper recording studio will cost you money too. So like it or not, if you want to make a proper recording, you’ll have to spend proper money too, which is in quite short supply for the average Malaysian independent band.

That is why some bands have decided to go the singles route and record their songs one song at a time (so that their pockets wouldn’t be hurt so much as compared to recording a whole album in one go) and release them as singles every few months.

Combine the cost factor with the fact that CDs just don’t sell much nowadays, the argument that releasing singles is the way to go does make business sense, because you can release your singles as ringtone downloads and it’s ringtones that have been bringing in the money for most people nowadays.

But there’s also a fallacy in this argument because unless you’re someone like Aizat, Yuna, Hujan or Bunkface who sell hundreds of thousands of ringtone downloads (surely due to the fact that their singles get gargantuan mainstream radio airplay), the average independent act still won’t make that much money from ringtones, whether it’s singles or albums, unless you get lucky and your song somehow gets a huge amount of mainstream radio airplay.

So really the actual dilemma facing the average Malaysian independent act nowadays is how to get by with little money and still sound "proper" so as to be considered serious enough with your music because for most bands the reality is that making an album is nothing more than just wanting to leave a recorded legacy for memory and history’s sake.

I wish I know the exact answer to this dilemma too. But so far the only way I know how is to either do that home recording thing (and risk not sounding professional enough) or spend as little money as we can in a proper recording studio by recording as fast as we can (also risking not sounding professional enough because you know what might happen when you rush things). If we manage to come out of the whole album making process without being too broke and the album sounding professional enough, then I’ll consider it mission accomplished already. Whether it’ll sell or not, well it is mission accomplished already, isn’t it?

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.