DJ Shadow live in Chile 2006. photo by Leo Prieto. Licensed under Creative Commons
In 2006 DJ Shadow dropped his most recent solo album, The Outsider, and set in motion the process of creating one of the most fully-realized and successful artist sites on the web. The latest incarnation of DJShadow.com was built by Derick Daily and his team at the prestigious marketing firm Euro RSCG and DJ Shadow’s team, managed by Michael Fiebach, all under the careful control of Joshua Davis (DJ Shadow). The three-year project completed it’s final development phase and was relaunched in August 2009. As someone who is developing a label site (that would be WowCool.com, folks), that features a full online shop and artist pages, I look at DJShadow.com as an example of what can be done.
Apart from the site’s innovations as a presence for a musician online, it represents not just DJ Shadow, but also works with, and by, his collaborators from Solesides/Quannum, Cut Chemist and Cali-Tex, DJ Shadow’s personal label for funk and soul re-issues, which includes the School House Funk compilations, and the recent ‘great lost Chicago funk’ album Pieces of Peace. It’s no secret that DJ Shadow is a major record hound, and his site represents that. This is clearly the work of someone who truly loves records and wants to share that with others who appreciate that.
DJShadow.com has a clean and elegant layout. No confusion about what stuff is and where to find it. It just works. And it is deep. The archives and discography are presented in a straightforward, unpretentious style.
The signature single from The Outsider ‘This Time (I’m Gonna Try It My Way)’ can be read as a statement of the need for an artist to control how his image is presented and his work is distributed; whether you are a DIY bedroom producer or in a ‘best of both worlds’ situation like DJ Shadow, who is both a major label artist and a successful indy label owner. At least that’s how I took it when it came out. Along with the Bloc Party’s ‘The Prayer’, ‘This Time’ served as a major inspiration for me when I started to plan the relaunch of Wow Cool.
OK, enough about me.
Holding down the day-to-day at DJShadow.com is Michael Fiebach. He handles the site management; marketing, project, and distribution management and sales for independent DJ Shadow releases; merchandise management for the entire DJ Shadow product line for tour and online sales and E-Commerce management for the online store. I met Michael at the last two SF MusicTech summits. He is direct, honest and knowledgeable about the music business. We spoke in depth about the site and the DJ Shadow Handmade label for this article on December 22, 2009 and followed up by email during January, 2010. This is the first of two in-depth follow up articles with people I met at the SF MusicTech Summit.
I’m guessing the average person would have a hard time getting exactly why it’s an unique deal, the arrangement with Universal, to license back the albums for digital sale and how that works.
Yeah, I think that you put it exactly right. The common music fan has no idea…doesn’t get it… ‘oh, you’re selling downloads… well, there have been downloads for 10 years on the Internet…’ who cares? You know?
The unique thing about it, really, is that we’re the only artist site that I’ve seen, that is legitimately licensing music back from the label and selling it directly to the fan through downloads. We are licensing the music as an E-Store, just as iTunes and other major E-tailers do. I haven’t seen any independently operated artist sites that combine the downloads with physical merchandise for the entire store. We do t-shirt and download bundles and buy a CD and get the download for free; and, there are sites that do that, but not independent artist stores, and combining the merchandise with the digital downloads was something that was really hard, actually, to get done and it’s not something you see that often. We do all the fulfillment out of here ourselves. We ship all it from out of here, worldwide.
Do you know the percentage that you’re moving of digital vs. physical sales?
As far as digital compared to physical, digital is a nice piece of the pie, and it is growing…For most people, CDs are kind of tough these days…as I’m sure you know, in general, but we still do… People still want DJ Shadow limited exclusive merchandise and CDs and we just came up with some creative ways to make it available… and there, we still have plenty of interest in CDs. Overall, vinyl is still moving very well from a direct to fan perspective, and the interest in Digital is large and continually growing. When we bundle digital and physical together… that is when the real interest is sparked. From a mass distribution perspective, CDs are still the bread and butter.
Any interest in developing the site to where it’s got more kind of community type features – like profiles, things like that?
It was something we looked into for this launch, but the tough thing is that we have a pretty active community on the social networks and I just found that people like to stay on those networks. They go to Facebook anyway. They go to these other networks, and we’re on there too. I don’t have a problem with those people interacting on Facebook. I think the data spreads better and to more people when it’s on Facebook, There are millions of users on Facebook – there are not going to be that many users on DJShadow.com… so I think that as far as gaining new people to come to the site– I think it’s more useful for those people to interact at different social networks and then to come DJShadow.com to get news and buy merch and to check out videos and things like that.
Facebook has been an extremely effective tool for Shadow, and I plan to continue to use it to promote Shadow and our various online campaigns. I think Facebook has done everything right, and I did agree with the sentiment at SF Music Tech that, generally, musicians need a Facebook strategy as opposed to Facebook having a Music strategy. Facebook has all of the tools for musicians to use; it’s using them correctly that is the important part. Twitter is Twitter. Most people use it too much in my opinion. Especially for musicians… make each Tweet count for something. Over-saturating the Tweetosphere is both annoying and diminishes the importance of each message. I think we need to focus on ways to properly utilize MySpace for what it is. Regardless of what people say, MySpace is still extremely important, and has the ability to really take over the online Free Content space for music. We, as industry professionals, should help MySpace to do this as opposed to just mocking them and sitting on our hands. I think we need to utilize these networks for what they are, and bring people to our home-base through those networks. We shouldn’t try to replicate those networks on a site that will never have even close to the same effectiveness in terms of data portability.
On the handmade bundles – I’m kind of curious about the actual manufacturing and assembly of those. You’re doing 180 gram vinyl…
Right, it’s a template that’s printed, but it’s hand assembled…so it’s actually stamped – the inner sleeve of the vinyl… the actual vinyl is stamped with the title on the label of the vinyl and then the inner sleeve is stamped…and then that reads through the outer sleeve which is die cut, and then we write the customers name on the back of the vinyl. Every person that orders gets their name written in… “this vinyl belongs to…”, and we write the customers name there… and that’s for the CDs and the vinyl. It was definitely the most intense music project I ever worked on from a production stand-point. I mean, you are talking about 15 releases (CD, vinyl) not to mention the fact that we also released most of that stuff digitally as well- ALL within a few months, and even though they all fit into an art template, there is still so much that goes into each of those releases. Really fun project though, and it has been a success.
How many separate releases per year are being produced by the DJShadow.com crew?
Per year totally depends. 2009 was a record year. We did the Diminishing Returns 2 CD re-release, Schoolhouse Funk CD re-release, 6 DJ Shadow Handmade Vinyl releases, 9 Handmade CD releases, and, with the launch of the downloads section we added 9 Exclusive downloads (most of which are the same releases as the Handmade pressings), and we did a Deluxe UNKLE “Psyence Fiction” download release as well. There has never been a year like that before…. We went all-out with the relaunch of the website.
2007-2008 we did The 4-Track releases, and ‘The Hard Sell’ With Cut Chemist. Those were bigger projects that had more mass appeal other than just appealing to visitors of DJShadow.com.
Were the 4-track era releases put together solely by DJShadow.com?
The 4-track releases were put together by Shadow (the music and vision), myself (Project Management), Paul Insect and Alaric Hammond (for the art), and Mikael “Count” Eldridge (Sound enhancement). The 4-Track Box Bundle was an idea Shadow and I came up with mid-way through the first couple of releases as a way to sum-up the project at the end. The high-end 4-Track Era CD packaging and the bundles were all exclusive to DjShadow.com. We also did a VERY limited Japan release which came in different packaging than the versions offered on the site. The Box Bundle included a Bonus mix CD which was not available as a part of any of the other packaging. Overall, it was probably the most successful project ever commissioned by DJShadow.com. The Handmade Project may beat it out though, it’s close.
So, how did you get involved with DJ Shadow?
I actually got the job through the guy who had the job I have now, Bryan Utech, who I definitely give credit to for upping the merchandise game, he has a huge history with music merchandising. He worked with some big bands… Linkin Park, Kid Rock, the Strokes and some other big names. He hired me in April 2006 to run the web store and do social networking type stuff… and then he left about 5 months after I was hired, to go pursue other things and I had just kind of built up a relationship with Josh and his personal manager and business manager at that point and they just asked me to take over the whole online and merchandise operation.
So it must be going good. You’re still there 3 years later…
Yeah, in April it will be 4 years. Which is crazy. It’s been cool, I’ve gotten to tour, I have been a part of some big projects and really got to spearhead the download store and site re-launch. The touring was amazing. I can’t even… I’ll never have that experience anywhere else… it was really cool… working with Shadow is an incredible… I mean he is one of the best musicians out there, in my opinion, and definitely one of the most respected in the industry. He’s a musician’s musician. People love him and respect him, and I think that has been really good for me. He’s top notch.
So he’s a good boss?
Oh yeah…definitely.
So, what do you listen to around the office?
Ha! All types of stuff. Some of it, I don’t even know what it is… just CDs that Josh leaves around in here…old funk stuff, classic, underground hip hop… I’m a hip hop fan and grew up listening to hip hop… but I definitely still listen to alternative rock from the 90s, some classic rock… we listen to all types of stuff. It’s an eclectic mix…which is what I guess you’d expect working in the offices of DJ Shadow.
Right. Anyone you care to give a shout out to?
Definitely would give a shout out to the Quannum people, Lateef and Gift of Gab (of Blackalicious) and all the people over at Quannum…great music, great guys, they’re family. Also The High & Mighty–my friends from The Eagles games in Philly, and a huge inspiration for me getting in the music biz (Mr. Eon- when’s the next record??!!). Besides that, I’m feeling Jay Z’s new album (The Blueprint 3, in case you weren’t sure)…I love it.
Right on… OK, so I’m obliged to ask this… any kind of info on when we can expect a new DJ Shadow album?
Well, I can definitely tell you he is currently in the studio working on new music. I can’t say anything about what it sounds like, or what it is… or anything… to be honest, I don’t know. I’ve heard very small bits and pieces… but, it’s going to be surprising and, I’m sure, it’s going to be cutting edge, and dope, as it always is… but, as far as a timeline, I have no idea when something new will actually be released. All we know is that he is working on it.
What did you get from SF MusicTech? Any highlights, thoughts on the summit itself as an idea, etc. I think we basically talked at theshow about the social networking panel getting hung up on MySpace and Facebook. Anything strike you as worth relaying about the event?
I think it is a great conference. I do think some of the speakers tend to get hung up on certain issues from time to time, but overall I think it is an informative conference. I spoke on a panel at the Bandwidth conference back in August, which was similar but a little more intimate, and I also attended the last SF Music Tech Summit in Spring of 2009. It is great anytime there is an opportunity for music industry professionals to gather and discuss ideas for this business. There is so much confusion as to where the industry is headed, it is always reassuring to interact with other individuals in similar positions… I walked away from this year’s SF Music Tech Summit with a heightened awareness of the current situation in the industry, and with many ideas for Shadow’s operation. Everyone is trying to figure out the same thing: the optimal approach for monetizing music… I have gained countless contacts and business opportunities from attending these conferences, and I definitely plan to continue to attend them, and hopefully I will be given more opportunities to take part in panels, etc.
DJ Shadow In Los Angeles 10.31.09- Snippet by djshadow
DJShadow.com’s latest release is DJ Shadow In Los Angeles, 10/31/2009 available as CD & Download. Released Jan 19, 2010. Sample above.
