Here’s the story of Marillion, an independent UK band. Most bands record demos, scrounge for gigs, and pray daily to be discovered by an A&R rep. The competition is fierce. And frequently, those chosen are the ones with the least talent. And most bands never make it, or break up and die long before they even have a chance.

These are the average results for bands in the music industry. A few make it big. Most suffer, flounder, and fail. Now, if you want average results, what should you do? You should do what everyone else is doing, right? But if you want extraordinary results, you have to do something extraordinary.

Marillion did the big record label thing. They even signed a deal with EMI. What most bands don’t know, because they never get a deal like this, is that these deals can be more a curse than a blessing. You basically have to sign your life away to the record label. You no longer own the music you created, and you may no longer even own yourselves.

Marillion went down this path. But then Marillion did something extraordinary:

By 1997, Marillion had realised that the Internet provided an ideal opportunity to nurture a closer contact with the fans, and a fan instigated whip round on their e-mailing list produced enough funds to allow the band to tour the USA. The release of the album Marillion.com in 1999 flagged their newly launched web-site and record label, but it was the revolutionary concept of asking their fans to pre-order and pay for the recording costs an album some 12 months in advance of its release that hit the headlines in 2001. Astonishingly, over 12,000 of their fans pre-ordered, and an additional deal was struck with EMI to market the resulting Anoraknophobia album… In terms of fan loyalty, it can be said that Marillion have an international underground following to rival the mainstream.

Note what Marillion did here. They didn’t just have a website, they had a web strategy. This strategy included an list of fans who want to get information about the band emailed to them. This is an invaluable asset that most small businesses don’t have. (And yes, an indie band is a small business.) But because Marillion was smart, they had an email list, and that put them in touch with their fans. That meant they could make their fans a direct offer for a new album. And the fans jumped at it… Even though the album was not even in production, even though it wouldn’t be released for another year.

This is not an exceptional circumstance. It’s an exceptional case merely because most bands do what everyone else is doing, which gets you only average results. No matter how small you are, you have a core set of fans. And you can expand on that core set of fans, even while you hold down a real job to pay the bills. As long as you keep in touch with those fans, you’re keeping the fandom alive, and you’re building up equity in your band.

What’s the ending to this story? For Marillion, here’s what happened:

When singles Don’t Hurt Yourself and You’re Gone breached the UK top 20 — the latter making it all the way to number 7 — jaws dropped right across the music world.

Not bad going for a band without major label backing.

But it was merely the latest twist in a 23-year-long history of a group who have held on to the conviction that what they’re doing means something real.

Years ago, I was in a band. And I had dreams of becoming a real band, with real fans, and really making money from it. And we played the local gigs. And we recorded a couple really low-quality demos. I remember wanting to put together a website for the band. And this was in the days before the web made it big, but not in the days before email. And one of my band-mates asked me why we needed a website. But I was young and inexperienced.

If I had it to do over again, I would have told him this story.

-TimK

Thanks to Chris Garrett for putting me on the Marillion story.

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