8Sided Blog

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Sweet Jesus: Steve Cobby’s One Man Cottage Industry

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Steve Cobby - Sweet Jesus

A lazy Friday in May revealed a righteous surprise. Without warning: the arrival of Sweet Jesus. This event wasn’t a religious awakening, but for fans of Fila Brazillia, it was like unexpectedly finding an apparition burned onto the morning toast. Steve Cobby, one half of the aforementioned Fila B, had dropped his latest solo album — yes, Sweet Jesus — on Bandcamp.

The album opens with the ringing strings of a gently played guitar. The thing that always struck me about Fila Brazillia’s oeuvre is its innate organicness. Though considered an electronic band, the duo (Cobby in cahoots with David McSherry) wasn’t afraid to toss in the odd guitar riff, live drum kit, or shite harmonica. As out-of-place as folksy fingerpicking might sound on Sweet Jesus, it’s all part of a modus operandi that’s a long time in motion.

Recognizable elements of Cobby’s velvet-textured production come into play — the intro of “Chauffeur De Camion” brings to mind at least a couple of Fila B’s mid-90s moments — but it’s the renewed intersection with a prominent guitar that inspires imaginative shifts. Notably, there’s “Feline Plastique” which incorporates a rhythmic Latin shuffle alongside a wealth of melodic riffs and optimistic tones. And jazz features more than we’re used to, allowing the guitar to explore on extended cuts like the Liston-Smith-laid-back-space-jam-ish “Truer Than Words.” Introspection rarely feels so sunny.

The mechanics of the release of Sweet Jesus interest me, too. Steve Cobby is no stranger to independent labels. After a stint with the major-aligned Big Life via his band Ashley & Jackson, Cobby played a part in the formation of no less than four different independent imprints. Déclassé is the latest, launched in 2014, and is the home of this new effort. But it appears a one-person operation, making the surprise release of Sweet Jesus an intuitive experiment.

Steve documented the launch of the album in real-time, live-streaming the click of the ‘publish’ button on his Bandcamp account, followed with a listen of the album accompanied by an affable and enlightening commentary.

I’m always curious about artists who thrived in the independent sector pre-Napster and how they operate now. It’s no secret that I’m one of those artists. Though I get excited about the potential of today’s DIY freedom, the changes remain a constant struggle of adjustment. Cobby’s embrace of the Bandcamp and live-stream platforms led me to believe he’s a lot more confident than me in the modern landscape. But, after an email chat, I see he’s playing it by ear like the rest of us.

Says Steve: “[These tactics were] borne of desperation and curiosity. I prefer to be just creating. I never anticipated being an owner-operator at such a late stage in my career, but necessity is invention’s mother. The times have moved a great deal. I wouldn’t say I’ve moved with them 100%. But I have autonomy so I can try out things signed artists might struggle with. The live-stream idea, for instance, only came to me about a week before the planned release on the 10th and the night before I was still tweaking tunes and mastering. I cannot envisage that scenario being duplicated many places where a committee is involved.”

How long did it take to figure some of this out and how rough was the transition?

“2004 to 2014 was a fallow decade for me. Couldn’t get anything to traction with the collaborative releases put out on the labels I co-owned. Once I went completely solo in ’14, consolidated all tasks to myself, and went direct-to-customer it was revolutionary. The light appeared at the tunnel’s end, and I began to earn money again. I’m a digital busker now, and almost everything that goes in the hat comes home. I think this is more like the many-to-many publishing model we’ll move towards. You’re sustained by a very bespoke coterie that you’ve curated.”

But, that’s liberating, right? So much nicer than being under the thumb of a label I’d imagine.

“I would much prefer financial security to be honest. My one man cottage industry is simply the only way I can get my material to market without interference. Certainly far from an ideal. I did enjoy the liberation of delivering an album completely ‘fresh’ and sans promo. But I’ve not worked within the traditional label machine since being signed to Big Life in the late eighties. They were pricks who wanted to dictate what we did and who we worked with. But If I was signed to an open-minded label, then I don’t see why I couldn’t make the same decisions I’m making now. Who knows.”

Whatever liberation there might be, a lot of artists are finding that Bandcamp is an essential tool for achieving it. Not only is it often used as a direct-to-artist platform, but Bandcamp also encourages artist fandom rather than passive playlist loyalty. I asked about Bandcamp’s role in Steve’s ‘one man cottage industry,’

“Bandcamp has been key to my turnaround. It’s the platform that delivers uncompressed and compressed downloads as well as streaming whilst taking the smallest cut of any retailer. This release was a Bandcamp exclusive for the first six weeks to help promote some more traffic that way. I’d still bother without it, but the returns would be less as all other online portals are serviced through an aggregator. “

I wondered: was Sweet Jesus‘s surprise release date set in stone and was there any temptation to push it back? And, as Steve was tweaking and mastering the album less than 24 hours before he clicked ‘publish,’ would he ever go back and update any of the tracks, Kanye-style?

“The beauty of the surprise deadline is it can be moved on a whim, but I was confident it was coherent work. I’d set that deadline for myself to avoid over-procrastination. As for reviewing post-release, the egg is fried. I don’t beat myself up once material is published and I would only ever re-upload a track for a technical reason, never creative.”

Despite the backed-into-a-corner nature of a self-release (and I can relate), I’m heartened and inspired by the freshness and ingenuity of Sweet Jesus, both in its playful roll-out to Steve’s fans and its bright, sanguine, and thoughtful sound. But, without any constraints, how would Steve Cobby release this album differently?

He answer: “To fifty thousand subscribers.”

Follow Steve Cobby and his Déclassé label on Bandcamp to help him get closer to that number.

Road Maps, Rainy Days, and Digital Streaming

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Spotify, Waze, and road trips, via Endgadget:

Drivers use their smartphone for both navigation and music, so why not put the two together? Waze and Spotify have announced that they’ve done just that: You can now navigate with Waze within Spotify and access Spotify playlists from Waze. After you set up a playlist, it’ll automatically play when you start your journey, while letting you “easily” change songs. At the same time, you can browse playlists (and switch from one app to the other) when your vehicle is at a full stop.



The partnership is somewhat surprising, as Waze is owned by Google, which has its own Play music-streaming service that competes with Spotify. However, Spotify’s 50 million-strong subscriber base dwarfs Google Play (and every other music service), so it could be a way for Google to prod all those users into trying the Waze platform.



Spotify, The North Face, and rain, via The Verge:

The Austin-based band White Denim has a new song out today, but you can only listen to it if it’s raining where you are. The North Face is releasing the track, called “No Nee Ta Slode Aln” as part of a partnership with Spotify. The whole thing is a gimmicky way to sell a rain jacket.



The streaming service is using geo-targeting to make the song available only in areas of the United States experiencing drops of water falling from the sky. If that’s not happening in your area, you’re out of luck. It’s currently not raining where I am, which means the song isn’t showing up on my Spotify.



Just as digital streaming has opened up endless options for defining a ‘release’ or an ‘album’, we’re now starting to see this creative freedom applied to music promotion and integration. More of this, I say.

The Audience Problem

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Cuepoint:

Previous generations were forced to group themselves by geography. We now do so based on interest, by way of the web. What we’ve learned is, just like the real world, the natural state of behavior on the internet centers around small communities. Unlike the past though, these communities are based on a common interest, not on the location in which you were born.



That’s why solving your Audience Problem by focusing on a core group is actually a more natural way to do it. It’s never a good bet to align yourself against human behavior. It seems better to open your sails behind a growing wind, instead of trying to swim upstream against the current.


This article is more ‘pep talk’ than anything, providing some positive encouragement for cultivating fans to help the artist make a living. The paragraphs above may seem obvious at first glance, but the important, underlying message is that one should not look at the ‘Audience Problem’ through a traditional lens. There are new communities forming thanks to the web, and seeking creative, previously unimaginable approaches for music exposure is a winning pastime.


Another quick quote I’ll pull from the piece, in case you need reminding:

The free distribution and cheap means of production that the web provides is only bad for the “middle men,” not the creators themselves.


And this Venn diagram the author references is worth meditating on for a few moments:

Action → inspiration … it’s most often not the other way around.

How ‘Playola’ Is Infiltrating Streaming Services

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Billboard:

Like social media, playlists are viral in nature: A track’s streams will spike after it’s added to a popular playlist; listeners will add the song to their playlists; their friends will do the same. Getting a song onto a hot playlist almost ensures awareness will spread from one social network to another.

Multiple insiders allege that the major music groups have paid influential curators to populate their playlists with their clients’ music. Some third-party users are known to request money to include songs on their playlists. Pay for play “is definitely ­happening,” claims a major-label marketing executive, one of several who say that popular playlists can and have been bought.

According to a source, the price can range from $2,000 for a playlist with tens of thousands of fans to $10,000 for the more well-followed playlists. And these practices are not illegal, although it would be difficult to find an official policy in the fine print.

In a statement to Billboard, Spotify head of communications Jonathan Prince says its new terms of service, hitting the United States next week, prohibit selling accounts and playlists or “accepting any ­compensation, financial or otherwise, to influence … the content included on an account or playlist.” Yet policing, let alone enforcing, these terms could be difficult.


Everything old is new again, eh? But then how is aggressively promoting an artist to a playlist different than, say, promoting that artist – through bribery or otherwise – to a music blog? Playlists are sort of becoming ‘the new music blogs’ to streaming fans, so it makes sense. A blog (or a radio station in the ‘old days’) that relies on promoted or paid content gets noticeably watered down in its taste-making reputation, but that probably doesn’t matter to the mainstream targets here. Pay-for-play stinks, but as it is nearly-impossible to enforce (though not difficult to spot by savvy music fans) it’s probably going to be a permanent thorn in the side for these services. When it used to affect your local radio station you didn’t really have elsewhere to go … at least with playlists and blogs there are many other alternatives out there to turn to when the ones you are following start suspiciously including the same lackluster songs at the same time.