Black Vibes Interviews... TOM SILVERMAN (Founder of Tommy Boy Records)
Written by Gerald Olivari
Monday, October 05, 2009 - BlackVibes.com
Gerald Olivari recently spoke with Tom Silverman, founder of Tommy Boy Records, about the New Music Seminar, the new frontier of the music industry and the Performance Rights Act.
Why did you decide to bring the New Music Seminar to Chicago?
Tom Silverman: We wanted to move it around so we'd be within driving distance of 60% of all of the artists in the country. After Chicago, we're going to LA. Then, we're going to Atlanta. Every quarter we're going to move to a different part of the country so we can bring the message which we feel is very important to people who need to hear it.
Do you have a date set for the Atlanta conference?
Tom Silverman: It'll probably be late April or early May [2010].
What should someone do to prepare themselves for the conference?
Tom Silverman: You don't have to do anything to prepare. You just have to register. Check out the website http://newmusicseminar.biz. Everything that you need to know is there.
Give me a preview of the type of information that you're going to give to an artist about tackling the new frontier of the music industry?
Tom Silverman: First of all. Forget about record companies and forget about radio stations. Don't make music for them. Don't waste your time promoting to them. It's a much better investment to buy a lottery ticket because that's what that is. It's a one and a million shot that you'll ever get played.
Focus on Fans! Put all of your focus on your potential fans and how you can get more people to pay to see your [live] show because that's where artists are getting paid.
We've changed the definition of success to 10,000 albums and 300 tickets. If you can sell 300 tickets in multiple markets besides your hometown, you've emerged from the mass of artists that are trying to break.
It's an attainable goal if you manage your business right.
What do you think of the Performance Rights Act? (Amends federal copyright law so artists can receive money from radio stations that play their music)
Tom Silverman: If you recorded a song and radio station is benefiting from that song financially, then they should be sharing some of the benefit with the artist. Look at Mary Wells who sang with The Supremes, but never wrote any of the songs and is struggling to pay her rent right now.
The songwriters make money and it's not fair. Every other country in the world except for China, North Korea, and Iran has that right. We look like idiots by not having this right.
What is your response to people like Cathy Hughes who say this law would put radio stations out of business?
Tom Silverman: It's not true! It's absolutely not true! Why do they even pay their electrical bill? Why don't they say "if I have to pay my electrical bill it'll put me out of business." You can't broadcast without electricity and you can't broadcast without music.
If they want to do news, weather, talk and sports, they can do that, but the truth is running a radio station that only runs news, weather, talk and sports costs 5 times more than doing a music station where you get all of programming for free! If that was the case, then that would be the case all around the world.
You had a lot of big name artists signed to Tommy Boy (Naughty By Nature, Queen Latifah, Coolio, etc..). What artists did you pass on signing that ended up being successful elsewhere?
Tom Silverman: New Edition is a group that we should have signed that we didn't. We also did sign Rza before he was part of Wu-Tang as Prince Rakeem. We put a single out, but it didn't do much. The Wu-Tang idea didn't come along until a few years after that.
Gerald Olivari recently spoke with Tom Silverman, founder of Tommy Boy Records, about the New Music Seminar, the new frontier of the music industry and the Performance Rights Act.
