If the music business is going through a bad patch, you can’t tell it by Nicholas Tasch.
The Beverly teenager follows four or five hard-core heavy metal bands religiously.
He goes to their concerts. He buys their CDs. He proclaims his musical taste by wearing clothing with band logos.
In Tasch’s world, Britney Spears couldn’t be less cool.
“I don’t have much respect for someone who doesn’t write her own songs,” he says.
That’s music to the ears of Tony Brummel, the founder and owner of Victory Records, an independent record label that produces the kind of non-mainstream tunes that appeal to Tasch and millions of other young people.
Victory Records not only has continued to grow during a music industry downturn, but it stands out for another reason. It’s located on Chicago’s Near West Side, far from the two hubs of the music business–Los Angeles and New York.
Since its 1993 launch, Victory has grown into the second-largest independent rock label in the country, according to Nielsen SoundScan, boasting a stable of 20 bands. Some fall into the heavy metal category and its more extreme subgenres. Others favor punk style (think mohawks and body piercing). Ska bands that play fast-paced Caribbean music make up part of the repertoire as well.
Atreyu, a top-selling Victory band, broke into Billboard’s top 50 in early July with the debut of its second album, “Curse.”
Another Victory group, Taking Back Sunday, is approaching gold record territory with sales of its first album, “Tell All Your Friends.”
The Long Island band’s second album, “Where You Want to Be,” is scheduled for release later this month, and Victory plans to ship 450,000 copies.
Those numbers have won the respect of major record labels.
“Tony stays very close to the ground. He respects the consumer, listens to them and gives them what they want, something the major labels haven’t done that well,” said Lyor Cohen, president of Warner Music Group in New York. “I would be more than happy to own a piece of his company.”
Adds Ken Antonelli, president of Sony Music’s Red Distribution unit, Victory’s U.S. distributor: “Most people try to market to the masses, saying `I think a lot of people will really like this.’ Tony is a fan. He is the consumer. It’s almost like he is selling to himself.”
So far, Brummel’s formula is working.
Victory’s sales have grown annually and are on track to almost double this year.
Because it is privately held, Victory doesn’t disclose revenue or profit, but industry sources project Victory’s 2004 sales will hit between $15 million and $20 million.
Not bad for a company with 30 employees that operates out of 13,000 square feet in a loft building at 346 N. Justine St. near Grand and Ashland Avenues, sharing a floor with Aunt Martha’s Youth Service Center.
“I’m confident we’re not a one-trick pony,” Brummel says.
Launching new bands may sound like fun, but it’s hard work. Groups on so-called indie labels don’t get much, if any, airplay on traditional rock radio stations, which have become increasingly backward-looking with formats like “Classic Rock” or the “Best of the `80s.”
Because the easy path to stardom isn’t open to them, new bands rely on “viral” marketing, getting the word out on the street directly to consumers.
It’s something Brummel has been doing since he hawked his first 45 r.p.m. record at concerts and mom-and-pop music stores.
Today, Victory has 250 “street teams” of young people across the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom that hang out at concerts and follow tours like Ozzfest or Warped Tour, handing out stickers, catalogs and CD samplers of Victory’s bands.
If something on the sampler catches their interest, potential buyers can surf Victory’s Web site, which gives them background on the bands and allows them to test-drive other songs.
Victory’s bands play their part in underground marketing by touring constantly, sometimes staying on the road for two years, playing a different city nearly every night.
Through such efforts, Victory has transcended the music business and become a lifestyle brand, Brummel says. As proof, he offers the 100 photos the company has received of fans with Victory’s bulldog logo tattooed on their bodies.
Some marketers say the Internet has democratized the music business, allowing new artists to connect with and stay in touch with their fan base.
It’s a confounding situation for the music industry’s giants because the traditional channels to reach their audience have fragmented.
Reluctant target market
The music industry’s sweet spot is male buyers ages 12 to 24. But those lads are watching less TV and spending more time playing video games, sending instant messages and surfing the Internet.
Marketers have dubbed them “the missing males.”
These guys aren’t just hard to find, they are hard to talk to, say media buyers, because this group resents anything that smacks of being packaged for their consumption.
“They’re turned off by the hype of marketing music,” explains Michael Wood, vice president with Teenage Research Unlimited in Northbrook.
“It’s part of the reason they had no qualms about downloading music. They didn’t see it as taking money away from the artist. They saw it as just beating the system.”
That’s why big companies from Sony to PepsiCo are trying to sneak up on young men with their messages.
“We’re merging contact and content,” says Chris Boothe, senior vice president at Starcom, the Chicago-based media buying company.
Rather than running the same ad in a variety of publications, Boothe said, “we work with the editors of the magazine, who know what their readers want to hear about, to create a specific ad.”
Sometimes the ad is even more subtle.
It may take the form of sponsoring a concert series for a cult band or a tactful product placement for a beer brand on a cable show such as “Rescue Me,” a drama about New York firefighters that debuts Wednesday on the FX network.
“You’ve got to be with them in their pack, and you’ve got to talk to them in their language” Boothe says. “You’ve got to talk to them when they’re engaged in their passions.”
Their passions can be narrowed to three broad categories, he adds: sex, sports and music.
Brummel knows all about being passionate about music.
His father, a construction manager, moved the family from Chicago to the Bahamas in late 1977 while Brummel was in elementary school. His new teachers found him so smart they skipped Brummel ahead two grades. Two years later, he watched reggae legend Bob Marley light up the Queen Elizabeth Sports Center in Nassau, and it changed his life.
After Brummel’s family moved back to the States, he graduated from Hinsdale High School in 1988 and spent a semester at the University of Illinois at Chicago. But college didn’t hold his interest, and Brummel soon found himself waiting tables and producing singles for alternative rock bands on the side.
He produced his first 7-inch vinyl record in 1989 for a melodic hard-core band from Sacramento, Calif., using $800 in savings to pay for 1,000 copies.
By 1993, it was time to decide whether to go back to school. Instead, Brummel answered the music industry’s siren call.
Business acumen on the fly
As Victory’s business grew, Brummel had to worry about things like income statements and balance sheets, but he says running a business came naturally to him.
What he didn’t know, Brummel picked up from books. He finds time to read three or four a week despite routinely putting in 12-plus hour days.
Two things Brummel knows for sure: His business has to be profitable, and debt is bad.
“I hate debt,” he says. “I’d rather scratch and claw.”
Brummel has an open-door policy with his employees and doesn’t mind being told he is wrong. The title on his business card is “leader” rather than chief executive.
But there’s no question who is in charge.
“I have to have total control. I’m not a team player,” Brummel said. “I see meetings as just a waste of time.”
But Brummel doesn’t try to push his bands around, which likely wouldn’t work anyway.
“Tony and me are pretty like-minded,” says Alex Varkatzas, the 22-year-old lead vocalist of Atreyu. “We want to be the best and aren’t satisfied with anything else. We both push ourselves.”
Some independents are always short of money, so they are vulnerable when big record companies want to gobble them up. Often, the independents spend the money advanced to them before the deal closes, losing their leverage to negotiate.
Brummel found himself at the altar with MCA Records in 2002 and agreed to sell 25 percent of Victory. But after the deal was announced, he got cold feet.
Because he had put the advance in escrow Brummel was able to return MCA’s money in 2003 and walk away. His instincts turned out to be right. MCA Records shut down last summer and its bands were shifted elsewhere or dropped.
Now, Brummel says he has no interest in affiliating or selling to a major player.
“I’m not motivated enough by money to do what I do. I’m motivated by hiring employees and breaking records,” Brummel said. “Now is the time to build. I’m not thinking of getting out. I’m thinking of getting in.”
Listen to a sampling of bands from the Victory Records roster: chicagotribune.com/victory
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Victory Records
What: the country’s second-largest independent rock music label, based on market share as measured by Nielsen SoundScan
Where: 346 N. Justine St. in Chicago’s up-and-coming West Town neighborhood
Size: represents 20 alternative rock bands; projected to do between $15 million and $20 million in sales in 2004
Who: Tony Brummel, 33, founded it in May 1993
Hottest sellers: Atreyu, a hard-core metal band from Orange County, Calif., and Taking Back Sunday, an indie rock band from Long Island
Local talent: Spitalfield, a Chicago band formed by Mark Rose and J.D. Romero of Naperville
