Web Site Gives Struggling Musicians a Chance

By BRIAN ROONEY

BURBANK, Calif., Oct. 8, 2006 — While the old record companies with their roots in wax struggle to survive, a Web site that rocks tries to reinvent the business.

Rehearsals.com, operating out of warehouses and airplane hangars across the road from Burbank airport, tries to bring back diversity to the sound of popular music.

"The music industry right now is in a moment of arrested development," says Johnny Caswell, president of Center Staging Corp., and a founder of Rehearsals.com.

With the rise in unpaid downloading and the decline in music sales, record companies rarely take risks with unknowns. The way the surviving big record companies now do business, it costs so much money to launch a new act that they have to be certain they'll score millions in sales before they give someone a shot.

Rehearsals.com is trying to turn that upside down, giving music acts relatively inexpensive exposure on the net, generating sales.

Rehearsals.com gives free studio time to promising acts that allow themselves to be videotaped and put on the Web site.

The idea for the Web site grew out of Caswell's main business of providing rehearsal space and renting instruments and equipment to musicians. With some of the biggest acts in the world and some promising unknowns traipsing through his studios, Caswell got the idea to try to put their rehearsals on the Internet.

Caswell knows music. He's a veteran of the old Philadelphia music scene, with two records that hit the charts.

Echoing the current complaint that everything on radio these days sounds the same, Caswell and his partners work to find a way to launch new acts that can't get a break from the record companies, and to bring back old ones that will still connect with an audience.

Caswell compares the power of the Internet to FM radio, which saved music lovers from the monotony of short-playlist AM radio.

"Remember that?" the fast-talking Caswell asks. "FM radio came in and saved us from that short playlist. We're at that crossroads again."

The fare on his site is a mix of performances, rehearsals and appearances by legends like Tom Petty, Burt Bachrach and the Manhattan Transfer.

But the site also serves as a potential launching pad for acts that get no traction with the record companies
read more here



and here at rehearsals.com