Web Site Gives Struggling Musicians a Chance

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.

Caswell says, "There absolutely is a lot of talent out there with great gifts that will never get a shot if someone doesn't give them that shot."

Listen to Beth Hart and you'll be stunned that she doesn't have a record deal.

Tia Sprocket belts it out as a lead singer, but she's been kicking around for years as a backup musician.

Sick Puppies came all the way from Australia to make it in America. Says its leader, Shim Moore, "You have to think: How much longer are people going to buy music from the shops?"

Musicians like Brett Hestla of Dark New Day, which recorded at Caswell's studios recently, know that fans don't have to go to the smoky rock clubs anymore to discover new acts.

"People see this," says Hestla, "and they're going to call their local venues and say, 'Hey, are you guys going to have Dark New Day?' "

The studios are rigged with remote-controlled high-definition cameras and microphones that can isolate almost every sound in the room. Multiple camera angles and more than 100 tracks of sound are captured in the studio's digital servers.

Eventually, edited segments will be available for download to computers, cell phones, digital players or any device capable of playing digital media.

Rehearsals.com, though, wants to be about music, about giving musicians a break and a better cut of the money.

Says Center Staging's CEO Roger Paglia: "Eventually, a record company is going to pick up that emerging artist, and eventually radio is going to pick up that emerging artist, and they'll be a big artist someday. But it will all have started here."