Merrill Garbus’s self-release of tUnE-yArDs’ Bird-Brains proves pay-what-you-wish isn’t just for the big guys

By Katy Henriksen
Published: January 23rd, 2009 | 3:30pm

The year 2008 became a sea change of a year for the way that music is distributed and released when Radiohead introduced the pay-what-you-wish model. The massive success of In Rainbows, which made more money through digital downloads than the total amount made by Radiohead’s 2003 release Hail to the Thief, has inspired other folks to try similar techniques.

For musician Merrill Garbus — whose one-woman band tUnE-yArDs features ukulele, voice, and found sounds filtered through a hand-held digital voice recorder and then sent to her laptop for mixing — self-releasing her debut Bird-Brains was all about empowerment. “Bird-Brains was very intentionally done all through ‘free’ media, i.e. the digital-voice recorder, my laptop, free Audacity software — and all by me. I was very much in a feminist frame of mind when I chose to use those as my limitations,” she says. “As a woman musician, I'm in the world of men a lot. I catch myself, even, assuming that women musicians don’t record, produce, or even write their own stuff.”

In July 2008 Garbus released the entirely DIY-made album using the pay-what-you-wish model, suggesting a $10 donation but allowing for a person to download the 10 tracks for as little as 1 cent. She also made cassette tapes of the project, which she sold while on tour.

Bird-Brains — an otherworldly textured collage of unrefined fuzzy sounds — shifts from lyrical melodies to rhythmic pulses, at times resembling a beat sample–heavy, DJ experiment and others a lo-fi, indie-folk tune.

“The project started with capturing small bits of sound and learning to listen to everyday noises that I could use to create rhythm, and texture, and melody,” explains Garbus. “I also would do ‘field recordings’ where I'd go sit by the ocean or in the woods and play something live, just to have not only a sense of the song but of where I was when I was playing them.”

At this point Garbus has sold 150 downloads of Bird-Brains, with the average buyer donating $10. She also sold approximately 300 cassette tapes, with the option to download the digital file, while on the road. She says that only three or four people offered only 1 cent for the album, and Garbus sees the experiment as a success, although the sales look minuscule compared to the 30,000 downloads in the first week for In Rainbows.

“I would suggest that it's been a greater financial success than many other more traditionally released albums. From literally no cost, except many hours of lost sleep and a bit of tendinitis from moving the mouse around too much, I have apparently made over $1,000 dollars,” she explains. “For a gal like me, that's a huge amount of money. And, of course, I would not have been able to do it without the kind gifts of my laptop and the voice recorder from my parents and friends, respectively.”

Because she did not have the built-in stature of Radiohead, Garbus relied on bloggers to spread the word. She credits influential music blog Said the Gramophone as a factor for the success of album sales. She also toured a lot, including with Thao and the Get Down Stay Down.

This year, new models of DIY distribution continue to appear, helping to make the old label system look downright prehistoric. Jill Sobule, for instance, will self-release California Years in April. Sobule raised $85,000 from fans via the Web site jillsnextalbum.com in order to record, produce, and distribute the release. She also crafted donation levels, which provided different levels of “gifts” to fans. Whereas $10 got fans a digital download, $50 got them a digital download, an advance copy, and a "thank you" in the liner notes. More extravagant donations of $200, $1,000, and $5,000 received bonuses of free admission to her shows for a year, a personally written theme song, and a house show by Sobule respectively. The highest donor, who contributed $10,000, sang back-up on Sobule’s album.

Bird-Brains will see a more traditional release when Marriage Records presses it to vinyl in 2009, but the digital version will still be available via Garbus’s Web site through donation until March 10, 2009, and she definitely would consider the same model for future releases.

As for whether or not she has to report taxes on digital donations, Garbus isn’t sure. “I will find out in a couple of weeks when I do my taxes,” she says. “I assume so, because as much as I feel like a non-profit organization sometimes, alas I am not.”

tUnE-yArDs’ Bird-Brains proves that DIY releasing isn’t just for the big guns and brings hope of many similar bedroom recordings to come. Although musicians like Garbus may not be able to make a living off of their art alone, the digital age marks a turn of power away from the label and into the hands of the artist.

As Garbus remarks, “the sense that I had complete power and ownership over the whole thing, no matter where it went, no matter who listened, was really important to me.”

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For more information about tUnE-yArDs, check out her MySpace or Web site.