For being the Little Engine In Florida That Could, Silent Majority Group has a freight train of success and experience in its dossier. Company President Jeff Hanson is best known for his highly successful management company, guiding Creed to over 30 million sales and worldwide acclaim. His record label, management and merchandising company are headquartered in Orlando, and overseen by day-to-day guru and VP and veteran programmer Rick Schmidt.
We recently caught up with Hanson and Schmidt on SMG’s beginnings, its current success with acts such as Tantric and Framing Hanley, and the guiding philosophies that are currently serving the company very well.
For being the Little Engine In Florida That Could, Silent Majority Group has a freight train of success and experience in its dossier. Company President Jeff Hanson is best known for his highly successful management company, guiding Creed to over 30 million sales and worldwide acclaim. Additionally, Hanson also managedAlter Bridge and Sevendust to sales of approximately 2 million records. His discovery of new talent like Hayley Williams ofParamore and Chris Daughtry is proof of a golden ear in Rock that few can equal. His record label, management and merchandising company are headquartered in Orlando, and overseen by day-to-day guru and VP Rick Schmidt.
Schmidt, a veteran radio programmer from markets such as Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Tampa and Washington, D.C., brings to bear all of his experience and music industry insight, a valuable and productive component in the surging operation.
We recently caught up with Hanson and Schmidt on SMG’s beginnings, its current success with acts such as Tantric and Framing Hanley, and the guiding philosophies that are currently serving the company very well.
Tell us a little about what the Silent Majority Group is and how the company operates.
Rick Schmidt: Obviously, Jeff has a proven track record managing artists so he spends a lot of time on the big picture and strategic stuff. I’m more of a detail guy for our bands Framing Hanley,Transmit Now, and Tantric. He’s the President of the label and I’m the VP, Jeff calls it managing upward and managing downward. That’s a cool way of saying that we wear a lot of hats.
We’re purposely a very small company. We have four people out of Orlando trying to do big things. Jeff’s wife Rebecca is our GM, at SMG that means she does everything we don’t have time to do, a HUGE position. We also have a web guy who handles all of our digital initiatives. We outsource everything else. We’ve found it’s a happier and less stressful environment when you’re hiring third party service providers on an as-needed basis instead of firing your employees.
As far as things that we offer artists, probably the one thing that we do that’s really silly is we have a partnership with our bands. It’s a fifty-fifty deal on the recording side only. When people go in and do label deals they’ll get 12-15 points on a record and that’s pretty much it, as opposed to what we’re doing which is far more progressive and forward thinking when it comes to offering a truepartnership with our bands. If we get paid on other streams, which we often do, it’s because we offer more services such as management which we do for Framing Hanley, Tantric, and Transmit Now.
Jeff Hanson: For us it’s not just a cash grab as it is in most new model label deals. A partnership allows everyone to be more involved in the decision making. Both sides are looking at the expenses, which is unusual in this business. We do the records as efficiently and economically as we can, and the artists support that. We’ve eliminated the “hey, we’ll never see another check, let’s live like U2 while we can” mentality! We market and promote effectively and look for the best return on our investment, rather than just throw chunks of money at a project and hope we get results. The reality is that no one can afford to operate that way anymore. We’re just lucky we’re small enough to have been able to change the way we do business as the industry has changed very quickly. We’ll have done two million dollars in gross business this year, and made money, in a time where most companies would have been stuck with that much overhead that they couldn’t shed.
Schmidt: Jeff sold his 8000 square foot office right as all this began and moved his office to his house under the guise of “that’s the way Google is doing it”. It’s working for us, the numbers are there and it’s just the beginning for SMG and our artists. Who knows, maybe we’ll get another office some day or at least one that fits a couch.
Tell me about your current roster and some of the future priorities coming down the line.
Hanson: We have Candlebox on our label, which as a fan is really exciting. When they got back together and were looking for somebody to work with, we were fortunate to land them and have them be a part of what we’re doing. They obviously gave us some credibility instantly, because last time I checked they sold a sh*t load of records. The lead single, “Stand,” went top 15 and there is still plenty of love for the band at the format. We are launching a new single as we speak.
Going back about a year-and-a-half, Hugo Ferreira from Tantric was looking to do a solo project and we ended up talking to him about doing a Tantric record. It turned out extremely well. We ended up getting a Top 5 single out of “Down And Out.” That put them and us back on the map, which is really all that you can ask for when you have a band that’s been away for four or five years. We are releasing album two, Mind Control, in July. We have a band called Vayden that we love, which we want to keep developing. The singer is currently doing a theme song for Matt Hardyof the WWE. We’re really excited about that record and the talent in that band. We’re in the process of signing a band out of Orlando, Transmit Now. If you cross Framing Hanley with the feel of an Incubus, that’s Transmit Now. It’s Alternative with a Pop sensibility.
You’ve spent the last year, year-and-a-half developing Framing Hanley.
Schmidt: When I left radio and really started reaching out to people about what we had on the label at the time, Framing had a song they had done with (Creed bassist) Brett Hestla, called “Hear Me Now.” We started trying to break that record on our own, even before we had distribution throughADA or our deal with ILG. We ended up with the No. 1 record on Sirius Octane for the year, beating out Breaking Benjamin, Red, and other major acts. That was a legitimate song for Sirius, but we just couldn’t get a consistent build on the track – we had a lot of support in multiple markets but it never hit at the same time…making the chart game very, very, tough. The band kept touring, kept working MySpace and Pure Volume, and we kept looking for relationships that could pay off down the road, because nobody was going to give up on this band.
Then, all of a sudden “Lollipop” came into play.
Hanson: It’s amazing when you get something that just takes off like that. I know it’s a Lil Waynecover, but people reacted to it the same way that we did. We constantly heard the same thing: cover or no cover, this is a really great song! Overnight, the touring went from 100 people a night to 500 people a night in a really bad economy. The downloads on the track continue to be huge, we’ve done 360,000+ downloads of the song on iTunes. CD sales have grown dramatically and it’s reenergized “Here Me Now”, that almost a year and half later is now doing a 1,000 downloads a week. It’s just a passion record. It’s a massive phone record at radio, retail is great, and we’re blowing out ringtones. For a song that started as a goof for a live show, it’s been an incredible and pleasant surprise.
Schmidt: We’re also well over three-million views of the video on YouTube and it just debuted at #1 on FUSE’s viewers choice countdown. It’s a great situation for us to be in and certainly opens the door for a re-launch of “Hear Me Now” and a great future for Framing Hanley.
What is the company’s digital philosophy?
Schmidt: Hanson’s original vision was solely to focus on the digital side at that launch of SMG. We began as a digital distribution company only, with physical product manufactured strictly for the bands on the road. We even thought about replacing CDs back then with digital download cards.
Hanson: We headed in that direction, but we quickly realized that if we were going to brand the company and our artists and get stations to take us seriously, we needed to have visibility in the Best Buys and Targets of the world. There was also the component of wanting to support indie retailers as well and to do that you obviously need physical product. We look at is as marketing more than money making. Our bands are approaching 50% digital sales right now and we’re happy about that since it’s cheaper and quicker to get paid in the digital space. The glaring down side is the market’s reversion to a singles driven market.
Schmidt: The most interesting thing to me is ringtones. It’s amazing that it’s hard to get people to spend 99 cents on a song, but they sure don’t mind paying $2.50 for 25-seconds of the song, when they could simply take the 99-cent song and make their own ringtone. Hey, we’ll take it, if it’s making the label and the band money, then God bless. Hanson and I joke that maybe it’s time for a 100-track CD featuring the best 30 seconds of each song. It’s our get rich scheme.
Grand idea! What about retail though? How hard is it for an indie to compete with the majors and major corporations for shelf space?
Hanson: It’s literally close to impossible and the current model DOES NOT WORK. There are too many players that are hurting and artists, labels, and retailers are fighting over the same dollar and piracy has caused music to devalue so much that consumers feel overcharged even though they’re generally paying 99 cents a track or less now. The shelf space is going to keep shrinking and according to the laws of supply and demand, that means shelf space will come at even more of a premium. There are really only two valid solutions, digital distribution and the increased participation in the funding and distribution of music by entities other than those in the music business, who use music as an enhancement of other services or products.
What do you think is missing in Rock music today?
Schmidt: I’d like to hear more unique artists, vocalists, and music. When I was on the radio side, the left of center records made me nervous. I’m not saying it’s time for an all-tuba band at rock and alt radio but the records that really cut through and react quickly have something different. I have a huge appreciation for the Flobots, Kings of Leon, and Rise Against. Even Disturbed has their own sound, probably because David Draiman’s voice stands out.
Hanson: I suspect “Lollipop” has done what it’s done, because it doesn’t sound like anything else that’s out there right now. Another SMG example is “Down And Out” from Tantric. I can’t tell you how many people went: “Hanson, that violin is so freakin’ weird. What are you guys thinking?” That ended up becoming the hook on that song. It’s the reason that people fell in love with it and why it was a monster phone record.
What’s SMG’s A&R philosophy today?
Hanson: Find artists you believe have hit songs and be patient, sometimes it takes time for the right opportunities to raise their hands. Spend your money very wisely, it’s hard to find more.
Schmidt: Try to limit the number of ugly guys in the band to two.
**QB Content By Mike Bacon**
