Clef palate
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme- mso-fareast- mso-fareast-theme- mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme- mso-bidi- mso-bidi-theme-} A Brooklyn-bred transplant from Manhattan”™s recording industry, Ron Fierstein tells the story of his “previous lives” and the family ties entwined in his career in the framed photos, paintings and plaques that cover the walls of his tucked-away office in Bedford Hills.
“For My Big Bro with Thanks,” the inscription reads on a poster from the Broadway play, “Torch Song Trilogy.” The businessman”™s better-known kid brother, Harvey Fierstein, won two Tony Awards 25 years ago as its author and lead actor.
That”™s gray-bearded Harvey, in character for his Broadway role in “Fiddler on the Roof,” in more recent photos hanging there. And that”™s Harvey”™s painting of a young Bob Dylan ”“ his big brother”™s favorite piece ”“ done in 1966 by the talented teenage art student in Brooklyn before he discovered the theater world across the bridge.
“I was always his sort of defender,” said the 57-year-old president and sole employee of RF Entertainment Inc., “even when he came out that he was gay with my parents.” Harvey was 13 or 14 then and fled the dinner table after his revelation, leaving Ron to explain and reason.
“Now it”™s become like an industry,” said Fierstein, who serves as the actor-playwright”™s business manager and legal adviser. At his desk this day he scrutinized royalty statements and contractual clauses for the London theater production of “Hairspray,” written by his younger brother, for whom Fierstein, a former practicing lawyer in intellectual property rights at a prestigious Manhattan firm, had negotiated “a piece of the show.”
On a wall of what could pass as a doctor”™s waiting room ”“ Fierstein shares his 29 Haines Road suite and rent with a psychiatrist ”“ hangs a framed theater poster scrawled with cast members”™ autographs from “A Catered Affair,” the Broadway musical that Harvey Fierstein wrote and his big brother from Chappaqua produced. (He also produced the 1988 movie version of “A Torch Song.”) The Fierstein brothers love “A Catered Affair,” but too many influence-wielding New York theater critics did not, and the musical closed a month ago after a five-month run.
The gold-record and platinum-record plaques framed on the office walls tell of Fierstein”™s 25-year career as manager of recording artists, a creative lineup of singer-songwriters that has included Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Dar Williams. The dramatic guitarist-in-the-spotlight photo was taken by Fierstein in the ”™80s at the first video shoot for Suzanne Vega, his Greenwich Village discovery and first and longest-managed client.
After stints as musician in a rock band and on the folk circuit, a degree from Brooklyn Law School ”“ where he and his wife met as Law Review editors ”“ and a job as an attorney at Fish & Neave ”“ where he found material for his nonfiction book-in-progress while working on the winning side of a patent infringement case that pitted Polaroid Corp. against Eastman Kodak Co. ”“ Fierstein in 1982 left the law firm to form AGF Entertainment, an artist management and record production company. In the late ”™90s, he launched Plump Records, an independent label featuring singer-songwriters.
Over the last three years, he has closed his artist management business, though he keeps in touch and hears the industry laments and travails of Vega and other former clients. He already had sold his interest in his company”™s record production business, Shelter Island Sound, to partner Steve Addabbo. In Bedford Hills, where he moved from his West 21st Street office in 2002, he no longer employs the several assistants he needed in the music business.
“9/11 was a watershed moment for me,” Fierstein said. “That was the day I decided to move out of the city and that was the day I decided to start moving in a different direction. Part of this 9/11 thing for me was I didn”™t even want to be in the studio business anymore.”
“By then, the writing was on the wall for the music business. The business of selling recorded music is over. It”™s done.”
That business has been done in by Internet file-sharing, streaming and subscription downloads. For the most part, “The competition is free,” he said. “It began with Napster,” the original free online music-sharing service that was shut down by court order for copyright violations. “It”™s my kids”™ generation that did it. They devalued the recorded music.
“This whole paradigm completely rejects the recorded album as an artistic form ”“ and the business continues to move in that paradigm,” Fierstein said. With online music, “No one”™s figured out a system for sharing that revenue” with recording artists “and besides, there”™s so little of it.
“That”™s just the artists. There”™s a whole industry of people who go into the production of recorded music,” he said. “You have this whole food chain of people. If you take it away, what”™s going to happen to them?”
For recording artists and executives, the direction for commercial survival is what Fierstein heard from a marketing guru at an industry conference: “What you need to do is give your music away and sell tickets and T-shirts.
“This new paradigm is not new,” he said. “It”™s the paradigm that the Grateful Dead used going back 20, 30 years,” when concert fans in Deadhead T-shirts were allowed and even encouraged to record performances. Among contemporary musicians, the Dave Matthews Band employs the same model. “At the end of the day, their revenue base is tickets and T-shirts,” Fierstein said.
“The problem is that business model works for certain kinds of artists. It”™s not going to work for singer-songwriters. It”™s not going to work for a jazz artist.”
Major rock bands such as the Rolling Stones might do concert merchandise sales of $15 to $20 per capita, Fierstein said. “That is a significant revenue stream. In my world of singer-songwriters, we thought we did great if we did $1 a head. Jazz and world music, forget about it.”
Fierstein”™s views of the industry are supported by year-end manufacturers”™ shipment statistics for compact discs reported by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In 2007, 511 million CD album units were shipped with a value of approximately $7.5 billion. That was a 17.5 percent decrease in units from 2006 and a 20.5 percent drop in dollar value.
After peaking in 2000 at approximately 943 million units valued at $13.2 billion, CD album shipments have declined steadily since. Over the last two years, the industry has seen a nearly 30 percent cumulative drop in shipments and more than 31 percent drop in dollar value of units shipped.
Meanwhile, legally purchased digital downloads of albums reached nearly 43 million last year, RIAA reported, a 54 percent increase from 2006. They were valued at $425 million, also up 54 percent from the prior year. In the last two years, album downloads and their dollar value have risen 157 percent.
From 2005 through 2007, CD sales as a percentage of manufacturers”™ total revenue have dropped 14 percent, though they still accounted for 77 percent of revenue last year.
“For all of my artists, their sales of units have decreased by 85 percent,” Fierstein said. “If they sold a million, they”™re down to 150,000. If they sold 150,000, they”™re down to 25,000.
“The record labels themselves are disappearing,” Fierstein said, as privately-owned companies run by entrepreneurs have been swallowed up by publicly traded corporations. “It”™s all quarterly numbers, quarterly numbers. The record labels can”™t worry about artists who sell to a niche. They want grand slams.”
His first client, Vega, has been dropped by two record labels in recent years because of insufficient sales, including the label to which Fierstein signed her in 1984. Fierstein”™s recent advice to her: make an album for $25,000 rather than the usual $250,000.
With today”™s technology, “You can make a professional-sounding album for $25,000 if you have to,” he said. “Anybody now, for a buck a unit, you can make a professional CD.”
That ease of production has created a glut of music on the market, he noted. “There”™s clearly a need for a filter, for service to pick things out that are good.”
At Ronald”™s Record Club, an online CD subscription service he launched in 2004, Fierstein acts as that filter, selecting recorded albums from the genres of singer-songwriter, jazz and blues and world music for members who pay $15, plus his actual cost for shipping and handling, for each of the one to five albums they receive monthly or every other month. Unlike the record-clubs business model of old, which left artists with greatly reduced payments for their club-licensed music, artists receive the same royalties for sales to Ronald”™s Record Club as they do for retail-store sales, he said.
Looking to tap a primary market of affluent adult CD buyers, Fierstein said he has invested $60,000 to $80,000 in his latest enterprise. His Web site at www.ronaldsrecordclub.com, featuring a soul-patch-sporting cartoon host who more closely resembles Clark Kent than Ron Fierstein, was designed by Berlin Productions in White Plains.
Fierstein said he pays $8 to $10 for the CDs he sells at $15. Still, “I haven”™t recouped that investment because I have a very small membership. That membership has never exceeded 100 to 200.” He hopes to form a strategic partnership that will boost his club marketing and member numbers.
“Ronald”™s Record Club is really a hobby,” he said. “I”™m doing it because I love sharing music with people. I love turning people on to new music. And if I can help a little bit these artists find an audience and at the same time help people find their music, then it”™s a win-win.”
Fierstein, who too downloads favorite songs on his iPod, claimed there is still a strong market for CDs despite the industry numbers. “The only way to get a tangible, permanent, high-quality audio version of your music is on a CD,” he said. “I happen to believe there”™s a real value to buying CDs. If you”™re going to pay $1 a track, why not buy something that”™s permanent and has quality?”
Does his online record club have any like-modeled competitors?
No, he said. “People think I”™m a dinosaur.”