Culture > February 9, 2004

Outside the Mainstream

By Don Thrasher

In an age where floundering major label executives sponsor high-priced think tanks on CD pricing structures and mount public campaigns decrying the evils of downloaded music, Chicago-based music entrepreneur Rich Seng has devised a revolutionary method for distributing his products. As unrealistic as it sounds, Seng has produced a string of free compilation CDs and a DVD collection available on his website http://www.sengbrothers.com. He funds his compilations by selling ads on the CD jacket.

Seng so far has produced a series of Windy City CDs and and collections of regional music. Recent projects include an indie rock compilation featuring acts such as The Shams, Baseball Furies, The Cells and Light FM, and Music of Ohio, featuring unsigned bands from Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Toledo. While most of Seng’s musical projects have concentrated on rock bands, he plans to release his first all-rap album in March.

“I’m working on Music of California and I did Music of Texas a while ago,” says Seng. “I’m planning on doing the same thing in Indiana and Michigan. I’m trying to build an underground media network of free CDs and DVDs. That’s my vision.”

Seng’s first multimedia release, the 133-minute DVD Cherry Bomb, was released in late September and contains experimental shorts, music videos, mini-documentaries, comedic sketches and animation by Chicago-based filmmakers. The content of the films ranges from the silly (Doug Lussenhop’s “Ice Cold Homies”) to the poignant (“Algren’s Last Night” by Warren Leming and Carmine Cervi), and the work ranges in length from less than a minute (the experimental “Inflation” by Casandra Voltolina) to more than 10 minutes (Nathan Pommer’s surrealistic sci-fi comedy “P-13”). Cherry Bomb also offers such interactive extras as a splash screen with artist bios, contact information, Web site hyperlinks and more.

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• Reader Comments

  Check out cdbaby.com, a wonderful resource for independent artists.
  Hear my latest CD at http//www.cdbaby.com/federico4.
  Thank you,
  Federico Guillermo

  Posted by Fewderico Guillermo on Feb 9, 2004 at 5:20 PM

  Terrific article by Don Thrasher!  And what a great marketing idea!  Am a paper-relief sculptor in western Montana.  Would be fun to find a parallel marketing method to Rich Seng’s.

  Thanks for putting something on this ITT website that one can laugh at in delight!  Wonderful!

  Alan Taylor
  

  Posted by Alan Taylor on Feb 10, 2004 at 12:23 PM

  Great article—but when I go to the website mentioned above, there is not anything mentioned about free CD’s or DVD’s—and the site has not been updated since December.  While the idea is compelling, it does not look like the article is accurate based on what I see at the www.sengbrothers.com web site.

  Posted by Richard Ward on Feb 11, 2004 at 5:03 PM

  This is one of the dumbest and most non-revolutionary ideas I have ever heard of. Why are we celebrating the further encroachment of advertising in our daily lives and art by calling Seng’s project revolutionary? Was it revolutionary when newspapers starting relying on advertising to produce newspapers? Is it revolutionary that I can get free long distance if I listen to two minutes of advertising before every phone call I make? The only revolutionary thing here is from a purely capitalist marketing standpoint. Just about every other art form inundates us with advertising and the album is one of the last places where one can escape such unbridled commercial spectacle. So hooray for Seng for taking that away from. Why not distibute you album free online? Why not post the album and artwork online and allow whomever wants to download it to do so? That’s revolutionary, not adding to the onslaught of advertising that humanity has to confront more and more in everyday life. I bet the major labels are foaming at the mouth to implement this so-called “outside the mainstream” gimic.

  Posted by Josh Honn on Feb 14, 2004 at 3:07 PM

  What does it have at sengbrothers?

  “No pages were found containing “music"."

  Posted by Nus on Feb 17, 2004 at 4:02 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

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• Outside the Mainstream