Barenaked Ladies try a new way of doing business

NEW YORK (Billboard) - The Barenaked Ladies' career has come full circle.

In the '90s, the much-loved Canadian band made its name with a self-released cassette mini-album. Now, with "Barenaked Ladies Are Me" (Desperation), the members find themselves in the vanguard of Nettwerk Music Group's self-governing, Internet-savvy, fan-friendly business model.

It's a far cry from 1998, when the band was signed to major label Reprise and hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with "One Week." But when Billboard caught up with frontman Steve Page at music industry conference MIDEM, he declared himself "happier than ever."

Q: Did you worry about taking control of every aspect of your career?

A: I still worry sometimes. There's a comfort zone you're in with a label, but your biggest fear as an artist on a major is that you'll be forgotten or they'll pull the plug. This model doesn't get pulled until we pull it.

Q: Isn't it much harder work this way?

A: Before, we were always that band where everyone said, "Let's call the Barenaked Ladies, because they'll do anything and they don't complain." And you get to a point where you think, "Is this ever going to stop?" In order to sustain yourself you have to be engaged, not only with the fans, your art and your co-workers but also with how the business works -- and that's changing. The grassroots is different -- so much of it is online now. But it's a fine line between marketing versus social networking. If you can, as an artist, put yourself in the latter category, you have a better chance of sustainability, but that means a bigger investment of yourself.

Q: How do your sales actually compare with when you were on a major label?

A: If you're going to look at (Nielsen) SoundScan, they're about half, although we're making about three times (more money) per unit. But if you include all of our alternative releases, stuff we're selling directly to fans ... that doesn't show up on SoundScan, then we're about two-thirds of the way to where we were when the last album finished. And we're only a few months into this album.

Q: You've been critical of the major labels' attempts to stop piracy. Wouldn't you feel differently if you were losing money?

A: I was terrified of

Napster when that blew up, but what I figured out over the years was the amount of resentment that created. The fans just go, "F*** 'em, I don't want to buy their records anymore." It's our responsibility to make money rather than shutting down (peer-to-peer) services or trying to change people's behavior. Let's look at P2P and say, "How do we make money out of this?"

Q: When you first dreamed of being a rock star, did you imagine spending five days on a boat with your fans as on the Barenaked Ladies cruise called Ships and Dip? I can't imagine

Mick Jagger doing that.

A: But that's part of people's enjoyment -- they think, "Well, who else would do this?" I was afraid that they were going to think we're all best friends and they'd want backstage passes and my phone number, but they were very cool about it. They understood why they were there, and we went out of our way to entertain them, the same way we'd entertain them at a regular show -- just a lot more intimate and personalized.

Reuters/Billboard