KNOCK YOU OUT
Indiespace.com's Jeannie Novak Takes On The Big Boys
And Girls Of The Music Biz

by Kate Sullivan
The Zone News
August 2000 


"I go to a lot of music conferences, and nobody wants to get signed anymore,” says Jeannie Novak, a musician and founder of Indiespace.com, which she operates out of her cluttered two-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica. Founded in 1994 as Kaleidospace (or K-space), Indiespace provides Web hosting and e-commerce services to independent musicians, filmmakers, visual artists, performers and writers. Novak says proudly that her site made the first online sale of an independent CD, back in 1994.

Today Indiespace has roughly 1,000 clients, who largely seem to use the site for its Web hosting and mail order services. 

Indiespace offers “mini-sites” to artists for free (www.indiespace.com/mysite), with online ordering and audio and video clips, or more deluxe Web hosting ($25 a month with a $50 setup fee), with individualized domain names and coaching on Web design and marketing. Artists who already have sites can use Indiespace for online ordering alone. All services take a 30 percent commission on sales. Additional services include MP3 downloading, on-demand manufacturing of out-of-stock CDs (for a 50 percent commission), and licensing of music for film.

Indiespace is not for everyone. Novak is clear that she’s not much interested in musicians gunning for a major-label deal. Ambition for superstardom is not Indiespace’s zeitgeist - ambition for control over one’s survival is. In fact, Novak started the company because she wanted to write, produce, perform and sell her own CD her own way, without even an independent label telling her what to do. She got a sour education on record labels early.

“My first job out of high school, I worked in the marketing and finance departments at A&M Records, in 1984,” Novak says, sitting on the couch in her living room. “I saw a lot of what went on (in the record industry). Recently, when I was on a conference panel with a major label executive who stood up and said, ‘Record labels pay $90,000 to promote (a band’s) stuff!’ I said, ‘Yeah, when they want to promote it, fine. But I know of places where the usual thing is to sign five people who sound similar and then decide to promote one and not the rest. They’re locked into their contracts and sometimes go bankrupt.’ And she completely agreed with me!”

Novak has a fetchingly haughty attitude toward the corporate entertainment media, which seems all the more charming considering that, at this point, she doesn’t even have a bed. (Her bedrooms have been taken over by computers and stored products; her house is overrun with books, CDs, knick-knacks, musical instruments and computer equipment, not to mention employees and interns.) But one senses that Novak is, like all successful entrepreneurs, someone who dwells in possibility, in the future, and who does not consider herself a small-time person, despite her humble surroundings. 

Novak grew up in San Diego, where she started working as a professional pianist and singer at age 12. After her tenure at A&M, she attended college for a year, and then took on a series of jobs in the corporate entertainment industry - at MGM film studio, a television company, recording studio, and management agency. She graduated from UCLA in 1992 with a degree in Mass Communications.

Novak started Indiespace in 1994 with business partner Pete Markiewicz, a scientist working in genetic engineering who shared her fascination with the Internet. (Together they have written three books on Internet entertainment.) Following an angel investment of $350,000, Novak is preparing for a second round of fundraising. Indiespace’s executive summary unblushingly outlines its expectations for 100,000 clients and $100 million in revenue within five years. 

Novak is encouraged by major labels’ neurotic reactions to the Internet. “Some of them are scared. But some are (too) relaxed about it - ’Oh, these people don’t know what they’re doing, they’re not professionals. We’re going to come in and take over.’ But that’s what the old railroads said about airlines. They just don’t get it. Already things are happening and a new industry is emerging and they’re the sleeping giants. One day Cigar Charlie is going to wake up and go, ‘What happened?’”

One longtime Indiespace client, the Sid Hillman Quartet, has been getting attention lately on college radio and, particularly, the influential KCRW show “Morning Becomes Eclectic.” Hillman says he values Indiespace as a place to send his fans for information and ordering - but it can’t do everything.

“As an unsigned artist, the Internet for me hasn’t had so much of a purpose. It’s analogous to when people say, ‘You should get a distributor.’ But if the CD is in a store without promotion, without radio play, nobody’s going to know it’s there. But now that I have airplay, if someone does a search for me online, Indiespace comes up right away. Now it’s getting useful. And just the work they do getting their own name out there, and the involvement they have in the Internet community, that’s what helps me the most.”

“Morning Becomes Eclectic” host Nic Harcourt echoed Hillman’s concern: “Artists still need people on the radio talking about them and directing people to their Websites.”

What he’s really talking about is a consumer-oriented filter - which Indiespace does not necessarily want to provide. “We are primarily focused on our clients - musicians,” says Novak. 

David Guerrero, from local rock band Third Grade Teacher, has been happy with Indiespace since joining in January. “I think they’re awesome. They’re very professional, always calling us about opportunities, and they’re very quick with client services and very reasonable compared to CD Now, which is ridiculous - they take like 93 percent (commission). Plus, Indiespace is convenient - they take care of all of the headaches (of e-commerce).”

Right now, Novak is most excited about the win-win potential in hooking up independent filmmakers with independent musicians for film scoring and soundtracks, especially since she predicts that music will eventually become mostly free on the Internet. “This whole idea of piracy, which is really scaring big labels, is not scaring the independent musicians at all. It creates a buzz. If my stuff is passed around all over the place and people in another country hear it, I’m really happy to know that people are interested, and it can lead to other things.

That’s why we’re doing business-to-business stuff, working with filmmakers to get the use of music in film. There are other ways to make money.”

“The whole idea of a product is going to change completely. Now that we can pass around one track, who cares about a product anymore? You can still do a concept album, but you have the option - you’re not tied down to, ‘Oh, we have to have this much music because we’re selling a CD.’ When I was working at a recording studio I remember producers pressuring artists to get out a second album out quickly, and they’re not necessarily ready. Sometimes it ends up being filler, which (can mean) a sophomore slump.

Novak has all kinds of dreams, including a Web radio station, and is preparing for a day when the Net, for better or worse, becomes a musical barter society. “I know people are asking, how are you ever going to make money if music is traded freely? We feel the next (trend) will be a subscription or a fan club model, where an artist can allow people to get to a password-protected area of their site for maybe a monthly or yearly fee, almost like cable, and get unlimited stuff there - works in progress, video clips. Chuck D (of rap group Public Enemy) has talked about this too - forget the idea of paying per product, or even per view or listen. People will still copy and trade things, but I believe there might be enough of a base to make it work.”

For now, Novak is busy building and promoting Indiespace and speaking at various industry conferences on the power of freedom from corporations. As she rubs elbows with adversaries from the old guard and natty competitors in Web commerce, one wonders if she ever feels intimidated by the wealth and sometimes arrogance of dot.com bullies, with their fancy cars, sexy offices and expensive sweaters.

“Oh no,” she says with a laugh. “I usually intimidate them.”