54th GRAMMY Nominations: Best Children's Album

First, let's get the technical stuff out of the way -- here is the list of the nominees for Best Children's Album, with the winner to be announced Feb. 12:

All About Bullies... Big And Small - Various Artists (James Cravero, Gloria Domina, Kevin Mackie, Steve Pullara & Patrick Robinson, producers)
Are We There Yet? - The Papa Hugs Band
Fitness Rock & Roll - Miss Amy
GulfAlive - The Banana Plant
I Love: Tom T. Hall's Songs of Fox Hollow - Various Artists (Eric Brace & Peter Cooper, producers)

OK, now that I have that out of the way.

WHAT???!?

Now, let it first be said that I totally expected the GRAMMYs' decision to combine 2 children's categories into one to spell a death knell for independent artists. I was obviously completely wrong, seeing as all five nominees are independently produced. So make of that what you will regarding my understanding of the GRAMMY process.
Let me then say (as I said last night on Facebook) congratulations to all the nominees. I'm sure it feels incredible, and I would guess that all the folks involved have put a tremendous amount of effort into not only these albums but also their careers. For example, I met Amy Otey - AKA Miss Amy, one of the nominees -- at Kindiefest last year and I know that she and her husband Alex are a) nice people, and b) committed to what they do.

I don't think it's a contradiction in terms, however, if I say in the very next breath that this list in many ways has nothing to do with kids music today. I can be glad for the individual nominees without thinking that it is a group particularly reflective of the genre.

Now, I don't like confrontations, and so if it sounds like I'm stepping on eggshells, well, I probably am. I received e-mails from a number of different folks who were... less delicate than I in expressing their... frustration with the list. That's why I (almost literally) slept on this post to make sure the cold light of day wouldn't change my feelings or moderate my thoughts.

It hasn't.

For the record, if I were to choose my favorite of the nominees, it would be the Tom T. Hall tribute. (I did, after all, review the album favorably for NPR.) Also, I've only heard four of the albums (sorry, Papa Hugs). But my concern with the list is not necessarily that the albums I really liked weren't nominated. It's more that it's hard to characterize that list as fully reflecting kids music today.

It's not that the Wiggles are anywhere near my first choice to be nominated, but there's no doubt that the "kids these days" are still listening to the multi-colored men from Down Under. I'd hate to see that getting nominated for (or winning) a GRAMMY once is the de facto way to get nominated again, but from that perspective, Beethoven's Wig or Dan Zanes or Trout Fishing in America would seem to be at least up for consideration. What about TV shows like Jake and the Never Land Pirates? All of those artists are folks who tour nationally (or whose show is shown nationally), whose music should have been exposed (or at least potentially exposed) to a wide variety of families in different settings.

I know that at least a couple of the albums tangentially address those concerns. The I Love album is a compilation with a number of nationally-known artists. But it's also an album made by folks who don't typically record for kids and probably won't again. (The fact that it is a tribute album to a famous kids' album does ameliorate the concern there.) The All About Bullies... album -- in which, I should note, I was thanked in the liner notes -- does feature a wide of kindie artists who have lent (mostly previously-released) tracks to the project or have recorded spoken-word tracks. But the compilation nature of the album makes it an odd bird -- it's more like a movie soundtrack that pulls in some popular tracks to fill out the original work.

Last year, when They Might Be Giants were nominated along with Pete Seeger and Justin Roberts, as well as the Battersby Duo and Judy Pancoast, I at least thought that it represented the genre decently -- might not have been the best five albums in my view, but it combined veterans with newer artists, everyone with at least some participation in the genre. And there was a palpable sense of rooting interest for Roberts on the part of many other kids' musicians, a recognition that Jungle Gym was a special album and should be considered against the juggernaut that is one of my two or three favorite bands in the world (They Might Be Giants) and a living legend (that would be Pete).

When Pete Seeger won last year for Tomorrow's Children, it was not for his best work. It was a competently-produced album, but he won because he sang about pollution with kids, and, more importantly, he's Pete freakin' Seeger. The man should have so many GRAMMYs he's using them as key holders. So it's hard to begrudge him the win. But it, like Kids Corner's Kathy O' Connell has pointed out about all this year's nominees, seemed designed more about the "good work" of the theme rather than organically about musical expression.

For better or worse, this year's nominees have no "must-hear" album, the album that musicians -- who make up the largest component of the GRAMMY voting base -- raved about all year. Just as importantly, this year's nominees have no star or even semi-big name in the kids' world in the list. Any one of the nominees as part of a broader nominee list would have been acceptable, even healthy. But the list taken as a whole seems pretty detached from who's making kids music these days.

Even if you accept my argument that the nominee list isn't reflective of the kids music genre as a whole, the real question is, so what?

If you don't like the GRAMMYs, then ignore them. But the fact remains that the GRAMMYs are still the biggest recognition of music in the country. It does, in some small way, affect perceptions of music, no matter the genre. There are tens of thousands of artists who would dream of holding a GRAMMY, probably in part because they want the recognition of their peers and because they've seen musicians they and many others look up to also holding a tiny, shiny gramophone. While the nominee list would give encouragement to other artists that they, too, could be nominated for a GRAMMY, it seems less likely that the albums themselves would encourage other artists to make albums that should be nominated for a GRAMMY.

New Grammy Categories Announced: 50% Fewer Children's Categories

The Recording Academy, otherwise known as the folks who put on the annual music recording industry confab called the Grammys, announced today that after a year-long review review they were restructuring the Grammy categories for the 54th Grammy Awards in 2012. Reducing from 109 to 78 categories, the Academy reduced the 2 categories in the Children's Field to one, eliminating the separate awards for Musical Recording and Spoken Word.

On the one hand, this can clearly be seen as a shot at the Children's Spoken Word recordings -- some other changes in the voting process indicated that low numbers of relevant album submissions were clearly a concern, as categories with fewer than 40 entries will now have just 3 nominees, and entries with fewer than 25 will be suspended. The Spoken Word category has, for the past few years, hung around in that 25-40 range, while the Musical Recording field always has well more than 100, often approaching 200, entries.

Oddly enough, however, it's that small number of recordings that may just give the spoken word recordings a disproportionate share of the nominees in the new, combined category. Fewer nominees, easier to vote for. And that's not even getting into the discussion once the nominees are announced, when the "famous name" aspect of the spoken word category may make it even harder for great, "non-famous" musical artists to break through.

I could be wrong. I hope I am. But I think the likelihood of independent family musicians getting nominated for 2012 just went down fairly substantially.

What Are You Worth?

Maybe the weather was particularly bad throughout much of the country Saturday, because what started as a humorous Facebook comment from Out With the Kids' Jeff Bogle turned into a full-on thrashing of music award sites, both by Jeff and others in the family music business.

[Note: I've edited this post with some additional comments, noted in italics.]

Now, the weather in Phoenix was lovely on Saturday, and we were tired from hosting a large party the night before, so we spent a lot of time being lazy or being outside. Not, in other words, in front of computer. But I thought I'd add my two cents' worth to the debate.

The first thought I had was, "this isn't new." If you read through the Facebook comments, you'll see more than one person reference always-good-for-a-money-quote Kathy O'Connell, who at the 2009 edition of Kindiefest called programs that give awards out to good CDs, "sticker scams," based on the fact that winning CDs receive (or get to buy) rolls of stickers that the artists can put on their CDs. But unease in the kindie world predates Kathy's two-word distillation. Nearly three years ago, I discussed these types of awards, programs such as the Parents' Choice Awards, who currently charge $250 for an audio entry (not to mention fees for use of the seal and their stickers). I didn't take a strong view one way or another other than to say such awards are useless to folks like myself who've heard just about everything they'd be considering. My purpose in publishing the post was more to solicit opinions from musicians and others on the value of such awards. People willing to respond had a more negative view of the process, but that could be just as much due to people's tendency to complain rather than to comment, "yeah, it seems fine to me." I would also note that even I wasn't the first -- Amy Davis tackled the issue way more than four years ago.
But beyond that, if you're an artist, what do you do? Well, I'm not an artist, but I might suggest some math.

Hey, wait -- where's everyone going?

Seriously, allow me to explain.

Awards such as these should basically be considered as part of an artist's overall promotional push and therefore should be evaluated as whether or not the cost of the potential additional notoriety is less than the potential benefit.

Let me subject myself to the analysis. As you probably know, I occasionally review kids music for NPR's All Things Considered (which I'm still totally geeked about). For sake of argument that I review 2 albums a year on air. Also for the sake of argument that I get about 200 albums each for which the artists harbor some small dream that I might pick their album to review on the air. (I get more than that, but some just aren't thinking about NPR.) So that means, all else being equal, an album sent to me has a 1% chance of being reviewed on NPR.

I know, I know, all else isn't equal, and though I try my best to be fair, you (the artist) might feel I'm not going to give your album a proper shake. Or maybe you think I'm particularly predisposed to like you. Whatever -- the key takeaway here regardless of who you're submitting to is that you have to know your audience and adjust the percentage accordingly. Feel free to say that I'm being overly generous to my sense of fairness and that your percentage is too high.

Or maybe it's too low. Again, you have to know your audience, just like I have to know mine. I like to think I'm fairly broad in my coverage of subgenres and artists, but I can't be too broad. I have to provide some editorial focus. That focus is different from other sites. Your job as a reader is too find the sites which either: a) cater to your musical interest, or b) cater to your reading/viewing interest, making you interested in stuff you might not be otherwise. (There are a ton of articles in "The New Yorker" that I would never read if the subjects were covered in a different magazine.)

Your job as an artist... well, as the saying goes, on the internet, all you have is your word. (Well, the saying also goes, on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog, but I'm digressing into "The New Yorker" again.) Which is to say, getting a review on a site that reviews pretty much anything and everything favorably is pretty much worthless. Your trick is to find a curated site that most closely aligns with your music.

What does that 1% chance of a review at any site cost you? Well, for me, it costs you, let's say, $3, which covers the cost of reproducing a physical album and the cost of mailing it to me. (Free mp3s sent across the internet make this equation impossible, and are also generally prohibited by these awards organizations.) Again, your cost may be higher or lower.

And what does that 1% potentially get you? Well, I have no hard data on the number of albums sold post-NPR piece, but I think that 500 albums is probably a good ballpark figure. Assuming that you're netting $10 per album (another figure you're welcome to change), then that's a 1% shot at $5,000.

Bringing it home then, for $3, you have a 1% shot at $5,000. If you do that math ($3 gets you $50), it's pretty good, I think. Now, it's a lottery (sort of), and so those benefits are distributed unequally -- meaning, 2 artists will get $5,000 and the rest get nothing. But the equation is same for every system. You could do the equation for a review on this very website (or any other website or magazine, or radio station, for that matter). You have a higher likelihood of getting a review on this site than on NPR, but I'm pretty sure that a glowing review on this website doesn't immediately translate into an additional 500 albums sold.

How does that compare to Parents' Choice? Well, I don't what goes into parts of their equation. But if you're willing to make some assumptions, you just need to solve for this equation:

Cost of entry <= Percent likelihood of award * Increased sales from award * Amount of sale returned to artist

If you look at the site Jeff refers to (which will go unnamed here and which, when I was first tipped off to it more than a couple months ago, I decided to ignore entirely and hadn't visited since), you can also do this equation.

Cost of entry = $78 ($75 + $3 for mailing CD) vs. 33% chance of award (some of you may feel I'm being generous) and increased sales of... what?

Well, you can flip the equation a little bit -- if $78 gets you a 33% chance of winning, then you can also solve for x as follows:

$78 / 33% = x / 1%... x = $2.60

So, $2.60 buys you a 1% chance of an award from that site. $2.60 is about 87% of $3.00, so if you think winning an award there will generate you $4,333 of additional sales, then that site's a better deal than sending your disk to me. Even if you assume that paying your fee will guarantee a review, it had better generate $1,300 of additional sales to be a better deal than sending it to me and taking your 1% NPR chance.

OK, for those of you who checked out during the math discussion, you can come back now. One of the purposes of creating the Fids and Kamily Awards was to honor good family music in a way that didn't require the artists to pay a fee. So while I don't know how much impact doing well in F&K has, it's a no-cost opportunity. (I'd also suggest that albums that doing well in F&K are doing well elsewhere -- after all, Justin Roberts not only placed first in this year's award, he was also nominated for a Grammy.)

I suspect that PR folks would believe that submitting albums for review and award submissions is part of a portfolio for artists and their music. Nobody cares about one review, but get fourteen good ones, and then folks might start paying attention. (That's sort of the philosophy behind F&K, for what it's worth.) It's the portfolio of positive press that gets people's attention, not the single review. I mean, I assure you that reviewers "in the industry" don't care one bit that I or Jeff or Bill or Amberly reviewed or played your album when they get your PR materials. I suppose that others who don't necessarily follow this genre on a daily basis are more impressed by a series of pull-quotes. But it's that series of quotes, not the individual reviews, that matter.

But you, artists, need to think wisely about what you're worth, and where you want to put your time, talent, and treasure, to use a phrase from another setting. You've spent a lot of time putting music to paper, and then to disk. Where do you hustle to get people to listen to that music, to buy that music? Time sending music to me (or whomever) is time you could be doing something else with your musical efforts -- playing live? Writing songs? Practicing? And only you can decide how to balance all those different parts of your musical life.

To put it another way -- could you spend that $250 entry fee in another way that, in the long run, makes a bigger impact on sales? Could you spend it on, say, an hour of recording time with a couple extra string players or horn players? Would that $3 CD sent to a random reviewer be better served given to someone locally, like maybe the booker at the local indie rock club or the local children's media librarian? Or would you get more value from that $75 entry fee by putting it toward Kindiefest registration. (Let me answer that last one -- most definitely you'd get more value from the Kindiefest registration.)

There is no right answer to those questions, and they'll be different for every artist. I have no doubt that many artists think about these decisions every week. But I think it's important that artists really consider how they're going to make their music as good as it can be, and then how they're going to get that music heard. And the only way to do that is to make explicit these choices and the returns they're going to get from each decision.

As for me, I've had a couple ideas in the back of my mind for awhile that would address the information asymmetry the general public has regarding kids music (and which leads to people thinking that they need awards programs to guide their selections). Perhaps this will spur me to get those balls rolling. And those balls are now starting to roll.

Juno 2010 Children's Music Nominees Announced

Sure, I talk about the Grammy Awards (a lot), but let's not forget our neighbors to the north. That's right, the nominees for the 2010 Juno Awards have been announced, and I feel compelled to give props to the Juno Children's Album nominees...

Action Packed - Bobs & Lolo
I'm Me! - Charlie Hope
Love My New Shirt - Norman Foote
We Share the Earth - The Bee's Knees
Walk On - The Kerplunks

I've heard the Bobs & Lolo and Kerplunks disks, and they're not bad, but my favorite here is Charlie Hope's I'm Me!. Having said all that, even though the Kerplunks were nominated in this category just last year, I expect the Juno to go to veterans Foote or The Bee's Knees.

The Juno Awards will be announced April 18, 2010.

Juno: No, Not the Soundtrack, the Awards

A few weeks after the Grammys, Canada's equivalent, the Juno Awards were announced this past weekend in Vancouver. Among the winners were Barenaked Ladies, who won Best Children's Album for Snacktime!. What's notable, I suppose, for the awards on the kids' side is that with the exception of BNL (whose album really was one of the year's best) all the nominees were definitely independent kids' artists. What some folks have been trying to do with the Grammys, the Junos have already accomplished.

Of course, I'm surprised Nickelback didn't win that category, too.