“I did not ‘go’ indie,” emphasizes Ani DiFranco. “I just started making recordings.” That statement sums up her career. From the time she was sixteen years old to now, almost twenty years later, she has become head of her own record label and makes almost $1 million in profits each year. Ani DiFranco may be a self-made millionaire, but there was no written out business plan. She made it up as she went along.
When Ms. Magazine focused on her business prowess as one of ‘21 Feminists for the 21st Century’, Ani protested. “Imagine”, she wrote in a letter to the Editor, “how strange it must be for a girl who has spent 10 years fighting as hard as she could against the lure of the corporate carrot and the almighty forces of capital, only to be recognized by the power structure as a business pioneer.”
Indeed, Ani has fought the corporate ladder by all means necessary, and yet built an empire of her own. She has lived out of her car, sold songs on cassettes just to pay for gas, and continually been on the move to the next town. She did not intend to do it alone, but had no choice. “At that point in my life, when I was 18 playing bars in Buffalo, it was ludicrous for me to think of sitting around and waiting for a record company to record my music.” And these days, Ani stays true to her standards. “I have no interest in fame and fortune. I’m more into social movements and making noise, stirring people up, traveling and communicating. I want to make a community and be based in the world, not within the corporate system of greed and fame. That’s why I started my own company.”
For this interview, I aimed for Ani DiFranco and/or her manager, Scot Fisher. They were both touring so I decided to do the next best thing, and contact everyone on the Righteous Babe Records website. I landed interviews with three key individuals in Ani’s organization, (i) Publicist Tracy Mann of MG Limited, (ii) booking agent Karla Rice, assistant to Jim Fleming of Fleming & Associates, and (iii) Sales and Marketing Director of Righteous Babe Records, Susan Tanner.
Since the start of her career DiFranco has done everything from booking her own gigs to rigging her own sound. Starting a record label and building an independent career from the ground up is not something for the faint of heart. For the past 15 years, DiFranco has done every type of music business intermediation for herself, ranging the gamut from agent to manager and A&R representative. But there comes a time in every musician’s career when the business starts to take too much time away from the art. In DiFranco’s case, she began to outsource.
The first move was to get a booking agent. This allowed her to book more efficient tour dates and opened doors to venues that she might not have had access to before. To sustain her career, DiFranco had to go out on tour. “When you are an indie, a touring career builds a recording career,” says Jim Fleming. “And one of the things Ani and I agree on is that you go where your fans are – and that means into the secondary markets. It seems basic, but a lot of people forget that after a while.” Jim Fleming told DiFranco, “Let’s go for the underplay with the hopes of selling out early. It’s got to keep the fans wanting more. After all it’s hard to loose money on a sold out date.”
Karla Rice, assistant to DiFranco’s booking agent Jim Fleming, retells the multitasking job of an agency. “The responsibilities of an agency include the long range planning and mapping out of an artist’s tour. The contractual details are dealt with, i.e. the negotiation between the agency and the promoter who hires the artist; the confirmed dates are matched with promotional needs; all legal documents are tracked and amended, if necessary, regarding conformed bookings; and interest in the agency’s artists is cultivated for future bookings.”
“I work directly with Ani’s Manager, Road Manager, Tech Director, Record Label Manager, Publicist and Radio Promotion point person, along with various members of the Righteous Babe staff. I serve as a conduit regarding details per show between the RBR office and the various promoters who book Ani. My responsibilities also include interaction and coordination of details with the European agency that coordinates Ani’s European touring.” DiFranco’s non-stop touring career is what has spurned her wildfire grassroots growth. “When we first started out, someone explained to us the five elements of a successful career: something like touring, marketing, radio, video, retail,” says Scot Fisher. “We looked at each other and said, ‘Well, we’ve got touring.’ It has apparently been enough.”
The part of manager came in the form of a lover. Fisher was DiFranco’s boyfriend at the time she and her business manager had a falling out. “He [Fisher] just sort of declared himself my business manager.” Fisher recounts the resistance he met from the other member of DiFranco’s business team at the time. “It took [Ani’s agent] Jim Fleming a couple years to tell me that the first time I called, he thought, ‘Omigod, it’s the boyfriend.’ But I knew where I stood. I knew people didn’t respect me. I’m from Buffalo. I’m used to it.” Today Fisher is President of Righteous Babe Records and so intertwined in the well being of Righteous Babe and DiFranco’s career that DiFranco acknowledges his importance. “I know the business couldn’t exist without me, but at this point it couldn’t exist without him, either. It is the synergy of the two of us that is making all of this happen, along with the efforts and investments of many other people.”
The next major addition to the DiFranco team was MG Limited, Tracy Mann’s publicity company. Mann started her business because she “loved being an artist advocate” and “loved telling a good story as much as I loved music.” Dale Anderson of the Buffalo News spoke to Mann about DiFranco’s needing a publicist to “bring her to the next level” right before Righteous Babe Records was about to incorporate in 1994. Mann has been DiFranco’s publicist ever since. “My job as a publicist is to build artist or project awareness for an album or tour cycle.” While DiFranco may hate celebrity hype, she concedes that there has to be some give and take with the media. “Since I’m running a company without a marketing or advertising budget, interviews tend to be my only publicity, so I respect that. It’s more effective than pouring money into adverts, so I’ll talk, but I think it’s boring.”
As Ani DiFranco’s career expanded, Righteous Babe Records needed more office space and employees. “Righteous Babe existed pretty much in name only. It had no structure, no organization, no full-time employees, and no office.” Today, the label has about 10 employees and an office in the heart of Buffalo, NY. Susan Tanner commented on the size of the label even today, “I’m sales and marketing. No manager, no director, just sales and marketing… we’re too small for rank.”
Indeed, Susan Tanner is Sales and Marketing. In the beginning, DiFranco had concerns about the “forces of capitalism,” and dreaded marketing, but she had no choice. “I started out with the stance of ‘no advertising’ because the product should sell itself,” she explains. “It’s the socialist in me. You make music; people like it; they’ll tell their friends. Why take out an ad? And T-shirts just feed that cult of personality thing.” “But, I couldn’t afford any help on the road,” she recalls. “I was my own roadie, guitar tech, road manager, and driver. You can only do that for so many years at the kind of pace that I was doing it at, and then you start to go nuts… I was given point-blank financial advice from my manager: ‘If you make and sell t-shirts, you can afford to have help on the road.’ So we had to do it. But I wasn’t going to put my name or face on them. Those are my rules. So I thought I’d just print some poetry instead.”
Now, Susan Tanner handles most aspects of marketing. “My job is much more encompassing than someone with my job at a major label… I have to submit advertising plans for approval not only with my bosses at the label, but also with our distributor, which includes sales goals for the distributor’s staff. I check sales and stock levels, set up advertising. I’m constantly reviewing sales and advertising costs to judge the effectiveness of sales programs. I also speak with buyer’s accounts, from the chains down to the independent stores, and with the individual stores as well… setting up promotions around tours, sending out display materials. If it has to do with a retail store or a distributor in the US or Canada, it touches me in some way.”
Righteous Babe also continues to put marketing dollars in a special area unconnected with touring. “In-store merchandising is key,” says Fisher. “We always offer point-of-purchase materials, and if there are positioning programs, we support those.” DiFranco stresses listening-post placement. “There is no purer way to sell your music in a store.”
It has been estimated that DiFranco nets on average about $4 for every record she sells, while total album costs have remained fairly stable for her at $20,000-$25,000. “I make a lot more than people on major label, per unit… One can sell a lot fewer albums and still pay the rent if you don’t have some kind of massive corporate overhead to answer to.” She adds, “The way to your fortune is independence.”
In another interview in the UK, Ani showed surprise for winning an award for best mid-sized independent label. “I was like, ‘Mid-sized?’ That’s amazing. That’s huge. I’ve always made a point of keeping things on as intimate a scale as possible. That way, I believe there’s no danger of me losing my way.”
“I don’t need to sell millions of records,” DiFranco emphasizes. “I like my job and I don’t need to conquer the world to be happy. So, how fast and big can we at Righteous Babe grow and still be able to sit down, hands-on, and think about every step along the way? How can we stay in control of the mechanisms and do the things the way we want to do them?”
Plus, there is the added stress of knowing that you are the boss of a group of loyal employees and associates. With so many people dependent on Righteous Babe for their livelihoods, Fisher feels the pressure to keep innovating and diversifying, just as DiFranco feels the pressure to keep performing. “Our goal is to sustain all these people, and if I don’t keep on my hamster wheel, it doesn’t happen.”
Ani DiFranco is forever on that hamster wheel, averaging one full-length album per year and many side projects, plus over 100 tour dates. And she isn’t slowing down any time soon. But, as her career has matured, so has DiFranco the businesswoman and DiFranco the artist. She has swung from having a full band to recording, mixing, and producing and entire album herself. She has also moved from being a totally independent artist to a being a completely interdependent artist.
DiFranco and Fisher “have tapped into one of the most underappreciated forces in business, namely, the power of community.” Fisher elaborates: “As a housepainter, you’re in a small community and your reputation precedes you,” he says. “So you’d better do a good job. What I learned painting houses was more relevant than going to law school. That’s because small communities impose a kind of accountability that is missing in the music business.”
“Over the years, a lot of people asked me ‘What do you think you’re doing?’” recalls DiFranco. “So I had to explain it to myself and hone in on my own ideologies. Now it is a much more conscious effort. I find myself on a path to deliberately thwart the standard industry process.”
Maybe it’s not to thwart the standard industry process, but to set an example of how things can be done differently, and more organically. That is why I chose Ani DiFranco and Scot Fisher for my research. The strength of commitment and the high standards that DiFranco and Fisher set for themselves, their company, and for all of those they are involved are very high. What I find important to acknowledge is that while an independent artist like her can function and thrive beyond the monopoly of the majors, she still needs to get much outside help. I also believe that to be committed to a high standard of business practice and service, and to share that work with other like-minded people like her, demonstrates that an artist can be both successful and conscientious.
I spend my hard-earned $50 to buy a ticket to see Ms. DiFranco perform at Boston’s Orpheum Theater, and industry executives are possibly left marveling at DiFranco’s savvy. But with her talent and commitment, Ani has earned my trust as a fan and a music business student. What the industry executives realize is that she is doing everything they do—but she just comes from a place where community is celebrated and giving is more popular than taking, and where an artist stays true to her core beliefs.
“These are people I’ve worked with for many of years,” explains DiFranco, “that try to maintain a relationships on the basis of principle; we try to grow together. There’s a lot of frustration that comes with trying to work with smaller businesses. If you want to go to your corner drug store and get your prescription filled, it’s probably going to cost more than if you go to Wal-Mart. But, there is a reason why there is some value in going to the independent corner drug store.” And, as Ani DiFranco shows us, true independence can be the result of practical compromise.

Materials used:
1. http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/interviews/story.jsp?story=4881...
2. Burlingham, Bo. “Don’t Call Her An Entrepreneur” INC. Magazine. Sept. 2004. http://www.onherown.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=288
3. DiFranco, Ani. “Ani DiFranco’s Open Letter to Ms. Magazine.” 1997. http://www.folkandbluesnews.com
4. Gillen, Marilyn A. “Billboard.Com: Righteous Babe an Indie Success Story” April 12, 1997. http://www.onherown.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=243
5. Grossweiner, Bob. Cohen, Jane. “Industry Profile: Dan Steinberg” http://www.celebrityaccess.com/news/profile.html?id=237
6. Poet, J. “Independent as She Wants To Be.” PULSE Magazine. http://www.onherown.net/modules.php?name=News&File=article&sid=64
7. Teshima, John. “Ani DiFranco”
http://www.chartattack.com/features/ani.html