Musicians finding fans through Internet

Jonathan Coulton can go to work without putting his pants on, and that's something to which we can all aspire.

Coulton's a full-time musician able to support himself while hardly ever having to leave the house -- as the major label oligarchy continues to circle down the drain due to its inability to develop a sustainable business model in the face of downloading, it's independent musicians like Coulton who are reaping the benefit.

For the past two years, Coulton has built a name for himself with pretty, geeky pop nuggets that double as buckshot in the record industry's backside. The Brooklyn native first gained notoriety with his "Thing A Week" podcast, where he wrote a new song every week for a year and released them all online (hear them at jonathancoulton.com).

The tunes ranged from breezy odes to Ikea to unofficial anthems for software designers to a tender acoustic cover of Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back," which was a viral hit that first put the burgeoning musician on the map in 2005.

"I left my day job in 2005 without much of a plan," says Coulton, who will be in town speaking at the "Digital Freedom Campaign" at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Monday as well as performing at the Palms later that night. "I knew that I wanted to be a musician, but I really wasn't sure how I was going to make money. At that point, I had recently become excited about the idea of podcasting, this ability for anybody in the world to just broadcast to however many people would listen, for free. It was just a crazy, crazy idea."

But soon enough, Coulton actually was making money on the endeavor, using the Internet to distribute his songs without the need for a record label.

"Even when I started this, I think in the back of my head, it was probably like, 'Well, maybe by doing this "Thing A Week" thing I'll attract enough attention that a label will call me and want to sign me,' " Coulton says. "I couldn't believe that there was a way to make a living directly this way. But as the numbers kept going up, I actually started to turn a profit, and I was like, 'Wait a minute? What would I really gain by going with a label that I don't already have?'"

The answer: not much. With the Internet, power is switching back to the hands of musicians and consumers who no longer need a middle man, a gatekeeper, to determine what does or doesn't get released.

As music fans, that job belongs to us.

"It's such an exciting time to be an artist or a lover of music," Coulton says. "We're on the cusp of something very big, and it's still hard to see what it's going to look like. The industry is changing, and what's happened is that the major players aren't in the right position."

Fortunately, the rest of us are.

Jason Bracelin's "Sounding Off" column appears on Tuesdays. Contact him at 383-0476 or e-mail him at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com.