Andrew Solomon

FORBES Magazine

Digital Dreams by Amy Doan 1/24/00
ANDREW SOLOMON IS A SINGER and songwriter seemingly poised for stardom. At age 26 he is talented and boyishly handsome. His songs have a polished, piano-driven style that fits well with the current revival of male crooners (think a less nerdy Bruce Hornsby).
So two summers ago Solomon quit his job as a number cruncher for Salomon Smith Barney's leveraged buyout division in New York to pursue his dream full time. He lacked a recording contract--but he had the Web, and he spent most of 1999 working it like a cocktail party.
It got him noticed--it got him a lawyer and a manager and even a few thousand sales of his self-pressed CD.His catchiest single was the aptly titled "Leap of Faith."
"The Internet made it seem less flaky," he says of his decision to quit Salomon. "It was something practical to grab on to." But Solomon's own leap of faith hasn't paid off. Even as music downloads mushroom online, the Web is a long way from replacing an old-fashioned record deal, the one goal that remains stubbornly out of his reach. That offers a lesson for wannabe rock stars--and also for investors betting that Web music will pay off soon.
Solomon has sung and played piano since age 7, but he never had the nerve to pursue a music career all out until summer 1998. He had saved $40,000 during his two "hellish" years in investment banking to keep him afloat.
In October 1998 Solomon spent $4,000 to pump out his self-titled CD, then painted in shiny white lettering "www.andrewsolomon.com" on the back of his piano keyboard. He started selling CDs from his own site for $8 plus $2 for shipping and began pitching major music portals for a shot at the big time.
Thousands of homegrown sites offer free tracks for most any taste--country-music-club.com for C&W, hardradio.com for heavy metal, and the popular MP3.com. That site has lured 40,000 musicians (but only a few names you've ever heard). "Get fans! Sell more CDs! Get famous!" MP3.com promises struggling artists. It even has a one-click band-name generator (suggestions: Golden Vomit Vacuum, Terror Lime).
Solomon courted MP3.com the same way he went after radio stations and labels, and in December 1998 he mailed his disc and a $5 check to the site. It "ripped" his songs into the MP3 digital format and posted them online. Solomon, meanwhile, played New York clubs Shine and Arlene's Grocery by night and e-mailed dozens of chat room monitors, music message boards and Web site managers by day, urging them to listen to "Leap of Faith."
Soon after, things started to happen for him. He was voted the most popular new artist by Billboard magazine's Web site for up-and-coming acts, billboardtalentnet.com. On Mar. 1, 1999 a review on another site got him some nibbles from the record labels. It also caught the eye of Elliott Cahn, who once managed the hot rock group Green Day, and lawyer Joseph Serling, whose firm represents U2 and Ani DiFranco. Both came knocking after hearing Solomon sing online.
MP3.com selected "Leap of Faith" as its Song of the Day on Apr. 16, 1999. In the next 48 hours 1,100 people downloaded it, including eight German tourists who showed up at a Solomon show at New York's Mercury Lounge later that month. Then, in the fall, Solomon's online efforts got him a flattering mention in the Oct. 2, 1999 issue of Billboard, the music industry mainstay.
Along the way the self-made singer has had meetings with major record companies--Arista, Columbia, Sire Records and Madonna's own outlet, Maverick (backed by Time Warner). Why not just bypass the labels entirely? "It's not economically feasible," he says.
As MP3 has grown from a college dorm fad to a global phenomenon, it's ever more difficult for one artist to get heard above the noise, he explains. There's still no substitute for the marketing of a top label if an artist wants to get on radio or MTV.
That may change, as sites like Atomic Pop start acting more like "e-labels" and aggressively promote their own artists. Soon we'll see established singers using their home pages to push favorite newcomers, says MP3 poster boy Chuck D. "It used to be all about the triple R--radio, retail, record companies. The Internet means you don't need them nearly as much. I'm going to use it not just for myself, but to help out some newer artists who are doing their thing," the rapper says.
Andrew Solomon, for his part, says he expects to sign a record deal within a year--but then, he harbored similar hopes last March. A year of online touring has left him exhausted and, he admits, a bit hardened. "Maybe it isn't my time yet," he says.
In the interim he has run out of cash. In November he mailed a letter to emusic.com--not to promote his free tunes, but to apply for a job in San Francisco as the Web site's director of business development.
He took the job last month.
- Amy Doan

Piano Man: With his fine self-made EP, "Leap of Faith," Andrew Solomon provides pleasant respite from the glut of strumming folkies and amped-up rockers currently shopping demos. Instead, he is opting for a sweet, piano-based sound fondly reminiscent of Bruce Hornsby, as well as Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel prior to their platinum breakthroughs. Some might even accurately liken the winsome "I Will" to Ben Folds Five. However, Solomon's songs are more intricate and expansive in their in their melodic construction, which allows him to weave rich tales of boyhood dreams and romance. The charismatic 25-year old New Yorker continues to play clubs along the East Coast, where he's developing an ardent cult following. - Larry Flick

It is tempting to say that there seems to be no place in the music industry of 2009 for an artist like Andrew Solomon, a singer/songwriter/pianist with a husky, earnest voice whose pop/rock compositions and performances recall Peter Gabriel here and Marc Cohn there. More than 20 years earlier, Solomon's style of music may have been all the rage as artists like Phil Collins and Steve Winwood tore up the charts, but that was before grunge and boy bands and the hegemony of hip-hop, and now it sounds like a throwback to an earlier time. The issue comes up because the music is so accessible and appealing that it seems to presuppose a mass audience rather than one of the many niches that make up popular music in the early 21st century, but maybe it represents just such a niche, nevertheless. After all, every time it seems melodic pop/rock has disappeared from the best-seller lists, someone like James Blunt or Daniel Powter appears to prove it hasn't. So, it might be more accurate to say that there are fewer slots in the mass marketplace for this kind of music, and the thing that separates a Blunt or a Powter from an Andrew Solomon is a breakthrough hit. There are many potential hits on Something More, Solomon's third self-released CD and first full-length album (albeit at a mere half-hour running time), among them the Gabriel-like "Lay Me Down," the Cohn-like "Simple," and Solomon's closest thing to a hit from earlier in his career, "Leap of Faith," repeated from his self-titled debut EP. Were one of these songs to get picked up by a TV show or used in a prominent film or played repeatedly on some taste-making radio program, Solomon easily could take the next step to a profitable music career. As it is, people who wonder why they don't make music like those quality artists of the '80s used to do should go to andrewsolomon.com and discover that someone does. - All Music Guide