Interview: Hip-Hop Artist Marvalous

I met Marv last week.  I was walking up 6th Ave. on my way to a gig and he was standing outside a grocery store near 12th St., trying to get people’s attention as they walked by.  I have a soft spot for people trying to talk to strangers – I have enough experience with cold calls and passing out flyers to know that it ain’t an easy thing to do.  I had some time to kill before the gig, so I stopped to talk.

Marv, aka “Marvalous”, is a musician selling his CD.  I had no idea what his music sounded like, but after talking to Marv for a few minutes I bought his album. I just have to admire a guy that is willing to stand out on a New York City street for hours at a time, facing the early February cold and sustained rejection, in order to give a pitch and a hard sell to one face after another.

And after talking to him awhile, two more things impressed me: 1.) He does this full time. 2.) He makes a living doing this.

I think about my own albums, which I’ve safely stashed in the big, anonymous cloud of iTunes, and I sheepishly push from behind the shield of Facebook and Twitter – giving my hard sell to profile photos and not real faces. Could I stand on the corner and sell my music? I think I could, but it doesn’t matter – I don’t.

As Marv tells it in the interview below, he hit the streets when the music industry machine started to break down. He had used standard music distribution routes before they started to go out of business, and then – not to be stopped – he just walked outside and starting doing it himself.

As we move further and further into a new musician industry, it is, and will be increasingly, tempting to settle behind the largely faceless infrastructure that the internet is building for us – where we interact largely through email, wall posts, newsletters and bursts of text 140-characters-or-less. For a lot of us, this infrastructure is working – certainly it’s working much better than the infrastructure we had in place before this. But look at Marv – he’s doing something right, too.

I asked Marv for an email interview, and his answers are below.

Q. How many hours a week do you stand outside and sell your album?

A. It’s a full time gig year round, unless the weather is to an extreme that people won’t be inclined to stop and listen. Like the old adage says you get out what you put in. So I’ve put in many a 12 hour day.

The good thing is you never stop selling. In the course of even a traditional conversation, someone is bound to ask you, “What do you do” or a similar question that allows me to segue into my spiel. So assuming I have product – I’m always promoting.

Q. How do you get people to talk to you on the street? Do you have an opening line that always works? How do you get people to buy your album?

A. I genuinely love people, and that helps I’m sure. Especially in NYC people are many times apprehensive and guarded. So I smile, and ask open ended questions or make a remark based on an observation, it could be a shirt or a brand that they’re wearing or A sports team, etc. People are like squirrels they want to see your nuts, they just don’t want to get hurt or victimized in the process. Selling is about product knowledge after that it’s just a matter of tailoring it to the individual.

People like new music/artists and people gravitate to confident assertive types, too. It’s like they can or want to identify with you and how they would like to see themselves. Many have abandoned their creative side in some way due to fear, societal pressures, or just the everyday harsh realities of life. We’ve all been there and very few, if any, escape.

Q. In your experience, do you feel like you receive primarily positive feedback from people you talk to on the street, or primarily negative feedback?

A. I appreciate any feedback I get. It’s really gratifying when someone tells you that they can relate to something you’ve said or experienced. It’s like the palms on the proverbial glass. I know everyone won’t like my music, but maybe they’ll respect my story. I even tell people that, it’s the truth and I pride myself on being honest.

Q. Do you sell your albums through traditional distribution sources (stores & online) as well? Which is more successful – selling through traditional distribution sources, or selling one-on-one on the street? Why do you think one method is more successful than another?

A. I’m in the process of re-launching my web-site, and getting back into the online markets. I was one of the many artists who several years ago thought we were ahead of the curve, by having a fancy website and a company that would house and ship my product for us. The company was absorbed, then eventually went out of business, so I found a different avenue, literally.

It’s not a matter of which method is more sucessful, when you can do both. The online market pretty much takes care of itself, and being outside on the Ave in NYC gives you a similar kind of world accessibility. Plus you’re always thinking marketing, and dealing with and overcoming rejection, two essential skills in business.

I will say this – in one day I can move more CD’s than in a year in a storefront (when there were store fronts). I remember going to the Virgin Mega Store just to show people the CD’s I was featured on, which no one was really promoting. Now both have gone, and are going, the way of the dinosaur, so the web is definitely the place to be. But like with anything else you gotta research and work it.
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If you’d like to know more about Marv, visit his myspace page, or visit him on 6th Ave. Marv also produces a show called Fire Your Boss, a party for the independent artist. The next show will be May 6th, 10pm, at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City.