Great article about both the Pentatonix themseles and new shapes to the music business via Youtube etc.
also industry pressure to make the acapella group stop being acapella ? LOL
http://www.wsj.com/articles/pentatonix-t...ding_now_4
Quote:Pentatonix Tears Up the Charts
Pentatonix fleetingly bumped Taylor Swift from atop iTunes with the album ‘That’s Christmas to Me.’ The a cappella group’s unlikely rise to stardom highlights the influence of YouTube as well as the power of a distinctive sound
Pentatonix in Baltimore in September, from left: Avi Kaplan, Kirstin Maldonado, Scott Hoying, Mitch Grassi and Kevin Olusola. ENLARGE
Pentatonix in Baltimore in September, from left: Avi Kaplan, Kirstin Maldonado, Scott Hoying, Mitch Grassi and Kevin Olusola. INVISION/ASSOCIATED PRESS
By HANNAH KARP
Updated Dec. 11, 2014 3:19 p.m. ET
14 COMMENTS
You rarely hear them on the radio. Most fans can’t spell, let alone pronounce, their name. They don’t play gigs on Friday nights and their manager says they sometimes are mistaken for a death-metal group by fans who come across the cover art for some of their music collections. Instead of portraying the group’s five members, the covers feature five glowing bars and the mysterious letters: “PTX.”
Quote:
RELATED READING
Six Holiday Albums for the Holiday Season
The 15 Best Music Moments of 2014
From YouTube Stars, Literary Lions
Yet Pentatonix, a young a cappella group hailing mostly from Texas, may be one of the few acts to sell a million copies of a 2014 album this year, selling more than 615,000 copies of “That’s Christmas to Me” since last month, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Several weeks ago the album bumped Taylor Swift’s “1989” from the No. 1 spot at Apple Inc. ’s iTunes Store, though Ms. Swift has since regained the top position.
The group’s unlikely rise to stardom—which caught most of the music industry by surprise—highlights not only the influence of YouTube but also the power of a distinctive sound. The latter is particularly valuable in a world where pop stars generate most of their income from hit singles and are wary of taking the musical risks they once could on full-length albums.
One reason why Pentatonix was able to preserve their unconventional sound is because until last year, no big record label wanted anything to do with them. Even after sweeping NBC’s “The Sing-Off” in 2011, the group was dropped by Sony’s Epic Records—which had an option to sign winners. So they started making their own records and simple YouTube videos, putting together quirky a cappella arrangements of popular hits without executives weighing in or pushing them toward a commercial sound.
The group hung on to the name they had coined before appearing on “The Sing-Off,” even though NBC had warned them they would regret it, said Pentatonix member Scott Hoying. The 23-year-old Mr. Hoying, who says he became an “a cappella nerd” as a freshman at the University of Southern California, persuaded two childhood friends to audition with him for the TV singing contest and then recruited two more singers. Until this year, the group distributed its music through Sony’s Madison Gate Records label, which usually handles film soundtracks.
It wasn’t until last year, when the 2013 deluxe edition of their 2012 Christmas album “PTXMAS” soared to the top of iTunes, that record labels came calling. By that time, it was clear that whatever Pentatonix was doing was working. They had amassed millions of fans, who call themselves “Pentaholics,” and their video of their vocal homage to the French electronic-music duo Daft Punk was well on its way to racking up 100 million-plus views on YouTube.
“I had shopped this to every label in the business. They told me I was nuts,” said Lenny Beer, co-owner of the MGMT Company, which manages the group. When Sony’s RCA Records President and Chief Operating Officer Tom Corson called last year, Mr. Beer said he told him, “Hey, man, you passed on this, like, 11 times already,” but eventually agreed to a deal.
Mr. Corson said he was always impressed by the group’s talent, but hadn’t been sure how his label would expand the group’s appeal. “How does this work for us?” he said. “Most of the time we focus on acts that get on the radio—and no act has come out of ‘The Sing-off.’ ” The most recent a cappella success stories he remembered were Bobby McFerrin, whose hits included “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” in 1988 and Boyz II Men, whose purely a cappella version of “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” topped the charts in 1991.
But, Mr. Corson added, “where there’s been success, there’s always potential for success again. It’s now new again.”
Pentatonix. ENLARGE
Pentatonix. MAARTEN DEBOER/AMA2014/GETTY IMAGES
RCA decided to have Pentatonix release another Christmas album this year because carols are a natural showcase for an a cappella group and because a Christmas album can generate “phenomenal business if you get it right,” and can “keep on giving year after year,” said RCA’s executive vice president and head of artists and repertoire, Keith Naftaly.
Moving Pentatonix to the next level in the new year will be a challenge for RCA, Mr. Naftaly said. The label wants to help the band create an original “smash-hit song—or ten of them,” that radio DJs play, he said. Messrs. Naftaly and Beer said that to make the tunes radio-friendly, Pentatonix might need to add instruments.
The band doesn’t agree.
“We’re not really into that idea,” said Mr. Hoying, adding that instruments would negate the roles of members Kevin Olusola and Avi Kaplan, who supply the group with vocal beats. “The second you add instruments, what makes us so special is lost.”
Mr. Naftaly said he wasn’t considering anything “bombastic,” but maybe some subtle strings, since Mr. Olusola plays the cello and the band already has collaborated with violinist Lindsey Stirling.
For now, Pentatonix is busy promoting its Christmas album, occasionally running into hurdles as Mr. Olusola, the group’s classical-music buff and melody expert, is a Seventh-day Adventist and can’t work between sundown on Friday and sundown on Saturday.
ENLARGE
RCA RECORDS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
All five singers have their quirks, Mr. Hoying said. The group’s electronic-music expert, Mitch Grassi, keeps crystals in his room to “recharge his energy,” while Kirstin Maldonado keeps her schedule in an old-fashioned day planner instead of on her phone. Mr. Kaplan is the kind of guy who “Instagrams sunsets over the mountains” and serves as the group’s rule-enforcer, calling others out when they are late. Mr. Hoying, an R&B aficionado, shared a room with Mr. Grassi on the road back when money was tighter—and still does “even now that we don’t have to anymore.”
“We think each other is so funny,” Mr. Hoying said. “You don’t want to hang out with us because we are so best-friend-y, it’s annoying.”
The group’s manager, Jonathan Kalter, said, “They’re just naturally themselves. It’s kind of a metaphor for what a cappella is.”