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Interviews : “The Patreon campaign was a huge success and that’s all that matters” – An Interview With Tim Charles (Ne Obliviscaris)

By on March 30, 2016

NeOTim Charles – Ne Obliviscaris

If you spent any time on social media at all in the month of March you have probably heard about Ne Obliviscaris’ Patreon campaign. It is a story that has divided metal fans and musicians alike into two camps. At the time of writing, the band is earning USD $7378 per month, backed by 475 patrons. I phoned up Tim Charles on Good Friday to have a chat about their Patreon campaign, but also their recent US tour with Cradle of Filth. 

My first question for Tim was one that I had been curious about ever since the band announced its groundbreaking way of earning money. Why does he think that this works out so well for NeO? What is it about their music that means so much to the fans?

“One thing that we’ve observed over time is that we do have a lot of support and a lot people, our fans are extremely passionate. I guess the only thing I could pin that on is that we’re very different to a lot other bands, we have a sound that is quite different. For a lot of people, if they like us, they love us; and, if they don’t like us, they don’t like us at all <laughs> which is totally fine. I think what we sort of worked out was that we really felt that our fans liked being involved in our career. They took a lot in satisfaction from the world tour crowdfunding campaign and if we gave them an opportunity to be involved in what we’re doing in our career, we were really confident that they would jump at that chance, and that’s what’s happened, which is incredibly exciting.”

It seems like most people have reacted positively to the campaign, but many have also raised their voices and complained, calling the band a “fucking hand out band”, among other things. Did NeO expect this level of negativity? 

“We definitely expected some negativity, because whenever you do something new, not everyone is going to agree with you, and that’s totally fine. We’re also mindful of when we did the world tour crowdfunding campaign, no one had really done that before, and that got some negativity from people who didn’t understand what it was about. And so, you know, a lot of it is people not understanding, either due to not paying attention or they couldn’t be bothered.  Having said that, it was definitely a bit more negative than what happened with the world tour crowdfunding campaign. I guess I can put that down to how different the way we’re doing things in comparison to the rest of the people in the industry. We really don’t care what people think. We’re doing what we want to do for the right reasons and then looking at how the results go. And the reality is that we have completely transformed our career in the space of a few weeks. The Patreon campaign was a huge success and that’s all that matters.”

Did the negativity coming from fellow musicians surprise you?

“I definitely observed quite a bit of comments from other musicians as you said. Some of them were local musicians who have played in bands for years and never earnt a dollar, just like every local band in the world, just like us in the past. I think to be realistic, even people in bands think that other bands make money. Like I thought that a lot of bands made money, you know. The longer I’ve been in the industry, the more I’ve realised how few bands make money. But it wasn’t until we started touring internationally that I just realised how difficult it was. There are a lot of local bands, I think they think that we should be making money or different decisions or whatever. But the reality is a lot of these people haven’t toured internationally and they have no idea what’s involved and they have no idea how many bands of note that they’re fans of are in the exact same position as us. There are definitely some comments from bands that have toured internationally and should know what’s going on. Like the wonderful Michael Crafter who had some great things to say of course. I think some of that comes down to there seems to be this badge of honour in the industry for sleeping on the floor, or sleeping in the van for six weeks. I think that’s a big part of it, but what if I told those people that they didn’t have to do it that way? What if I told you that there are already enough fans of your band so that you can make money and a life that you would enjoy instead of toughing it out through bullshit that no band loves to do but they put up with it because they feel that they have no other choice?”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc7DaJqn5Hg]

I asked Tim about the financial situation for bands of their level in general and if they have been in contact with other bands regarding Patreon. 

“The reality is that backstage all around the world it’s a common topic: joking about how poor everyone is. You make a comment about money and you’ll get a comment back from the person in whatever band it is about how broke they are as well. Because that’s the reality of most mid-level bands. Most bands at our level who quite a lot of people know who you are, but you’re not a big headliner, a lot of those bands don’t make any money. And a lot of those bands have been contacting me in the last couple of weeks, asking me how we went about it. Bands that are in the same position, they’re looking for a solution as well. In the past there hasn’t been solutions and bands just break up. If there is demand, here’s a direct way where fans can support the bands in a meaningful fashion because we get 95% of the money that come through. You might get 50% of merch sales at a live show, you’re getting maybe 5-10% of CD sales sold through, for example, JB Hi-Fi.”

NeO recently announced yet another European tour, this time with Enslaved. Is this tour announcement a direct consequence of the success with Patreon? 

“It is. We’ve been working on that tour since just before Christmas. We had the problem in January when we were paying the last of our upfront expenses for our US tour. We had bills we were still trying to pay from our European tour, we had $20 000+ expenses for the US tour that we had to pay upfront. I started to realise that if we lose too much money on this US tour, we would have to start from scratch trying to save up money to do other tours. I knew we had other tours in the works for later in the year. And it put a little bit of doubt on what we could afford. I guess the Patreon campaign has been able to instantly take away that doubt. It’s given us the ability to book tours with confidence.”

Any plans for another tour back at home this year? 

“We hope so. We’re looking into some options at the moment. I’m not sure exactly when, but I think sometime second half of this year we’ll try to do at least one more tour before we go back into the studio to record a new album.”

The start to NeO’s first ever US tour couldn’t have had a worse start. I followed the whole ordeal on Facebook at the time and I had to ask Tim about that experience. 

“Basically when we left for the US we didn’t know for sure that the tour was definitely happening. So, we were told that Cradle were hopeful that Dani’s visa would come through in the next couple of days, but they didn’t know for sure. And the reason the first few shows were cancelled was to buy time, rather than cancelling the whole tour. Now, the reality for us then, first of all we couldn’t change our flights because of United Airlines, it would cost us $10 000. We had no choice but to hop on the plane or cancel the tour. We hopped on the plane not knowing if the tour was going and knowing if the tour got cancelled, we would be stranded in Philadelphia. Because it would be six weeks until our flights back home. So we would have to borrow money from friends or family just to come home. We would be in financial ruin if the tour was cancelled. So that’s how it started. When we landed in Los Angeles I spoke to our agent, because a lot of our fans got involved trying to help us to get some stuff happening. And three hours later we landed in Chicago, and our agent had booked three shows, and announced them before we even landed, because this was the day before the first show. We played the Philadelphia show in front of a hundred people on 24 hour notice. The vibe was so amazing because the fans thought that they were going to miss out but instead they got a 90 minute headliner set. The day after the first show we got confirmation that the visa had come through and the tour would go ahead. Basically, it went from what could have been the biggest disaster of our career to the best thing that has happened in our career.”

To end the interview with Tim I asked him to give me quick and short replies to my fairly random questions about the US tour. 

A moment that felt really American?

“We parked at a lot of Walmarts!”

A funny moment that you shared with Xenoyr?

“So many moments between Xen, myself and Lindsay [Schoolcraft] from Cradle of Filth. Xen and I are the perfect odd couple because we’ve been great friends for so many years, yet we’re kind of nothing alike. Lindsay nicknamed us ‘Sunshine’ and ‘Darkness’.” <laughs>

Most frequently heard stereotypical assumption about Australia?

“A lot of Americans really don’t know anything about Australia. We were always joking with people, probably the most stereotypical thing was that everything kills you in Australia. We tried to explain to people that except for the drop bears it is actually pretty safe.” <laughs>

Click here to get all the information on Ne Obliviscaris’ ground breaking Patreon campaign.

Join the Patreon campaign today!

About

Martin is an aspiring music photographer/videographer. He is originally from the southern parts of Sweden and now he's living in Sydney, Australia. Thanks to his older sister, he got into Rammstein at the age of 9, and since then he's been into all types of metal/rock. He loves to combine photography and music, but also filming concerts and produce live material. Follow him on Twitter and check out his website.