I’m on the verge of graduating from UNC Kenan-Flagler’s MBA program and I guess one of the big end-of-year events at the University of North Carolina is Spring Fest. This year culminated with a free concert by Boyz II Men and Nine Days. I had to miss the show because I was watching my kids while my wife ran the Music City Half-Marathon in Nashville, but hearing about the line-up caused me to think about these two groups I’d seen perform separately a long time ago.

If you don’t know Boyz II Men, you must have been living under a rock for the last 15 years. I saw them perform at Riverside Park in Agawam, MA (now Six Flags) in 1995, my senior year in high school. The most memorable part of the concert however was opener Montell Jordan performing “This is How We Do It” not once, not twice, but three times during his set – asking the crowd to sing it for him on the final rendition.

You may be familiar with Nine Days however, a band best known for a single song “Absolutely (A Story of a Girl)” which was a big hit in 2000. I became pretty familiar with the group after seeing them open on multiple dates for Vertical Horizon (another band known primarily for a single song “Everything You Want”) back in early 2001. Anyhow I still remember the band’s unique two singer sound and strong energy on stage, especially their keyboardist. Their CD, The Madding Crowd, quickly became part of my wife and my regular rotation in the car.

We eagerly awaited the follow-up. And waited. And waited. Nine Days website at the time chronicled their work in the studio and then the painful wait for Sony, their label at the time, to release the new album. The story was eerily similar to that of their tour mates, Vertical Horizon, who’s label RCA sat on their follow-up to the 1999 platinum selling Everything You Want. Except in this case, Sony never did release the album.

It’s about the worst thing that can happen to a band. Bands will often toil for years before getting signed. Both Nine Days and Vertical Horizon release 3 albums and toured for 5-7 years before getting their “big” deals. They’ll have a hit. Then for some reason it ends there. Sometimes a band truly is a one-hit wonder – think Right Said Fred, I mean was any surprised there was no hit follow-up from the “I’m Too Sexy” guys. Both these bands, however, recorded quality second albums, as good in every way as their hits, yet still managed to fall off the map.

So much of the music business is timing and luck. There are thousands of incredible artists out there, with every lick of talent as the people you listen to everyday, but for one reason or another, you’ve never heard of them. In this case, Sony and RCA sat on albums until the fan buzz wore off. While the labels can simply write it off as a bad investment, it can easily spell the end of a band’s career. A band gets labeled as a one-hit-wonder. They are confronted with the prospect of returning to the grind of building a fan base through low-budget albums, frequent touring, and guerilla marketing. This is an especially hard pill to swallow after they’d “made it.” Furthermore, the likelihood of landing another major label deal is now exponentially harder for them, assuming they would want one anyhow.

There is a silver lining for Nine Days fans. Because Sony paid to record the band’s 2002 album, So Happily Unsatisfied, but didn’t release it, the band instead has made it available as a free download from their website since they don’t have the rights to sell it. They’ve also released two additional albums, Flying The Corporate Jet in 2003 and Slow Motion Life in 2007 which can be purchased at iTunes or downloaded from eMusic. eMusic is a pretty cool service I was turned onto recently where for the low fee of $15 a month you can download 50 songs from all sorts of primarily independent artists. Best thing is your first month is free, so you can get 50 songs free just for trying out the service.

Anyhow if you’re like me and simply lost track of Nine Days over the last 8 years, it’s the perfect opportunity to get caught up on what the band’s been doing free (and legally) and get prepared for the band’s next album, due out this fall.