Record labels these days get a bad wrap for only signing acts that already have a huge audience. That are already proven. That are already making money and have the rest of the pieces in place.
And it’s true.
But it isn’t only true of record labels.
Every entity: management, booking, radio, playlisting, publishing, labels…everyone is looking for the least amount of work for the biggest pay off.
Management wants tons of stuff already going on, including label interest.
Booking agents want pre existing promoter relationships and hard numbers on Pollstar.
Radio wants all the other stations to play it first.
Playlisters want the other playlisters to add it first.
Publishers want you to be well connected with other writers and have a catalog that is generating revenue.
So it’s not just the labels, it’s everyone.
And it’s us too. We long for familiarity. We long for low risk high reward. We are afraid. We’re afraid of making the first move. We don’t want to look stupid. We don’t want to lose our jobs by rolling the dice on something unproven.
If anyone of us were in charge of putting a million dollars into an artist with the obligation to turn it into two million…we might surprise ourselves with just how ‘true to the music’ we really are.
Most of the time we all operate exactly like the record labels do.
