Woodstock MusicWorks:
Keeping it Local,
Taking it Global
by Peter Aaron
Starting
a record label is always a gamble, but in the 21st century
it seems downright heroic. Or maybe just insane. The advent
of the Internet, with its artist-networking MySpaces, its
CDBabies and Amazons, its band-to-fan and file-sharing websites,
and its independent publicists and song-placement firms, has
thrown the music industry into freefall, bringing down not
only mom-and-pop outlets but even retail monoliths like Tower
Records. In fact, in the last several years all of the above
have been mounting steadily toward a critical mass that threatens
to render the entire concept of record labels altogether unnecessary.
You know you’re in trouble when no less than Keith Richards
has been spotted cheering what he terms the long-overdue death
of the record industry.
“Well, yeah, it’s true that the industry has
totally changed, and that people now buy 70 percent of their
music online—most of it as downloads, not CDs,” says
Paul Schiavo, general manager and A&R chief of new imprint
Woodstock MusicWorks. “But we see ourselves almost as
a ‘boutique label’ that trims the fat you’d
have at a big label and keeps things small and efficient.
Moving forward, for successful labels it’s, going to
be more about those labels partnering with their artists,
instead of owning them, which is how it’s traditionally
been.” A musician himself, Schaivo knows a thing or
two about such traditions, having also worked as a producer
and an engineer at Bearsville Studios in the mid 1990s to
acts like Rush, Phish, the Butthole Surfers, Jewel, the Dave
Matthews Band, and others; as a tour manager to Natalie Merchant
and John Mayer; and as a co-founder of the long-running WDST
100.1-FM Radio Woodstock Mountain Jam festival.
CONTINUE....
|
