INDUSTRY ADVICE
Elliot Aronow of rcrdlbl.com
 |
by Elliot Aronow Creative Director/A & R RCRD LBL www.rcrdlbl.com elliot@rcrdlbl.com |
Can you explain the idea behind www.rcrdlbl.com?
The most basic idea behind RCRD LBL is to combine the best elements of a
trusted record label with the openness and editorial qualities of a blog. We
wanted to structure the site so you can easily go in and grab whatever
tracks we are featuring on the home page that day or, if you want to dig
deeper, you can download our widgets or subscribe to our RSS feeds or go
through our catalogue and download some other stuff you would find
interesting.
The idea of creating a place where fans could find great, free music legally
and know they are supporting the artists and labels is also important to us.
We want to take the legal ³grey area² a lot of blogs exist in and move it to
a space where we have the permissions necessary to offer the music for free.
What are your goals with this new technology, sales wise/creatively?
We look at blogging and the culture that surrounds it as a great platform
for delivering content and adding a curatorial element to the process of
discovering exciting new artists. When you discover a great blog that
continually hips you to great new bands and does it with sincerity and
enthusiasm, it¹s something you stick with and it becomes a part of your
daily media diet. We want RCRD LBL to be a site that you want to check out
every day, not only for the artists you have heard of, but for the ones we
and our labels are introducing and hopefully breaking via our platform.
Can all artists utilize this tool? Is it only signed artists?
We hand pick the artists who will appear on our site and work with everyone
from big bands who have sold substantial amounts of records via traditional
labels to smaller emergent artists who are just starting to make moves and
don't have record deals. We like keeping things curated and focused and seek
out bands we personally dig and that we think our readers should know about.
Since we¹re not selling any music, it¹s really just about what excites us
and what we want to champion.
What does your role as creative Director and A&R director entail? What do
you look for in the artists you seek out?
I am responsible for signing artists and partner labels to the network,
working with our team of writers to create our daily editorial postings and
hooking up features with other like-minded labels to showcase their rosters
of artists. It¹s nice to be able to find a way to collaborate with anyone we
like and respect, since we are very flexible in terms of how we work with
both bands and labels. There¹s no rules in terms of genre or anything like
that, so it¹s been a fun process thus far.
What is the best advice you can give to artists pursuing their careers at
this time? Independently or with a record deal?
To be honest, my advice is very old fashioned. Write great, compelling music
and work as hard as you can to connect your vision to fans‹be it on the road
or on the internet. Since there are so many bands out now and music is
basically free, the things that set the great talents apart are great songs
and great performances.