Tea Break Tip: Record deal as an artist

Songwriting the Nashville Way | Mark Cawley (Tina Turner, Diana Ross, Joe Cocker, Taylor Dayne, Chaka Kahn, Billie Piper, The Spice Girls ...)

 I think you do that. the best news right now is, the traction you can generate on your own.  If you were to go into a Nashville label and go, look,  I live in, you know,  Milwaukee,  Wisconsin,  and look at the social media  audience I have already, I’m huge in that area. I’ve got a  hundred thousand followers.  I’m getting this done in my area.

What I need you to do, big label guy  is to blow it up. Yeah. That reduces the risk for them, which is great. They go, okay, you’ve had some success. You’re, you know, we’re not, we’re not training you. You’ve got this. We just need to  put it into our market big time. there were bands like Dave Matthews Mm-Hmm. Who comes to mind years ago who were so brilliant. By the time they went to a label, they went, they could sit there and go,  we don’t necessarily need you.  We are making a living in our area.

And look at the numbers and look at the social media following, what can you do?  And you, you, you know, you reverse spin the table around. Yeah. Yeah. Which is fantastic. And then they go, Hey, we just, we’ll blow you up worldwide. How’s that? There’s your deal. Yeah.  Yeah. but to go back to your point, you still can get these labels. there are a lot of little labels, indie labels, maybe that’s where you start. but the days of an a and r, the, the term a and r was artist and repertoire gone as far as the job description.

I think, they were not look at you and go, you know what? We can mould you. You know? Yeah. Come on in. It’s like, come in moulded and let’s figure out how to do business. It’s pretty much the same with the, with the pop industry as well now. Yeah. You know, independent artists. Yeah. You know, I’ve, I’ve spoken a lot about this, with a and r people in the uk they say, you know, we want to see that you’ve got a team of people, that you’ve got a campaign, that you’ve got x hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter and Insta and Facebook and, and an email list of 50,000.

Yep. And you, and you’re playing to 300 people every time. At least You’re going, which, if you’re good, you can do, that’s the good news. And you, you cut some of these channels.  That social media thing is, is very big with Nashville publishers. Even that if you walked in the room today, they might, they might go, what’s your network? Like  the old days, you’d go, ah, that’s your job, isn’t it? You know? Yeah. Now they’re gonna go, no. If you’re networking with, you know, so many people on Facebook, in a group or Instagram, whatever you’re doing,  we know that you’re capable of finding some of your own leads and your own people and your own co-writers and yeah, this looks better now.

 So I advise anybody I ever talk to do it, you gotta do it. Even though it’s against most songwriters, nature probably, you know? Yeah.  

 

Country Music market, Nashville artist record deal, Record Labels, America and Global music industry, The heart of country music, Nashville, Bakersfield Austin, Bristol, Owensboro, St. Louis, Branson, Denver, Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas, West Virginia, Georgia, Missouri, Arkansas, California, Virginia, Oklahoma. How to approach a record label, How to get signed to an indie or major label record label. Capital Records, EMI records, MCA Nashville, Mercury Nashville, Universal Music Group 

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