Breaking new artists is the Holy Grail of the music business. Without new artists the music scene stagnates, atrophies, and eventually goes away.
As a music biz professional I’ve spent the better part of thirty years trying to figure out the magic formula for success. But, it still seems as fleeting today as it did when I was booking shows at USC back in the late 70′s. Now I’ll have you know that the music business is full of geniuses who will be happy to tell you how many big artists they spotted before anyone else and what their formula for success was. More often than not those folks have a penchant for re-writing history from the end of the story (success) back to the intro (who knew?). But for me, when it happens it feels almost heaven sent.
While so much about the music industry has changed in terms of distribution, pricing, formats, and marketing the million dollar question is still “What does it take to break a new artist?”. Everybody has a theory. In this final excerpt from my interview with Epic Records President, Charlie Walk, we discuss what it takes to break an artist these days.
Tell me what you think it takes to break an artist today. Tell us what you would do if you could be King or Queen for a day. We’ll decide later if you are a genius.
My thanks to Charlie Walk for taking the time to share his thoughts on this wacky business. I hope the participants in this little blog enjoyed it.
This was really cool, Steve. Thank you for sharing this interview with us. It will be very interesting to see what happens to the industry in coming years.
Four Seasons?
This was awesome…
I agree with Charlie on breaking a new artist. I would guess that the only way for a artist to “hit it big” would be to get them exposure. Put them on a Rhapsody commercial or put their single on itunes as the free download of the week before anyone has ever heard them on the radio. I remember downloading “Boston” by Augustana on the free download of the week way before I ever heard them on the radio. Same goes with other artists. A lot of times I will see their music video on VH1 and a few weeks later everyone has heard of them.
I agree with the exposure thing too. My “holy crap it’s monday again?!” playlist has a lot of music from ipod commercials. But there’s something conflicting about that – I’m not ‘supposed’ to be getting my music from commercials, then again I don’t really pay much attention to that.
As far as radio goes, I think it’s kind of a means to an entirely different end. If I hear a song on the radio I like, usually it’s not one of those loyalty inspiring “gotta go get the CD and entire discography” songs, but usually what will happens is that I’ll find new bands through them. I’m not sure that makes sense, but as an example RHCP got me into Funkadelic and Captain Beefheart, and you don’t hear them on the radio.
Also, not so much into radio anymore, but if I’m really itching for something new, college/university radio stations are always my safety net.
I’ll stop rambling now