Artist who haunt labels: an ironic excursus (dedicated to Christian)

Di Staff
Data di pubblicazione 10/06/2013

A short ironic excursus on various entities of the Italian music world. Any reference to an existing person or event is purely accidental. We dedicate it to a friend who asked us to write an article specifically about this subject.

The rock boy band with a “finished album”

In general, they have their album already produced, played, mastered, and finished. They don’t know that in 2013 CDs are not being sold. And they don’t know that today everybody makes themselves an album. They present it with the completed cover, booklet, plastic case. They’re searching for a label even despite having done the work on their own. They did it to raise the purchasing power of the label without regarding the fact that for its artistic director it’s enough to know where they play, how they play, and how many people follow them, to know exactly what their purchasing power is. The sound, when it’s going well, often brings us back to the “Clean Hands” era, but, the group has no intention of applying further musical work to the thing, giving the fact that they’ve already paid for the production. They’d need a booking agency and a promoter, not a label, but the agencies don’t follow them because usually they lack public, and the promoter, especially a good one, costs money. Unfortunately, often they get swallowed by “fake labels” which in reality are distributing companies working through artist contracts.

The careerists:

Their profile is similar to that previously described, but they also set their minds on trying, using all possible means, to become famous. They’re on the search for a label, but the only thing they want is to sign a contract with someone big, preferably a major. A status’ symbol. The more binding, the more status’ symbol. This makes them extremely problematic regarding any negotiation. Even when it comes only to master rights’ transfer, they remain convinced it’s a binding artist contract. They see scam everywhere, even if it’s not there, because being scammed by a label is rooted in the history of rock, happened even to Queen. They’ve created a base of approximately few hundred emails to small label’s which now loose loads of time on their account. They’ve demanded the full management control over the record, though they should simply take care of arranging some gigs. If they can’t get that done it’s the label’ fault, even if it has never signed for organizing anything, only to make their album.

The girl bands:

There’s always a man in charge behind. Mostly working as the artistic producer with ambitions of a promoter. He’s a 100% go-to guy and he’s very difficult to have a conversation with.

The careerist girl bands:

The 100% go-to guy in charge behind them is a careerist.

The fake label

A pot-pourri of services, from booking to publication. Very often for a hefty sum. In general they do whatever they wish with tracks and artists via some improbable contracts. They play with bands’ fucking necessity of “publishing an album”, and they demand payment for the printing service in contracts. If they work good, with regularity, they tend to start cooperating with diverse bands, generally the aggressive-face ones which want to make history with their desaturated imagery. We collect all the mails that other labels send to the artists we work with. It’s after months of working, of constructing a recording project from zero in order to produce an LP, when you’re all set to publish and start with the promotion, when the first mails start coming: “If you come to us we’ll print 500 of your cds for 2000 euros in exchange for the publication rights.” This kind of mails.

But if we choose to leave a track edition-free to give a free choice to the artist, it’s not for impeding it’s publication! They use the artists’ ignorance about the difference between the phonographic rights (label) and the author’s rights (publisher), and their won rights in general (like citizen’s right’s at times). We are a label which produces and sells music, so it’s obvious that while the artist is working with us he won’t go to someone else. It can happen, when an artist is a particular social climber, that he will wait for us to create him a satisfying brand, so he could then move it to the “higher league”: we take this possibility into account as a part of our job, but, if this artist is a social climber with some brains, he will cut the ties AFTER, not WHILE we’re making him an album! (We’re proud to say that all artists published by Miraloop Hearts were published for the first time EVER)

PS. If you’re an artists and you feel you’re not fluent enough in the legalese of the music industry, we would recommend to check out our partner, a Bolognian association dealing with legal consultation and representation of musicians: www.notelegali.it With just a few euros for the registration you’ll be annually covered by their expert advice. You won’t regret!

PPS. Obviously, that’s an ironic excursus. We know well how much value and passion inhabits the music world. We don’t want to judge all books by the covers.. it’s only some of the covers that really make us chuckle.