Starting a label for the right reasons (Part 2)

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Our last post was about deciding on the right reasons to start a label, and before you go on reading this post on starting a label yourself, I’d invite you to go back and read the first part of this series. If Part 1 was a bit of a reality check for you, or perhaps was a bit of a disappointment, Part 2 will be more positive and help you get in touch with your entrepreneur-self.

So, let’s get things straightened up and go over the “I want a label” checklist.

The name of the game is networking

If there is one thing that is essential to run a label, it’s to know the right people and to make good connections; this alone will make a tremendous difference. Believe it or not, I know a few people who have previously decided out of the blue to start a label because they had access to all the resources online to do it, but no network; no surprise then that the outcome of a these endeavors were very few sales.

But how does one network?

I’ve discussed this previously in past posts; I believe it starts on Soundcloud, where it’s important to connect with people who have similar tastes…these people will be supporters of your projects if you connect with them. People will be interested if they see some action on your music and profile. If you don’t mention, like, or reshare anything you’re going to be caught in a downward spiral.

Other ways to network include:

  • Connect with local DJs, clubs.
  • Follow labels you love and release music like you want to release. Connect with the artists.
  • Leave comments on podcast and music you like.
  • Go out, try to attend festivals and be social. Making physical contacts is incredibly empowering and important.
  • Tip: Investing 1-2h per day in networking will bring huge benefits down the road.

Be present

A long time ago, I read an article stating that humans get curious or engaged after a series of 3 notifications prompting them to buy a product. In other words, you need 3 ads or 3 different sources to get people’s attention or a sale. This article was current, but I still believe there’s some truth to that. This means that for your music, you want to get people’s attention multiple times so they get interested enough to listen to you. However, people are constantly submerged with solicitation so a no-solicitation approach might even be better. This means you want people to talk about your music but you don’t want your approach to be “Hear me! Buy this!”, but instead a “This is a great track!” kind of comment. People are way more likely to be curious if there’s no “call to action” to do something. This means that you need to be present, and have a web of contacts to share the news for you; this will only happen if your network is solid.

Have solid contributors

You can’t expect to have a solid label if you can’t consistently release great music. To do that, you need some solid artists and releases. You need a balance of new artists mixed with known artists, either through remixes or full releases. But to get artists on board, you need to create a safe ground and attractive platform to have people wanting to jump in.

But once you have artists on board, you need to keep them. Having ways to keep them stimulated such as with label nights in a club, a podcast series, or pushing their music to get reviews, promoted, etc. – these things are very exciting for anyone.

TIP: A new label will have a hard time getting a PR agent to do publishing and advertising but this is something you can slowly do yourself. Perhaps we can discuss that in a future article.

Think of your branding

Branding is also exciting for an artist, but also for fans. People love finding a community that makes music that speaks to them. That’s probably the most difficult part of starting a label because a branding will stick with you until the label’s over. You need to be sure of what image, values, sound, aesthetic you want to project. You’ll attract people in as a consequence.

TIP: You can totally find someone on Fiverr for a logo.

Be innovative

Innovation is about watching what trends are happening in the music world, and trying to fulfill the needs of people who support what you do. If people prefer to buy music on a certain store, try to focus your promo there. Nowadays, the main trend is to go through Bandcamp for selling and promoting the music. But you might want to work with an aggregator to have your music be on 100+ online stores plus streaming sites. There are many aggregators out there you can work with. They all do the same things, but have different fees so you might want to shop around.

TIP: Start small, grow as you go.

Be ready to invest

Running a label has nothing to do with making money out of it, seriously. Trust me, you pay to have a label and sometimes, there are moments where you get some money back in the process.

If labels don’t really make money, why start one?

Starting a label opens doors. It will become your platform of expression, a hub to connect and attract people who share the same tastes as you and who can grow together into a place where you can all spread the music you believe in. Running a label is not about doing anything yourself. I’ve started enjoying running my own when I started delegating tasks to people who wanted to participate in helping doing something they liked doing. To surround yourself properly takes time but is also fun.

To finish up, starting a label also requires some technical items. You’ll need to cover these if you want your label to be selling.

  • ISRC codes. These are necessary for selling and are a way to create a single number for each song.
  • Have a website, a Soundcloud account, a Facebook fan page, and a Paypal account for payments.
  • Create a Bandcamp account.
  • Get an online shop aggregator.
  • Have someone do artwork if you’re not good at it. You can find someone on Fiverr and use Canva for little needs.

Playing Electronic Music Live (Part 6, final)

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I recently played a live set at StereoBar in Montreal for the launch of my album Returning Home and it was very interesting to create a live set from scratch, following the advice of this series I’ve written over the past few months about playing electronic music live. I’d like to share with you a bit about how it went, as well as some personal notes I took for future performances.

Notes about preparation of my set

Returning Home has many tracks; I wasn’t sure how I’d approach them in a live context considering they are all pretty intricate, full of details, and pretty much impossible to execute as the recorded version(s). I decided to go through all the songs and export the stems for each group of sounds – plus making sure the kick and bass would be isolated – so I could control how they would come and go in the set.

Exporting stems took me a while. I had also exported stems from certain songs that weren’t included in the album but that I wanted to play. I had a good 17 tracks ready, with about 8 channels exported per track. I imported everything into my new live set, and added everything in the right columns and with the colors I needed. I also started chopping the stems into sections so I could trigger some parts spontaneously.

After a few days of geeking out, I started playing the tracks to see how the flow felt and to see if the transitions were going well. I played with effects; trying to spice up the main ideas to surprise people. As I kept rehearsing and trying to see how to play the songs, I found myself becoming very bored out of what I was hearing. The thing is, when you spent months making an album, you get to a point where you can’t listen to your own music anymore – and playing it as is felt too safe, too simple.

Live at MUTEK Chile 2006

Live in Zurich 2005

I scrapped everything. I remember thinking that this whole series advising people on how to play live was crap but I realized that after going through it myself again, it still had a lot of value, but even I had done the preparations wrong. I remembered then how I used to LOVE playing live, 15 years ago and had a flashback excited me: pure improvisation. I realized that using stems wasn’t improvising enough and that my music is in itself, pure chaos.

I went back to my pool of sounds which didn’t make the cut originally and started chopping sounds, deconstructing stems, and re-exporting new parts. Then I started creating a space where I could remix the whole album on the spot, plus adding unexpected, unused sounds. Basically, it was combining the bass of track 2 with the melody of track 7, then percussion of track 4…pure remixing. I found a core idea for each moment of my set, and left a lot of space for reinterpretation. It worked and I was having a lot of fun.

My setup for this Set

I was using Ableton Push and 2 Novation Launch XLs, as mixers for all the channels (I ended up using 10). For some reason, each time I’ve tried using PUSH live, it has never really helped, but I felt this time I wanted to use it. I love the Novations so using 2 felt really amazing.

Limitations: My Macbook pro only has 2 USB ports so I needed a port to accommodate multiple items.

Soundcheck at Stereo

Soundcheck

Arriving at the venue, I felt really confident; perhaps too confident. The soundcheck went so smoothly that – in my experience – when that happens it gives you the feeling that something will go wrong later.

I had spent time in the studio carefully tweaking each channel with EQs to make sure the sound wasn’t to harsh or piercing. I also decided to use a Manley compression from UAD on the master which made everything really smooth. It was important to use a reference track as an EQ curve. It really paid off in Soundcheck so I didn’t have to do much; everything went so smooth.

TIP: Listen to your reference track before soundchecking, then play it to adjust an EQ on the master.

The show/performance

After a great start, shit started to hit the fan. As a track was playing, I noticed my mixer wasn’t responding and realized it had rebooted. By rebooting, it made the second mixer crash and the PUSH too. I wasn’t even 5 minutes in and the wheel of death was spinning on my Mac. I waited patiently and luckily it went back to normal. But after this glitch, I disconnected one of the Novations to plug it directly in my computer instead of the USB-Hub I had bought the same day (cheap connectors are always a big mistake!). PUSH was frozen and not doing anything, I had to activate clips with my mouse. Luckily from my experience playing live for so many years, I was able to do this in a way so that people didn’t notice. The Novations kept crashing one after the other. Each time I had to unplug them patiently to restart them, and then the wheel would go off on my computer; for some reason they would work for a good 20 minutes but then crash again.

Luckily, no one noticed anything! I could have really played a great show that night if everything had worked properly because Stereobar has the perfect setup for me…it was a bit disappointing, but I still received a lot of good feedback.

MUTEK Montreal 2006

Live in London 2005

After the show

Despite the technical issues, it was great show and fun nonetheless.

To summarize, a few tips here based on this live experience:

  • Don’t buy gear the same day without testing. Soundcheck are never 100% of what a show will be and can never be a real test.
  • Deactivate Ableton Live’s auto-update feature. It actually upgraded to a version the day before with a bug in it – a pretty big one. I had to reinstall the software and that was stressful. Thanks for the swift reply from Ableton tech support on that one.
  • Never panic when problems arise. Most of the time, people don’t notice.
  • Try to avoid shitty USB hubs! I’m still trying to find a better alternative.

I hope this series was helpful!

Storytelling through arrangements and song arrangement techniques

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When it comes to mixing and mastering, my work involves to listening to many, many songs. Some are great, while others need more love, but from the numerous songs I hear daily I can pinpoint one important thing that makes a song stand out the most: arrangements. I believe your arrangements and your song arrangement techniques are what really show your maturity as an artist.

Your track can have amazing sounds, a crazy good kick, and a really lovely mix, but if you have nothing to say, your song will not be memorable. Although, paradoxically, some songs are also memorable because they have no arrangements at all; no arrangements can also be a form of storytelling.

In this post, I’ll approach arrangements in two ways: the “technical” and “total”; a philosophical point of view. While so many people have different opinions about arrangements, there’s one thing that I feel is important to highlight: to invite you to step outside of the box of anything “commercial” sounding; so many articles at the moment are pointing out how every song sounds the same. I’ll also explain why.

Keep in mind: there is no magic wand recipe or solution for arrangements.

So fundamentally, how can we explain storytelling in electronic music? There are two critical points to keep in mind:

  1. Arrangements start with a simple idea that evolves. The clearer the idea, the more it becomes understandable from the listener. The catchier it is, the most memorable it is. Catchiness comes from being able to make something that people can have an emotional connection with. It is also known that, if we examine at the last 50 years of pop music, there are always songs trends through time. What makes a song “a hit” is usually when someone understand the current trend (which is “in demand”) and adds their own, personal twist to give it a “same old but different” feeling.
  2. Technical arrangements aim at creating music for DJs. One of the most exciting thing about making music for DJs is about being able to architect music that creates a structure that will find a logical place to move into another song, or to create a new song (as in 1+1=3, track 1, track 2 and the mix of both).

These two types of arrangements are different but can also be combined. They have different goals. The reason I find it important to relate this is, as a listener, you don’t listen to them in the same way. The first type, is what makes a track be a song. In terms of vocabulary, a track is music more oriented for DJs, that you can layer while a song is more about music that can be listened on its own and have its own story. Too often, I find that people who listen to tracks will go “something’s missing” but in theory, if that music is made to be layered, it’s because it has space for another song to be layered over it. I like to say that the track is part of a story that will be created by others and it’s important to let go of adding more and more layers. If you leave no space, how can another DJ use it?

So let’s talk about arrangements for tracks and what is useful to do/use.

  • Use a motif: For anything, always use a motif which can be a few notes or a loop. Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. If for instance, your motif is a simple two note melody repeating (note: Batman’s powerful motif was just two simple notes too!), then keep in mind that those two notes are simply the core, then add variants or supporting notes; ideas.
  • Define your logic and stick to it: Usually the first 1/3 of your song will define the logic of the rest of your song. For instance, if you mute the kick after 4 bars, keep that logic for the entire song. So, whatever you define in terms of muting,  or adding, stick to it until the end of the song.
  • Divide your song in thirds (1st third is the intro, 2nd is core, 3rd is the outro): Keep in mind that each section has a purpose and demands balance. It should have a surprise, some coherence, a punch and a transition.
  • Leave space: Miles Davis loved the silence between notes and often said they were what would give the true meaning of any phrase. If you find your entire hook for the middle part of your song, make sure you have variants of that idea, with holes/silence.

The importance of defining your own language in your music is important to create your own persona. We all know music is a form of communication and therefore, certain codes can be used in order to create phrases in your music. Everyone has a different view, but I’d like to share my personal lexicon. But let’s consider this: techno is 4/4 music which means a “round” is basically 4 bars long; this is also where DJs try to mix in/out. Each of your songs based on this premise will have better coherence if you keep to a similar logic, and the music will be understood faster by DJs.

  • A phrase is basically a bar long (4 beats). A paragraph is 4 or 8 bars long.
  • Making sounds repeat, is a period (“.”). You usually want to do it at the end of a bar if you are doing a long phrase, but you can also have a period to underline a sound that needs to express something. Rolling sounds help move on to the other bar as it creates energy.
  • Muting the kick or multiple sounds at once is a comma (“,”), it can also mark the end of portion and prepare for another. Muting creates a mini tension and creates anticipation.

Now, these are the basics we can play with.

  • You can slice your entire song structure to clearly see all of your 4 bars in distinctive blocks. This crucial action really helps see the outline of your song and see the organization.
  • I usually go sound by sound (channel by channel) and decide that some sounds will have a change at some point, let’s say X number of bars. For example: hi-hats have a tiny change (a period) every 4 bars, toms will have one every 2 and claps, every bars. Then you slice all the bars in shorter one to be able to edit in details.
  • Add decoration if needed in the same logic. If you started muting and creating space here and there, those areas can be good spaces to insert effects; little, subtle blurbs of sounds.
  • Be very aware of where your song has its main elements, and if it is respecting the logic you have set in the first third of your song.

A song that has balance and repeating events will never feel empty, boring, or pointless because people will consciously (or not) understand the language behind it.

Now look at how it repeats and also, I will try to keep sequences of blocks repeating. For instance, if I have 4 blocks repeating and then there’s a 2 bar silence, I will repeat that through the song.

This is a good example of what I call arrangement logic. You decide of how things happen then follow through.

TIP: Always vary how sound come in and out. You have 2 choices: the sound starts playing or fades-in. Try to have variation between the sounds and how to come in and out later on as well.

The most important part – and I’ll finish with this – is to keep in mind that you should always have a surprise for the listener, and if you surprise him/her, he/she will want to listen to your song again; so be audacious and sometimes, unpredictable. I love the 1-2 punch method: do something, repeat it so the listener goes “ah yes!” then when the listener expects it again, punch him/her with something he/she didn’t see coming.

I hope this helps!

Starting a label for the right reasons (Part 1)

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Every now and then, someone comes to me for mixing or mastering and will ask if I can introduce them to a label. In some cases, I do, but I can’t guarantee it will lead to anything in the end; sometimes it works and when it doesn’t. I often hear that in a reaction to this sort of rejection, people want to start a label. While I’m all for new labels, in this particular case starting a label might not be the right thing to do. Let me explain in a bit more detail:

Before we begin, let’s clarify two things:

  1. The main purpose of running a label is about commercializing your music because there’s a demand.
  2. An active label’s goal is to provide an aesthetic that has a correlation to the direction of the label, and to reach a target market.

Now, the main misconception people have about labels, which is reinforced by the fact that they are so easy to start nowadays, is that if you work with a label you’ll finally have the exposure you were hoping for. However, often times this is not what happens. “Yeah but it’s good music!”, I hear you say. Sure, it might be, but how will people know you exist?

“OK then, so how about I release on a respected label?”

Yes, you can try to do this, but you need to understand the effort required from the label to work on promoting you so you sell. Labels with reputations don’t jump on unknown artists that easily. It’s not a coincidence you see labels paying a fortune for PR to make sure the track is played by DJs so they say: “Supported by …”.

Often artists feel entitled and that their music should be known, and even popularized because they made a great song. Sadly though, when it comes to “music marketing” having a great song doesn’t even accomplish anything. You can compare it to a guy/girl who makes amazing food at home, then decides to open a restaurant. In both cases, the artist is in for quite a reality check.

That said, I know I sound perhaps negative here, but this is the kind of discussion I have on a weekly basis with people who start labels that end up resulting in a substantial loss of money, or artists that are focused on building one without having any network whatsoever.

Let’s reconsider the situation from a different angle. Let’s say you produce music, have a network of people liking it, playing it (eg. podcast, DJ sets) and talking about it. If you have a bit of capital to invest, you might be interested in commercializing yourself. But before starting a label, I would highly recommend doing something many start-ups do, which they call “guerilla marketing.”

guerilla marketing, musicGuerilla Marketing can be defined as a “low cost and sometimes disruptive marketing strategy to see the viability of an idea.” But mainly, it’s about doing something unusual to get attention. The best example I can share from my own experience would be one marketing blast I was part of in the early 2000s when Netlabels emerged, giving away music for free online and through any other possible channels. Giving away quality music was disruptive but also in tune with people who, back then, were also interested in getting music for free (note: it was in the golden age of music piracy and illegal downloads). In Montreal, in 2017, when it was said cannabis was going to be legalized, there was a guy who illegally opened four stores to sell it. He knew it was illegal and once it was shut down, everyone understood it was a publicity stunt for when it would be legal.

So then, how should you act?

Think of making your music a personal project

Don’t think about starting a label until you’re 100% sure you can get sales. In the meantime, what you can do is make a personal project that you can then promote with the technique I explained. One thing people often do is print themselves 100 copies where they give away most of them to all DJs they can get in touch with and sell some via a Bandcamp page, where you can sell your merchandise. I know some people that also use Discogs to sell.

Make sure that:

  • Your product sounds good with a quality mix and mastering.
  • Your project looks appealing. Although some people love going low key, using white label records for minimal costs and stamp them manually. You may ask a bunch of friends to help spray pain them with a template.

Find a channel of disruption

Where will you try to cause a stir of attention? There are a few options on the table:

  • Soundcloud: If you’re mainly digital, test the market by sharing your music with DJs. I regularly have some guys that send me music to play. No questions asked, they just want me to enjoy their music and I like that. Personally I think this rocks. This guy Loxique is extremely prolific and sends me music as well to other DJs and then posts videos of them when they play his tracks. He’s building his presence out there without even asking for a release because he knows eventually it will simply come to him, in due time. The logic is, if DJs play it and people see that, more people will ask to play it, creating a demand.
  • Social Media: the “me! me! look at me!” approach has become so overdone that it just annoys the hell out of everyone. This will sound weird but the best way to promote yourself is by promoting… others! Creating waves of support attracts people’s attention to what you do, without you having to talk about it. Let your music speak for yourself while you talk about others.
  • Festivals: Go to a festival with the idea you’re going to a golf course for business meetings. Stay sober and try to meet people without being aggressive. Be yourself, passionate and interested in others. When people ask about you, show your records you made or USB keys you prepared. Watch them be interested in return. That can establish contacts.
  • Stores: A bit like festivals, you can go and bring some records to the store. Some will agree to take them to sell them. But mostly, try to go when it’s busy and and to show that you have your own records; you’ll be surrounded by DJs. There might be a few in there interested in listening and who knows, maybe even asking you for a copy.

Have a backup voice

When we had the netlabels, we had a label managers that would be in charge of the website and online promotion channels. You don’t have to do everything yourself. Some people are really excited to be part of the adventure, and interested in doing something you don’t want to. It can be someone who is more gifted at communications, marketing, or social media. Teaming up now is sort of a rehearsal for when you might turn your project into a label (which will be covered in Part 2). But honestly, any successful labels have always been something of a few minds all together and not just a single one.

The reason why you want a second person to help you is simple: it’s easier to sell yourself if someone else does it for you. Find that person or find a few people who can do it for you. That will really be useful for your project.

In the next article, I’ll explain the steps to turn your project into a label. I will also explain how I started a label dedicated to help my clients.