You may remember from Frank’s “4 Albums, 1 Year” series of posts that we had plans to shop his upcoming 4 albums to record labels. So here’s the update to that part of the story!
Why would you want a record label anyway?
Frank’s first 4 albums, that were released from 2007-2014, were all self-released. To tell you the truth, we were so busy working on them that we never even thought of signing them to a label (I think we’re also a bit of control freaks and didn’t want any other cooks in the kitchen 🙂 )
But this time around, we came to our senses (a bit) and realized the benefits of working with a label – they do a lot of the work for you! From creating the album art, to letting music media know about the release, to getting the albums distributed, whether physically and/or in digital locations like iTunes and Spotify, etc.
So far we’ve shopped 3 albums around to labels (the 4th, Love in 6 Stages, is still being recorded). From those three we’ve had label offers for two of them (The Current Agenda & You Haven’t Been). The third album, Me to We, only has three tracks on it, so that was a long shot to find a label who’d want to do all that work just for three tracks.
Deeper dive
With the search for a label complete, you do a deeper dive into what services they’ll provide for your release and of course, what does that big legal document you have to sign to climb on-board look like… Well, it was a tough decision but our gut didn’t feel right about both the legalese and how much time they’d be putting towards our releases. It was a hard decision because there weren’t any glaring issues but still little things that when you add them up you begin to wonder, well, what if we just did this ourselves??
What do you do if you don’t want to sign to a label?
You setup your own! The greats have their own labels – from Philip Glass to Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman and Beyoncé. They’ve all created their own labels to allow for the ultimate creative control and to ensure that their music releases are the top priority of the people releasing them.
So, let me introduce you to our own record label – I Am Who I Am Records! It’s first 4 releases are coming this Fall and I can guarantee you they come from the heart of the creator – he is who he is – and this new label is ecstatic to be working with him 😉
