http://media.www.34st.com/media/storage/paper1076/news/2002/10/18/34thStreet/Music.Subterranean.Sounds-2191473.shtml

El-P Interview.

For the owner of Def Jux, rapper and entrepreneur El-P, gaining financial control of his art was the main impetus for starting his label. “I don’t like having to explain my idea or vision,” says El-P, who parted ways with his former label Rawkus several years ago. “It’s okay to be mainstream, but you gotta work to get there and you gotta bring the music… A company without somebody’s soul is just a company,” says the New York native and former member of Company Flow.

At Def Jux, where the aim is to let the artists have freer reign, going on tour is a family affair. “The only reason they are even on my label is because they’re my friends,” says El-P. The Def Jux tour, which will go through 24 cities in a little over a month, also features West Philly resident RJD2 and stage master Mr. Lif. Even with a hectic travel schedule, El-P looks forward to recording in the future. “I’ve got some fire under my ass now,” El-P said. “I’m not waiting five years between albums anymore.”

...

Being involved in the business side of the art, Slug feels has made him “a smarter artist and a slicker business man.” Despite his modesty, Slug has a ridiculous work ethic even when off-tour, sometimes spending 12-hour days in the studio. But he doesn’t have any long term vision for his company or himself: “I take everything as it comes in terms of my ‘musical ‘career’… I’ve never been one of those guys who has a five year plan… I’ve already achieved the goals I’ve set out to achieve. Everything else is salad dressing.”

SOURCE LINK

When Amaechi Uzoigwe moved to New York, he had ambitions to work as a journalist or make films. He never expected to found one of hiphop’s most successful independent labels, Definitive Jux, known simply as Def Jux.

The label, launched in 1999 by Mr. Uzoigwe and his partner, rap guru El-P (born Jaime Meline), signs artists with a raw sound and a social conscience. Although most of Def Jux’s musicians are black, their music has been described as nerd rap and white boy hip-hop “because it’s intelligent,” Uzoigwe said. The acts - progressive artists with names like RJD2, Mr. Lif, Cannibal Ox, and Aesop Rock - caught on, often selling 60,000 copies of their albums, a feat for indie performers.

Mr. Uzoigwe considered it positive recognition when heavyweight rap label Def Jam sued Def Jux over the name similarity.

“Just the fact that they’re checking for us means we’re on the map,” Mr. Uzoigwe, 36, said, adding that the suit was settled out of court.

Now, Mr. Uzoigwe has a new plan to propel indie musicians further - helping them with their finances, an area many artists avoid, much to their detriment. The idea had been in the works for more than a year, but was cemented last month with the official founding of the financial management company World’s Fair, formed by Mr. Uzoigwe, Flaming Lips manager Scott Booker, and Kevin Wortiz, manager of folk singer Devendra Banhart.

“In this business, there’re a lot of creative people, but...they have no understanding of cash flow,” said Mr. Uzoigwe, who admits he gained his business skills by making numerous mistakes. “We make sure they make money.”

Mr. Uzoigwe also wants to make sure independent artist, who aren’t backed by multimillion dollar marketing budgets, get exposure. In a huge step towards this goal, Mr. Uzoigwe is helping organize this year’s Plug Independent Music Awards, the indie labels’ answer to the Grammys, which takes place in Park City, Utah, during the Sundance Film Festival.

“You can wait the rest of your life to be recognized by the mainstream,” he added.

Mr. Uzoigwe himself never fit squarely into any mainstream group. Born in London to a Nigerian father and an Irish mother, Mr. Uzoigwe’s fair complexion stood out in Africa, and he was the only black kid in his school in Ireland. His family moved often, following his Oxford-educated father’s professorial career, and the family lived in a number of European and African countries before settling in Ann Arbor, Mich. Mr. Uzoigwe developed his affinity for New York when his father - while working for UNESCO - brought him here on business trips.

“It was the electricity of the city and anonymity of the city,” Mr. Uzoigwe said in his nondescript Midwestern accent. “Here you can walk down the street and feel alone and surrounded at the same time in a very cool way.”

He moved to New York the day after he graduated with degrees in philosophy and English literature from the University of Michigan, where he also played football for a year. He rented an apartment with a college friend, actress Lucy Liu, of “Charlie’s Angels” fame, who got him a job at the wings joint, Pluck U. Eight months later, he was broke, miserable, and heading back to his parents’ house in Ann Arbor.

He took a year off, then returned to New York. And this time, he was determined to stay. Instead of riding high on New York’s expensive nightlife, Mr. Uzoigwe buckled down as a production assistant in the film industry.

With friends, he formed his own production company, Ozone, and began making music videos as a way to jump-start his film career.

Mr. Uzoigwe inadvertently became tangled in the music web when a hip-hop group he was shooting for a video asked him to review their new record label contract. He sorted through the legalities and the group asked Mr. Uzoigwe to act as their liaison with the label owner, then 18-year-old El-P.

The two met and immediately hit it off. El-P and his group, Company Flow - considered one of the most influential underground hip hop groups of the late 1990s - began recording albums at Ozone, and Mr. Uzoigwe became their manager. El-P ultimately moved to a larger label, Rawkus Records, but grew disgruntled, broke his contract, and founded Def Jux with Mr. Uzoigwe - the same year the first of Mr. Uzoigwe’s two daughters was born.

After seeing how little the music industry paid its artists, Mr. Uzoigwe and El-P made it a priority to treat their artists with respect, giving them creative freedom as well as a generous paycheck. All Def Jux artists reap 50% of all record royalties, while the label covers the overhead.

“If it was just about making money we all would have gone to law school or business school,” he said.

SOURCE LINK

Upstart Labels See File Sharing as Ally, Not Foe
By CHRIS NELSON

Four years ago, Rich Egan couldn’t fathom the usefulness of Napster.

Mr. Egan, the co-owner and president of the independent music label Vagrant Records, had heard about the software — which let users trade songs over the Internet without paying artists or labels — and could not imagine how such a setup could benefit his business.

But as soon as Mr. Egan tried it, he was hooked. Today he says — seemingly counterintuitively — his label simply would not exist without file-sharing services like Napster and its successors KaZaA and Morpheus.

Even as the major labels of the music industry pursue file traders for copyright infringement through lawsuits and the court of public opinion, Vagrant and many other independent label owners cheer them on. File sharing, these owners say, helps their small companies compete against conglomerates with deeper pockets for advertising and greater access to radio programmers.

“Our music, by and large, when kids listen to it, they share it with their friends,” Mr. Egan said. “Then they go buy the record; they take ownership of it.”

As the music industry suffers through its third consecutive year of falling sales, a decline the major labels say is primarily a result of file sharing, Vagrant is one of many independent labels having some success. Of the 100 top-selling albums of 2003 through Sept. 14, six come from independent labels and collectively have sold six million copies, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan. During all of 2002, only four independent releases made the Top 100 and together they sold 5.5 million copies.

And in an industry where the five major companies — the Universal Music Group, which is owned by Vivendi Universal; BMG, a unit of Bertelsmann; AOL Time Warner Inc.; the Sony Corporation; and the EMI Group — have more than 80 percent of sales, the independents have actually increased their market share this year by nearly a full percentage point.

By no means have the independents escaped the music business’s three-year sales slump. In 2002, album sales dropped 17.3 percent, to 650 million units, from the year-end total of 785 million units in 2000. They are down another 8.6 percent for the first eight months of this year, compared with the period last year. “The industry’s in a disastrous situation,” said Josh Bernoff, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. File sharing, illegal CD burning, competition from other entertainment and the weak national economy are all cited as contributors to a downturn that has led to layoffs and budget cuts.

In January, one of the best-known independent labels, Artemis Records, laid off 15 people, 40 percent of its staff, said Danny Goldberg, its chief executive, who started the label in 1999 after running major labels like the Mercury Records Group, Warner Brothers Records and Atlantic Records. “It’s a battle,” added Alan Meltzer, chief executive of Wind-up Records. “We go to war every day fighting for our little piece of territory.”

Nonetheless, the sense of worry that permeates the mainstream industry does not consume the independent labels to the same degree. Wind-up, which is distributed in the United States by BMG, is one of the more successful modern independents. “Fallen,” by the rock band Evanescence, has been a staple of the Top 10 for the last six months and has sold more than two million copies. Creed’s “Human Clay” (1999) has sold more than 11 million copies, making it the seventh-best-selling album since SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991.

For some independent label executives, their confidence stems from subscribing to unconventional barometers of success. (For this article, an independent label is one that is majority-owned by a person or group outside of the five majors, although it may be distributed by a conglomerate. Because the independent companies surveyed are privately held, none would reveal annual earnings.) Success for Vagrant, Mr. Egan said, means bands can make a living from their music. Most Vagrant albums turn a profit after selling 25,000 copies. Some albums on the independent Minneapolis hip-hop label Rhymesayers Entertainment can be profitable after selling just 10,000 copies, according to Siddiq Ali, the label’s co-owner and chief executive.

Financial success for a major label release often does not start until half a million copies are sold.

“None of us are buying Bentleys,” Mr. Ali said, but the label’s modest recording and promotion budgets are quickly recouped. The label’s best-selling album, “God Loves Ugly” (2002) by Atmosphere, has sold 71,000 copies.

Jaime Meline, who co-owns the Definitive Jux hip-hop label and raps under the name El-P, counts his company fortunate because it has cash on hand to pay for six months’ overhead and continues to split album earnings 50-50 with artists. (Major label artists often earn about 10 percent.) Definitive Jux’s most popular disc, “Fantastic Damage” (2002) by El-P, has sold 48,000 copies.

In recent years, major labels, much like the movie industry, have depended increasingly on first-week sales to determine whether a release will be a hit. The cost of bringing a CD to the public, which often includes hiring a consultant to get a single on radio and a top director to shoot a video, not to mention the tab for recording, can run into millions of dollars.

If a CD does not show smash-hit potential immediately, a major label is likely to stop promoting it to concentrate on the next possible blockbuster, sometimes even dropping the band. Independent labels will often promote an album, single or tour a year after a CD’s release. An informal survey of independent labels that vary in size from tiny (4 employees) to relatively large (50 employees), and in genre from rock to country to hip-hop, found executives crediting their successes to developing artists’ careers over the long haul rather than the pursuit of immediate hits.

A prime example is Vagrant’s rock band Dashboard Confessional. Their first album for Vagrant, “The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most” is also the label’s most successful release, having sold 434,000 copies. But it took two and a half years to reach that total, Mr. Egan said.

That constant promotion continues to pay dividends. Dashboard Confessional’s third album for Vagrant, “A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar,” was No. 2 at its debut on Billboard magazine’s album chart and has sold 256,000 copies in two months. The group is featured on the cover of the October Spin magazine and recently performed on “Late Night With David Letterman.”

“An artist may make his or her best record three albums in, four albums in,” Mr. Egan said. “We’d like to be there when they make that artistic statement.”

Building an artist’s career and building a fan base to support that career go hand in hand. As radio station playlists have shrunk in recent years, independent labels have turned to other avenues, including file-sharing software, to help listeners discover bands.

The unified response of the major labels has been an effort to shut the file-sharing programs, charging they foster piracy and, in turn, displace sales. On Sept. 8, the Recording Industry Association of America sued 261 file-sharers. The trade group represents the major labels and numerous independents.

Vagrant and Palm Pictures are among the independents that encourage file sharing. But even those who frown on it, like executives at Wind-up, Artemis and Definitive Jux, acknowledge that unauthorized downloading has been useful for exposing their artists to new audiences hungry for music.

“In artist development, file sharing — it’s not really hurting you,” said Chris Blackwell, the chief executive of Palm Pictures, an independent label manufactured and distributed by the Warner Music Group. Mr. Blackwell, who in 1959 founded the independent Island Records, the original home to Bob Marley and U2, likens file sharers not to shoplifters, as the major labels do, but to grass-roots promoters whose efforts eventually increase sales.

“You want people to discover your artists,” Mr. Blackwell said. “You’re building for the future.”

That tack may prove dependable, but it is still a volatile time in the industry.

“That’s the chess game,” said Mr. Meline of Definitive Jux, “to be able to hold on to the company and to still continue to grow while the rest of the industry is just completely going down in flames.”

Aesop on touring:
http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2007/08/aesop_rock_inte.html

W: Mainstream Hip Hop seems to be spiraling down in popularity right now. What are your thoughts on the state of underground Hip Hop?

AR: I think it’s going down also to be honest. (laughs) The underground craze hit its peak in 2001/2002 with Def Jux, Stones Throw, Rhymesayers and other underground labels getting popular. But once you get past being people’s critical darling, in order to get the same praise your new stuff has to be five times better than before, because there won’t be that ‘new artist’ shock anymore. I just hope that people can appreciate diversity and originality again. The underground always focused so hard on staying true to their art, and in the mean time saw the mainstream take off doing the opposite. In the underground you’re not suppose to be a biter, you’re suppose to bring your own shit to the table. No one in those crews is suppose to sound alike, all different styles. But then in the mainstream you’ll see a whole crew with one style. So I’m hoping maybe people will once again appreciate that originality and the diversity again, but I don’t see it happening. (laughs)

W: Your upcoming tour features Black Moth Super Rainbow. They’re kind of a rock band, but when I listened to them I connected them to Hip Hop right away as well. How did you hook up with them?

AR: I was looking to not do a bill with just 5 Hip Hop acts like I have on previous tours. That was cool too, but I wanted to switch it up and bring a band that my fans could appreciate. It was also important that it was a new band and just about the music, not about relationships. I came across BMSR, because my wife is a booking agent and she was sent their cd. They don’t have a traditional Hip Hop sound, but they also don’t have a traditional rock sound. But they do have sort of a Hip Hop drum pattern that I could rhyme over. It’s not Hip Hop, but it’s music I would sample to make Hip Hop. We also talked to Battles about doing a tour, and Octopus Project, but it worked out in the end with BMSR.

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2008/12/indie-def-juxs.html

n conjunction with US. independent music trade group A2IM (American Association Of Independent Music), we’re asking indie professionals: In this fractured media landscape, what is working? What outlets and tools are helping your artists build an audience?

In this 6th installment, Amaechi Uzoigwe of NYC based indie label Definitive Jux (Chin Cin, Aesop Rock, Dizzee Rascal) shares what is working for his label and artists:

“In addition to taking advantage of the usual suspects (itunes, myspace, blogs, touring), we’ve been able to successfully leverage the brands of both the label and our artists to create new exposure and revenue opportunities.

This includes a strong emphasis on merchandising (mainly t-shirts & hoodies), but also specialty items like limited edition vinyl and posters, belt buckles, jackets and even winter coats, which we sell from our website along with....

an assortment of digital music and video content. This year we successfully introduced our first sneaker line, designed by legendary NYC graffiti writer Phase 2, and in early 2009 we’ll begin selling music from other premier labels on our site.  We aim to use the merch as a vehicle to promote (and sell) the music, often including digital download cards with physical purchases. we’ve also now introduced blogs and forums to the site, which is having an amazing effect magnetizing traffic.  And the continued increase in our traffic results in a continued increase of sales for much of our catalog.

We’ve done some really cool partnerships with companies like Adult Swim/Cartoon Network to reach a much wider audience, and have worked with select corporate sponsors on tours, special events and merchandise.  For example, the backpacks we did with Brooklyn Industries were a big hit.

Musical collaborations have also been big for us - be it el-p with trent reznor/cat power/mars volta or remixing beck, NIN, ghostface, and all american rejects; aesop rock with john darnielle; cage with head automatica; dizzee rascal with ugk; or the mighty underdogs with damien marley - by tapping into their respective fan bases.

Our artists also have relationships with incredible graphic artists (i.e. aesop rock w/ jeremy fish, and cage w/ alex pardee) and through their collaborations on packaging, posters, videos and t-shirts they’ve been able to introduce each other to new audiences and benefit from the exposure.

We license a grip of music to TV, film and video games, which has also helped raise awareness for our artists and brand, and will be working even more closely with these mediums in the future.

We love making music videos at def jux and despite the tiny budgets, have been fortunate to receive some healthy airplay, on both network and online platforms, which has been another great way to expose our music.  We did a 52/52 campaign for aesop rock with MTV that was really effective.

We’re also very into digital platforms like youtube, imeem, pitchfork, fairtilizer and certain blogs, which do an amazing job spreading word to the digisphere and beyond.

And we are beasts with the touring.

But ultimately, by consistently dropping strong material, we’ll hopefully earn the right to grow in all kinds of new ways.”

Source:

http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/miscellaneous-retail-retail-stores-not/4569764-1.html

As the record industry weighs the long-term impact of new technology, Definitive Jux co-founder Amaechi Uzoigwe plans not to be caught unprepared.

In May, Uzoigwe’s hip-hop label launched its own digital download store. Now, Uzoigwe reveals that Def Jux will release only digital product for the remainder of 2006—an unprecedented move for a company of its stature.

Michigan-born Uzoigwe formed Def Jux in 2001 with producer/rapper and Company Flow frontman El-P, whom he managed. That was shortly after Company Flow parted ways with Rawkus, having grown increasingly uncomfortable with that label’s mainstream ambitions (it was about to announce a joint venture with MCA) and what Company Flow perceived as a lack of promotion.

In five years, New York-based Def Jux has become arguably the most recognizable name in independent hip-hop. In addition to El-P, the Caroline-distributed label is home to producer RJD2, rapper Aesop Rock and political hip-hop outfit the Perceptionists, among others. While El-P, RJD2 and Aesop Rock are not household names, their albums regularly sell more than 70,000 units, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Uzoigwe’s ambitions do not stop at underground hip-hop. In 2004, he formed management and marketing firm World’s Fair with Flaming Lips manager Scott Booker and Play It Again Sam America managing director Kevin Wortis.

In this Billboard interview, Uzoigwe discusses the growth of indie hip-hop and what he has learned about surviving in the digital marketplace.

Q: How is Def Jux doing at indie retail these days?

A: Indie retail is so trend-orientated. Now that Brit-rock and indie rock are the trend, that’s all they want to sell. Two or three years ago, it was all indie hip-hop. We did huge numbers out of indie retail. Now indie hip-hop isn’t the hipster music it was.

Q: Were you prepared for this declining support?

A: We had four or five artists who put up big numbers, so we were able to create a real solid platform for the future. We know we can sell X amount anytime Aesop Rock or El-P put out a record. It is not speculative. It becomes a question of how many we think we can sell, and we’re up for that. Maybe we thought it would keep growing and growing, and the cats from the underground would be mentioned in the same sentence as the major-label rappers. That hasn’t happened.

Q: With the creative differences that drove Company Flow from Rawkus, are you dead set against working with a major?

A: We’ve had plenty of discussions about that. We approach business realistically, and El-P has never been one to say he makes music for the masses and is going to make a radio hit. We’d rather keep the money. We know we can sell 100,000 records [worldwide]. For us, that’s a platinum hit. For a major label, that’s a big loss. We could take their bank loan, essentially, and be in debt for years, or we could do it ourselves. But the Rawkus experience left such a bad taste in our mouth. It just furthered our resolve to do it on our own, and have no one to blame or depend upon but ourselves. We didn’t want to play the game. You’re powerless, and you’re blaming other people for what they didn’t do.

Q: As a Caroline-distributed label, how closely are you watching the merger talks between EMI and Warner Music Group?

A: We’re watching that pretty closely. We’ve become pretty inured to it, though, because that talk has been going for years—about EMI selling itself or buying someone—and it never seems to come to pass. This time it seems more real. It seems like something is going down. We don’t know what to think. It’s so much out of our control. I think we’ll be OK because we do good billing, and we’ll be looked at as an asset.

Q: The shrinking indie retail base seems to have forced independent distributors to become more obsessed with volume, but there’s this tension there. A lot of labels are looking to the Web instead.

A: I agree, and in many ways what’s going on with the music business is a Hegelian dialectic of sorts, without sounding too academic about it. I think we are emerging from it and are heading to a place where the needs of consumers and business interests and technology will synthesize. I really believe we’re heading in that direction, but there is that pulling. Digital is awesome and amazing and everyone is in love with the idea, but physical sales are the dominant part of your revenue stream. It’ll be a few years before digital even comes close.

We’ve embraced digital commerce, but we haven’t abandoned physical. Best Buy is still way more important to us than iTunes. It doesn’t mean we’re going to neglect iTunes, and it doesn’t mean we’re not going to try and sell As
the record industry weighs the long-term impact of new technology, Definitive Jux co-founder Amaechi Uzoigwe plans not to be caught unprepared.

In May, Uzoigwe’s hip-hop label launched its own digital download store. Now, Uzoigwe reveals that Def Jux will release only digital product for the remainder of 2006—an unprecedented move for a company of its stature.

Michigan-born Uzoigwe formed Def Jux in 2001 with producer/rapper and Company Flow frontman El-P, whom he managed. That was shortly after Company Flow parted ways with Rawkus, having grown increasingly uncomfortable with that label’s mainstream ambitions (it was about to announce a joint venture with MCA) and what Company Flow perceived as a lack of promotion.

In five years, New York-based Def Jux has become arguably the most recognizable name in independent hip-hop. In addition to El-P, the Caroline-distributed label is home to producer RJD2, rapper Aesop Rock and political hip-hop outfit the Perceptionists, among others. While El-P, RJD2 and Aesop Rock are not household names, their albums regularly sell more than 70,000 units, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Uzoigwe’s ambitions do not stop at underground hip-hop. In 2004, he formed management and marketing firm World’s Fair with Flaming Lips manager Scott Booker and Play It Again Sam America managing director Kevin Wortis.

In this Billboard interview, Uzoigwe discusses the growth of indie hip-hop and what he has learned about surviving in the digital marketplace.

Q: How is Def Jux doing at indie retail these days?

A: Indie retail is so trend-orientated. Now that Brit-rock and indie rock are the trend, that’s all they want to sell. Two or three years ago, it was all indie hip-hop. We did huge numbers out of indie retail. Now indie hip-hop isn’t the hipster music it was.

Q: Were you prepared for this declining support?

A: We had four or five artists who put up big numbers, so we were able to create a real solid platform for the future. We know we can sell X amount anytime Aesop Rock or El-P put out a record. It is not speculative. It becomes a question of how many we think we can sell, and we’re up for that. Maybe we thought it would keep growing and growing, and the cats from the underground would be mentioned in the same sentence as the major-label rappers. That hasn’t happened.

Q: With the creative differences that drove Company Flow from Rawkus, are you dead set against working with a major?

A: We’ve had plenty of discussions about that. We approach business realistically, and El-P has never been one to say he makes music for the masses and is going to make a radio hit. We’d rather keep the money. We know we can sell 100,000 records [worldwide]. For us, that’s a platinum hit. For a major label, that’s a big loss. We could take their bank loan, essentially, and be in debt for years, or we could do it ourselves. But the Rawkus experience left such a bad taste in our mouth. It just furthered our resolve to do it on our own, and have no one to blame or depend upon but ourselves. We didn’t want to play the game. You’re powerless, and you’re blaming other people for what they didn’t do.

Q: As a Caroline-distributed label, how closely are you watching the merger talks between EMI and Warner Music Group?

A: We’re watching that pretty closely. We’ve become pretty inured to it, though, because that talk has been going for years—about EMI selling itself or buying someone—and it never seems to come to pass. This time it seems more real. It seems like something is going down. We don’t know what to think. It’s so much out of our control. I think we’ll be OK because we do good billing, and we’ll be looked at as an asset.

Q: The shrinking indie retail base seems to have forced independent distributors to become more obsessed with volume, but there’s this tension there. A lot of labels are looking to the Web instead.

A: I agree, and in many ways what’s going on with the music business is a Hegelian dialectic of sorts, without sounding too academic about it. I think we are emerging from it and are heading to a place where the needs of consumers and business interests and technology will synthesize. I really believe we’re heading in that direction, but there is that pulling. Digital is awesome and amazing and everyone is in love with the idea, but physical sales are the dominant part of your revenue stream. It’ll be a few years before digital even comes close.

We’ve embraced digital commerce, but we haven’t abandoned physical. Best Buy is still way more important to us than iTunes. It doesn’t mean we’re going to neglect iTunes, and it doesn’t mean we’re not going to try and sell our own digital stuff.

Q: A month into operating your digital store, what have you seen?

A: We’re seeing thousands, and I probably shouldn’t reveal the revenue, but it’s been thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. We’re selling full albums. About one-third of our sales have been videos.

All it has done is to underscore the fact that in order to make this work we need to market, market and market. We’re really doubling down on it, to the point where we’ve decided not to release any more physical CDs this year.

Q: Zero physical releases?

A: Only digital.

Q: What about upcoming albums by El-P, Aesop Rock and Company Flow?

A: All for next year. We could put physical stuff out this year, but we decided if we’re picking up this flag and waving it for digital commerce, we should go all out and really invest into this service and force people to deal with us on those terms. It’s a risk, but a calculated risk. We feel this is the future.

Q: So what is coming out online?

A: We will have exclusive music from all the aforementioned, plus the whole roster. Most of the stuff we will debut on our site exclusively, and some stuff will stay on our site exclusively. We’re loading the [site] with all our big dogs. This is not an ancillary thing. This is not an experiment. I don’t think people will take us seriously if we don’t take it seriously. Let’s put our money and our quality music into it. We’ll see. In a couple of years we’ll either be idiots or geniuses.

Q: Is this the first step to becoming an all-digital label?

A: That is something we have talked about, and maybe down the road that will happen. But we’re not ready to make that leap. We do too much solid business physically. We have great relationships with our distributors, and we’re not abandoning that. It’s where most of our money is, and we’d be remiss to take our foot off that pedal. But we are doing digital-only releases, and using that vehicle to test-drive new stuff, and we have a line of other labels who want us to do for them what we did for ourselves. We’re turning this into a new business, and will be creating and hosting Web sites.

Q: Exactly how will the digital offerings test-drive new stuff?

A: It is a way to test-drive new artists. iTunes is a one-way interface. On our site, fans will comment on the music and tell us what they like and don’t like. We’ll know if they’re feeling it or not, and if an artist is ready to go physical. It also prevents us from spending all this money on an artist and having them be $50,000 in the hole. It’s just safe, and our artists understand it and embrace it.

Q: Are your fans ready?

A: That’s a hell of a question, and we don’t know. We shall see. If we’re that convinced that this is the bridge to the future, we may as well help build it, and figure out how much of an impact digital will have. It’s harder to do that when you’re on the sidelines of an iTunes or eMusic.