In his weekly Indie Mixtape email, music critic and author Steven Hyden introduced the idea of a Record Label Draft. This is how it works: You are starting a record label. You get five picks. You can pick them in any order, but you must have one of each category, as listed below. Also: This is not an all-time draft — you are picking artists/bands as they stand right now. (You are not allowed to pick Led Zeppelin circa 1971.) The categories are below in bold with my responses in italics. Since the rules allow for drafting in any order, I am moving the “first” category in his email to the end. That was an especially difficult one.
Prestige Artist — Someone who doesn’t do big commercial numbers but gets great reviews and/or is a legacy act.
Evanescence
Yes, the mention of their name stirs the hearts of their ardent fanbase of which I am one. But Evanescence has only released two albums since 2017 and while they reached Billboard #8 (Synthesis) and #11 (The Bitter Truth), neither attained certified Gold status. However, while their best commercial days are behind them in terms of album releases, the band is still touring the world, and with 12 million monthly Spotify listeners Evanescence stands at #618 of Spotify’s Top Global artists[1]. Those 12 million listeners will make the cash register ring.
[A note about monthly listener numbers in this post. One study found that 77% of the music streamed comes from only 1% of the artists[2]. With approximately 11 million artists on Spotify, the one-percenters are the top 110,000, so you’re for sure getting a bag at #618.]
High Streamer — Someone who is largely ignored by the media but does big streaming numbers.
Melanie Martinez
For the record (pun intended), I hate her new album Portals but this is the record business – and by the business I mean the industry – and in the record business you want compelling and captivating artists. Melanie, at #440 on the list of Spotify’s Top Global artists with 15m+ active monthly listeners, is certainly that.
She’s had something of a DIY career. She finished 6th on The Voice in 2012, having auditioned without ever watching the show. I really liked her but also understood that she was too weird for a mainstream TV show. Melanie got signed to a record deal by Atlantic before having much original material. My Daughter Diandra (MDC) and I saw her at a very small local venue – a coffee shop with a little stage – twice. The first time she had no original material. The second time, she had a few songs. Both times she repeatedly looked over at her Dad for guidance as to what to sing next. By the third time I saw her in the back area of a brewery that no longer books shows for music, she had released an EP. And then she released her first full album that went double platinum. Her 2015, 2019, and 2023 albums reached #6, #3, and #2, respectively on Billboard.
Melanie is the kind of artist you want on a label. She is unique – odd? – in a way that her stans found her rather than having marketing try to find out who her audience is. The result is that she has built a large, loyal, and patient (albums every four years) fanbase. Even if I don’t get her new album.
Solo Artist 28 Years Or Younger — A person with a lot of potential upside that you can lock in for a long time.
Billie Eilish
This was tough. I had two names right away: Billie Eilish and Dua Lipa. But those two names make the word “potential” problematic as they have achieved so much already. Dua has 70m monthly listeners (#11 globally) and three Grammys. Billie has 60m monthly listeners (#21 globally) and six Grammys. But I’m going for Billie on the strength of her incredible songwriting ability, believing that will have greater longevity. She is THE voice of Gen Z. For my record label, I would bet that her stans will grow old with her just as Taylor Swift’s fans have with Taylor.
That said, if I had Dua on my label, I’d be selling her as the Bond babe in a movie with her singing the theme song. I cannot believe that this hasn’t already happened.
Band with three or fewer albums — Same as above but a band, i.e. potential upside that you can lock in for a long time.
Gabriels
That one is easy and I have already blogged about them. Since writing that, their debut album opened at #3 in the UK. I also like the possibility of lending out Gabriels’ fabulous lead singer Jacob Lusk for one-offs, like this dance bop he recently did with The Blessed Madonna.
** Sacred Cow — A band or artist you sign purely out of personal love. **
Last category. This one is hard. I can literally have ANY current artist I want. But I can have only one.
The Thinking side of me immediately went to My Girl Dua Lipa, who I have loved going back to 2016 BEFORE her first album. And I like money, so running a label with a global artist who’s crushing it on ALL forms of streaming and social media, and one I loaned out for the Barbie soundtrack is really appealing.
But “artist you sign purely out of personal love” . . .
That word “purely.”
The Feeling side of me said, “Hold up, Ray. Sure, the business of music is intellectually fun, but YOU love music because of the way it makes you feel. A lot of those feelings can be found strewn across the graveyards of careers of artists you loved that didn’t make it (RIP Machineheart, VersaEmerge, The Benjamin Gate. Your premature demises still haunt me.) And a lot of those feelings are found in the frustrations of artists you love not getting all the flowers they deserve.
Having my own label means I can show my love by signing these artists myself. I’m the one who loves them the most, so I should Be the One [cue Dua’s first hit single] to draft them. If this draft pick is based purely on Only Love [cue Steve Perry], then there are a few current artists I have felt a way about for longer than My Girl Dua: Jessie Ware. Katy B. Adam Lambert. Each is an artist I absolutely adore and the rules of this draft game is that I can have any of them.
But only one. Ugh. And my financial people are telling me how much the difference between Dua’s 70m monthly Spotify streams and Adam’s (3.4m), Jessie’s (2.9m), or Katy’s (795K), are going to cost me. Those dollars have my Thinking side’s attention.
But this is about the PURE, PERSONAL LOVE OF MUSIC!!! What kind of price can you put on that? And since we’re talking about love, there are few things I love more than discovering artists in their embryonic stages (see Gabriels, above; and Dua Lipa). So that’s why I am drafting River Iris, who I’ve followed since 2020. She is a delightfully clever pop singer-songwriter near the bottom of the music streaming food chain with 8,654 monthly listeners.
I discovered her when my favorite podcast[3] which plays songs submitted by their pod listeners played her song So Tempting. I was immediately enamored with her sound. River is emblematic of the independent artist swimming upstream to find an audience against the 50,000 songs per day that get added to Spotify. I love her music. It’s light, breezy, catchy, and melodic. It’s clever without being complicated.
She’s someone I want very much to succeed and if I were starting a label, part of the vision would be seeing some artists on the roster going from zero to hero.
Even if my Thinking side constantly reminds me that Dua would make me much, much, much more money.
That’s a wrap. You don’t want to know how many hours I spent laboring over this, especially that last draft pick. Still, it was a fun challenge! Hopefully, you enjoyed me sharing a bit of my musical mind.
[1] All data from https://kworb.net/spotify/listeners.html
[2] https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2019/10/a-breakdown-of-music-streaming-monetization-flow.html#:~:text=Out%20of%20the%202%20million,77%25%20of%20all%20artist%20revenue.&text=While%20this%20figure%20may%20not,artists%20at%20a%20serious%20disadvantage.
[3] The Tony Kornheiser show is a non-music-related podcast. Rather than pay for music to use on the pod, he supports little-known musicians by having his listeners send in their music.
Ray's Musings 