Stiff Records And Other Great Stories

Sunday November 16, 2008

I'm the last person who will tell you that you shouldn't take your music career seriously and treat it like a job. But I'm also the last person who will tell you that working in the music industry should be like working in the corporate world. Creativity, not the bottom line, is what really makes the music business go around, and the people that ignore that often do so at their peril. (In other words, the people who might as well be selling socks or lug nuts as music might start out with a bang but usually see the whole thing blow up in their face in due time.)

The music business is a business, but I think it's also pretty important to recognize that many of the most influential music companies were disorganized, broke and run in a way that would send shivers up the spine of most CEOs. Take, for instance, Factory Records. OK, sure, the label lost money on every single copy sold of one of their biggest selling releases (the New Order Blue Monday 12"), Tony Wilson agreed to send the Happy Mondays to Barbados to record an album (and spent over 500,000 GBP before pulling the plug), and eventually, the label lost the deal that would have saved it because they didn't have contracts with their artists. No business person would have given Factory the thumbs up. And yet, they're legendary, and the music the released continues to influence bands today.

Another case in point? Stiff Records. To give just a small taste of their story, the friends who started the label split when one of them threw a pack of empty cider cans through the office window. Still, they managed to sell 30,000 copies of an album called The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan - the whole album was silence - and at one point, they bailed out major label Island by loaning them $1 million. You won't find a lot of Stiff's decisions being lauded in your average business textbook, but yet again, their music and their ethos continue to inspire and shape the industry.

Of course, these labels are just two examples of many in the music industry who have done it their own way, but I think they illustrate an important point. Don't get so caught up in what's the right way to do this, or this business book says you have to have X, Y and Z to get started and so on and so forth. A lot of the best music business have been run by people who just found some music they loved and went with it. If you're trying for a music career, I think it's a good thing to keep in mind.