RCRD LBL Founder Responds To Music Label Doubts Over Brand Relationships

This post on Valleywag made us reach out to Peter Rojas of RCRD LBL and ask him for his reaction to a panel at SXSW where the music execs seem to be rejecting online marketing and relations between music makers and brands. Valleywag reports:

“I need more marketing and promotion on the Internet like I need a root canal without anesthetic,” Capitol Records’ Ted Mico told an audience at the “Ad-Supported Music, a New Hope for the Industry?” panel today at the South by Southwest conference in Austin… Beggars’ Group’s Simon Wheeler said, “Promotion is great, but only when it’s built on a sound commercial base.”

Peter wrote to us and said:

So on one level I get what they’re saying: that after a certain point the free “promotional” use of their music becomes a substitute for people actually buying their music. To me that means that you shouldn’t be in the business of selling music, since it’s impossible to stop people from enjoying it for free; for them it means that they need to get online music services to agree to licensing arrangements that value music at what they think it’s worth.

The problem is that what the labels think their music is worth and what the market thinks it’s worth are very different things right now. That doesn’t mean that music has no value — I certainly don’t believe that, otherwise I wouldn’t have started a music site — but that there isn’t as much value in at as a retail object.

That said, I’d be happy to take all of the marketing and promotion that Ted Mico doesn’t want!

RCRD LBL

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