ReactionNow

Embracing Digital: Interview with 301Studios

Posted on 11. Feb, 2010 by Jesse Caffrey in Modern Music Biz, News

JSL, aka Sixfold

The top brass at Sony, Universal, EMI, and Warner may be ‘polishing the brass on the Titanic’, but many independent label owners today are embracing digital distribution and social media as a way to compete with the Big Four by bringing music straight to the niche markets.

Joshua Lexvold, better known as JSL aka Sixfold, is the artist, producer, and main man behind local electronica/hip-hop label 301Studios. He stopped by the ReactionNow office to discuss his label, the changing shape of music, and the necessity for embracing social media in today’s industry.

301Studios has been around since 2003? Yeah, roughly, that’s when my solo debut came out. We’ve been around since then, probably more actively and officially since ’05.

What big changes have you noticed in the industry these last seven years? Within the last few years, definitely since we’ve begun, people seem to want everything now. They want it digital, and sales are down overall. It’s tough.

Have there been any big challenges that the label has had to overcome to survive? You know, we’ve never really been about making big money, so not necessarily. We’ve just stuck it out through everything. Just trying to keep in touch with independent artists with a similar mind frame

Do you guys have an online distributor? Do you go through TuneCore or iTunes? We’re actually through Symphonic distribution, which is mainly an electronica distributor. They’re trying to branch out now into all genres now. They get everything out onto iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Napster…

Now, 301 does not have an actual recording studio – there’s just “studio” in the name? Yeah, it’s just in the name. It began in a studio, and 301 was the studio number. That’s how it began. But yeah, people confuse that a lot.

Do you take your artists out to local studios to record, then? Yeah, we will. We have connections with people that have studios. Otherwise most of our artist have home studios that are sufficient. We’ll just take the final mix and get it mastered. But yeah, If it comes down to it, we’ve sent artists out to studios.

How do you feel about the online file-sharing? Do you think that the promotional benefits for emerging artists outweighs the lack of revenue? Nowadays, yes I do. I would agree. It’s unstoppable; people are going to do it regardless. At first, with a few of our larger releases, we were trying to combat that, but it’s pointless. Some of our first larger releases had over 4,000 downloads on different torrent sites. It’s so much lost revenue, but there’s nothing you can really do to stop it entirely. Nowadays we’re actually trying to embrace it, and we’re putting out free EP’s and mix tapes, free singles, anything to try to get people to come out to shows and buy merchandise or albums.

Do you ever “leak” albums early as a promotional tool? No, we haven’t leaked anything aside from singles here or there, which is pretty standard. A few of our artists have leaked things from time to time.

How are you leveraging the Internet and digital distribution to increase awareness for your artists? I see that you’re established MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. Are you utilizing any other outlets to connect to fans and artists? Forums. Lots of forums. Becoming members on music forums, forums for certain genres. Also, ads on Facebook, and ads on MySpace.

Do you encourage your artists to participate on Twitter and Facebook? I do. It doesn’t happen all the time, unfortunately, but I tell them to get out there and at least post something once a day to interact with fans and keep them interested. We’re trying to ramp that up right now. We’ve got a few artists on the label that we’re working on.

Do you use any social media to scout out talent for your roster? Yes. A lot of the new artists we’ve been getting referred to us lately have been from interns or street team members. Or we’ll go out to a show and scout a couple of acts that we’re into. But when comes down to it and we’re looking for more artists, we’ll hit up MySpace.

What is the label looking for now when it comes to signing a new artist? I want to see someone that’s professional; that’s taking it seriously. Someone that has semi-professional photos up already, a decent bio that we can work with, and decent recording quality – because we can’t afford to throw someone in the studio on a consistent basis. Overall just professionalism and quality.

They say that the major labels will be gone within the decade, but that the smaller niche labels will thrive due to their low overhead and flexibility. What are your thoughts? How does 301 stay competitive? I think that would be a good thing. More attention towards Indie is good, in my opinion. As far as staying competitive, I think it’s all about the release schedule. Keeping consistent releases, keeping the label as a brand in people’s mind.

Other than giving away music, do you do any other promotional giveaways? We have, yeah, from time to time. At release shows we’ll give away prize packages, merch from the label and artists, compilations. We’ll do online contests from time to time.

Tell me about your radio show. The radio show is something that just premiered about two weeks ago. It was offered to me by another label based out of Brazil that runs a radio station – Discotheque Radio. I was sending my debut release out to different radio stations to try to get airplay. They contacted me, said they liked the release, and through some communication with them, found out that they wanted me to have a radio show. It’s every other week, Thursday, new episodes, it’s called Antifreeze, and it’s on discothequeradio.com.

Anything that you would want to mention to artists who are considering getting signed? Definitely make sure that it’s something that’s going to benefit you. I think that signing with a label – especially an indie label – allows the artist to focus more on the music, and less on the marketing and distribution. Make sure it’s something that you want to do and that it is beneficial, and just look for the right fit.

Any advice to new those looking to start up a label? Yes: it’s a lot of work – especially to keep up, to keep getting airplay, and to keep people interested. If you do, you have to attack all aspects of social media, and just keep doing it. I read a quote once that said ‘Be prepared to work about 23 hours every day… for a long time.’

Any upcoming events people should know about? Yeah, actually. One of our artists, Max Haben – he’s a local MC, getting a lot of buzz on different hip hop blogs – is throwing a show on February 23rd at the University of Minnesota. He’s performing with a guy named Matt Maher, who’s pretty big.

Tags: Antifreeze, discothqueradio, JSL aka Sixfold, ReactionNow, [310Studios]