Musician James Blake talked regularly about his plans for post-major life last year, as he put together a team of partner-companies to enable him to release independently.
Now the resulting album is out – ‘Trying Times’ – and independent label Good Boy Records has explained the business model behind it.
Blake found Good Boy Records through the Indify platform, and the label then worked with him to strike deals for distribution and global strategy (Virgin Music Group) and digital marketing (Stellar Music).
“All four parties, Blake, Good Boy, Stellar, and Virgin, contributed funding to the album and will share in its success,” explained the label, comparing it to the system that traditionally gave A&R execs ‘points’ in releases.
“For decades, the only people participating in the success of a record on the master side were the labels, artists, and sometimes producers,” said co-founder John Zamora. “We built this structure to extend that philosophy to the partners actually building the campaign.”
Blake talked to Variety about the album, describing the business model behidn it as “a massive success”. That includes selling out a tour in “under a minute” after spending time to build up his mailing list.
“The monopoly on venues means that I can’t actually do a certain level of touring — I can do direct-to-fan ticketing, but it’s very, very difficult to do an entirely independent tour,” noted Blake of the remaining challenges. “So that, I think, is going to take a while.”
