Haley in the studio

[kaypea]

5 Points discovered her at a songwriting conference and signed her to a multi-record deal. They paid a well-known producer (who had worked with Paul McCartney) $50,000 and gave Lana "a significant advance." They put out an EP under Lizzy Grant and a programmer at Apple liked it. "So we got featured based on the EP as one of the iTunes emerging artists of that year."

And then we were moving towards the whole album and that’s when things shifted. She wanted to change her name, got new management, they wanted to change the record.

...The manager came in and was insulting about the record, and I thought, “Wow, we’re an indie label, we got David Kahne to produce this record and you’re negative about it.”

...We put out the album digitally and at first she wanted it “R-A-Y” and then we did one version of it that way, and then she wanted to change it to “R-E-Y” so that was now the third name we were using to promote that artist. Shortly after that, her and her new manager came in and said “We want to get this off the market. We’re going for a completely new deal. We’ll buy you out of the deal.” So we made a separation agreement.

So that’s why it never came out?

They literally insisted. That’s in the contract. We can’t have any reference to it anywhere. They were following up on it weekly, “Oh, there’s an obscure website in outer-Mongolia that still has a reference to it, can you tell them to pull it down.” We did. We took it off iTunes and never released it as a hard CD.

http://www.mtvhive.com/2012/01/30/lana-d...interview/

So, a small label made a significant investment in her. She got some recognition on iTunes. Then her management bought them out of the deal (btw, Lana's father is wealthy). In doing so, they wanted to make sure Lana's earlier songs were not available anywhere on the Internet.

I read the article and from what I can tell it appears that her first big hit-Video Games was self produced-that is after they bought out of her contract with 5 Points-unless I'm missing something.But either way-they may not have wanted her earlier songs on the Internet but they wanted Video Games on You Tube and my main point was that at the time when they posted it on You Tube that she didn't have a record deal and it wasn't until after it had racked up the millions of views that she got signed by Interscope.

[Miguel]

My bigger point was Lana was unsigned because she wanted to be. She had been signed to a minor label while in college and broke with them because she had interest from bigger labels.

SPIN:

The mistaken assumption that's constantly central to the argument against Lana Del Rey is that she is a valence for DIY/indie culture, which she's never purported to be. She played daytime industry showcases at overlit venues in Midtown for years, taking meetings at majors since mid-2010...Blogs and tastemaking websites just assumed that they noticed her first, when, in fact, they were two years behind a pack of lawyers and A&R scouts, eager to sign an artist who was pre-formed, a total package.

Interscope don Jimmy Iovine gave Jackson his blessing to sign Del Rey on the basis of seeing an unfinished version of "Video Games" on YouTube. Del Rey signed a worldwide joint deal with Interscope and Polydor in March 2011...

[kaypea]

My bigger point was Lana was unsigned because she wanted to be. She had been signed to a minor label while in college and broke with them because she had interest from bigger labels.

SPIN:

The mistaken assumption that's constantly central to the argument against Lana Del Rey is that she is a valence for DIY/indie culture, which she's never purported to be. She played daytime industry showcases at overlit venues in Midtown for years, taking meetings at majors since mid-2010...Blogs and tastemaking websites just assumed that they noticed her first, when, in fact, they were two years behind a pack of lawyers and A&R scouts, eager to sign an artist who was pre-formed, a total package.

Interscope don Jimmy Iovine gave Jackson his blessing to sign Del Rey on the basis of seeing an unfinished version of "Video Games" on YouTube. Del Rey signed a worldwide joint deal with Interscope and Polydor in March 2011...

Right-at some point she was unsigned because she didn't want to be.But she did make the decision to put the video on You Tube and then after that at some point she couldn't turn down an offer from Interscope and wouldn't have eventually sold 4 million albums if she had.

I guess my point in this is in regards to where Haley is at right now.She's unsigned and has recently recorded a bunch of new songs.So at this point does she have to wait for a new record deal or can she at least get the ball rolling by herself.She's probably got at least as much name recognition as Lana did before she took of.Obviously what happenned with Lana doesn't happen all the time but its at least food for thought.