Second Label Signing - rumor

[Miguel]

YouTube comment on "Free" and some speculation:

PJ ‏@PJHaleyR 20m

well I hope this is a true comment underneath the Haley Reinhart free video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1ed3bSjqSI … pic.twitter.com/fiblojyvJ0

Miguel ‏@HaleyFansDotCom 11m

@PJHaleyR Person is located in Nashville. If true, Big Machine or their VM subsidiary? Haley's cousin said BM almost signed her as a teen

PJ ‏@PJHaleyR 9m

@HaleyFansDotCom seems to have sony connections. that would be awesome if its tied to big machine.

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Miguel ‏@HaleyFansDotCom 6s

@PJHaleyR Hmm. Founder of BM "just forged a landmark music publishing partnership with pop superproducer “Dr. Luke” http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleyg...est-label/ …

[mercfan3]

I haven't seen all the posts in this thread, but is "Dr. Luke" associated with Haley in some capacity?

I just want our girl signed. New Haley music! And a tour! plz...

[abc890]

Hey guys,

Did some investigating... and their is a connection to BM. Check out his comments on this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKJxwK9MnPE

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Hypothetically, if she did sign with BM... I can see that being a good place, especially if she wants to go more blues/rock

[mercfan3]

BM is a good label. I would have said they were more country, but with the news that they've added a pop element..(and since most of their acts are more crossover anyway..) I'm okay with Haley being there.

Plus, if she's there first pop act signed, they'd likely invest some.

[Miguel]

From abc890's link:

sc1212able 5 days ago

IF you ever get back to nashville are studio is yours at no charge, my problem is keeping everything rolling smoothe, between the studio, we do video productions for the OPRY, and just landed a contract with THE BIG MACHINE, lots of work

Thanks for doing some homework. I tried but had a poor Internet connection at work today.

PJ first said on Twitter that sc1212able had a connection to Sony. He followed that up by saying he was an indy label: "Sidewalk Records."

I was able to find an old YT comment where sc1212able said was a producer for Sony. And another where he played a video and said 30 people gathered around.

So I was starting to think he probably had his own label but did production work in town. Your find appears to confirm that.

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He said this four months ago on Tusk's KCB Vegas video:

thank you for this upload,she is so amazing

He said this 8 months ago on my HTGR video:

every time I watch one of her videos I cant sleep for days , she is going to be so huge

He said this on the "Free" video in March:

SIDEWALK RECORDS should sign her, they? are good label that care more about the artist, than all the money they can bank.

Hmm

[Tusk]

I'm usually skeptical, just seems like someone creating buzz.
I could be wrong, have been before....
On one hand I'm not sure Haley is done with 'name labels just yet. She could go independent labels any time.
But at such a young age, with a ton of potential as well as extremely positive buzz from industry people, I would think she isn't done reaching heights that 'name' label can afford

On the other hand, her label hiatus has given her the opportunity and exposure to more song writing experience, which, if signed to an Indy label, would be less pressure so she can play around a bit, experiment. A big label, you wouldn't have that freedom, a bottom line situation.

Either situation has upside, I just think Haley's not done playing with the big boys yet

[Miguel]

Kyle Brooks ‏@Taithleach 5m

@HaleyFansDotCom @PJHaleyR I sent him a message on YouTube asking what record label and he said Compass Records pic.twitter.com/Vvke8DQ3O9

[taperjean_girl]

BM is a good label. I would have said they were more country, but with the news that they've added a pop element..(and since most of their acts are more crossover anyway..) I'm okay with Haley being there.

Plus, if she's there first pop act signed, they'd likely invest some.

Very happy if its true. I actually don't mind Haley experimenting with a more country sound. Her voice fits quite comfortably in that genre IMO.

[Miguel]

Compass Records:

Co-founded in 1994 by musicians Alison Brown and Garry West, Compass is a new breed of roots-music label: eclectic, sophisticated, and artist-friendly. Called “one of the greatest independent labels of the last decade” by Billboard Magazine, Compass Records has provided a thriving haven of creativity for artists and a reliable beacon of quality for music fans. Its 2006 acquisition of the Green Linnet catalog and the 2008 acquisition of the seminal Mulligan Records label has made Compass the place to go for Celtic and roots music.

Wikipedia:

Nashville-based independent record label founded in 1995 by musicians Garry West and Alison Brown. Currently home to nearly 100 folk, bluegrass, Celtic, jazz, and new acoustic artists, the label releases about 20 records a year.

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July 2009 article excerpt:

"Every Day Is Different."

An interview with Alison Brown, CFO, Compass Records.
Edward Teach, CFO Magazine


Some CFOs may play a musical instrument, but how many have won a Grammy? Alison Brown has. She's a critically acclaimed banjo virtuoso whose distinctive style blends bluegrass with jazz and other musical genres. She's also finance chief of Compass Records, an independent, artist-run "roots music" label that produces albums ranging from bluegrass, folk, and Celtic music to adult pop and jazz.

Brown launched Nashville-based Compass in 1995 with husband Garry West, who plays bass in her quartet. You may not hear Compass artists like Paul Brady or Beth Nielsen Chapman on mainstream radio, but they have nevertheless attracted devoted followings.

Along with her musical prowess Brown brings serious business chops to the CFO job. In the 1980s, after earning an MBA, she spent two years as an investment banker with Smith Barney before leaving to follow her lifelong passion for music. That led to a three-year stint with bluegrass star Alison Krauss and her band, Union Station. Later, Brown recalls, during a European tour with folk rocker Michelle Shocked, she and West "were sitting in a café in Stockholm one morning, and we started to think about what the aspects of a good life would be. We came up with this idea for a record label and a recording studio and a publishing company and live touring."

Today they are living that good life — but it's a busy one, requiring them to balance the demands of making music, running a business, and raising two young children. In June, two months after the release of her latest CD, The Company You Keep, Brown, 46, talked about the challenges of keeping Compass on a profitable course.

Many executives have noncompete clauses, but in your case it affected your musical career — you couldn't record for Compass at first.

I was still under contract with Vanguard; I had signed a four-record deal with them when I was playing with Alison Krauss. But that wasn't a problem, because when we started our company it was just the beginning of the artist-run-label boom, and it was important to us that people not think of Compass as a label that we started for our own music. I've done 6 records for Compass out of the 600 that we have.

Many aspects of the music-industry business model have changed in the past decade, in ways that many CFOs can relate to.

When we started Compass, independent labels went through regional distribution. It was common to have eight distributors that would cover the United States. Also, distributors paid on invoice back then. You shipped some records off and 30 days later you'd get a check from the distributor, whether they had sold the records or not, or even whether they had shipped them out of their warehouse or not. Then retailers and distributors got more savvy about their inventory and everything became computerized, and they switched to a consignment model.

Meaning distributors pay only for what they ship out?

Exactly, and it's very challenging. Anything can come back from retailers at any time. We'll see records come back that maybe shipped 10 years ago. And when they come back the distributor charges a restocking and refurbishment fee. So you never know exactly what your exposure is.

That was one big change. Shortly thereafter, distributors for roots labels got consolidated under a handful of national distributors. Then big-box retailers like Circuit City and Best Buy decided to sell CDs at loss-leader prices to bring people into their stores. All of a sudden the mom-and-pop retailers that had been an important foundation for independent music started going out of business.

And on top of that you have the huge transition to digital files and Internet sales, which caused CD sales to decline. How has the trend affected Compass?

Our demographic is older than kids; I'd say it's ages 25 to 100. In our experience, that demographic still wants physical product. Our artists sell tons of CDs at shows. And Garry always says, "You can't autograph a download." We believe that in our world of roots music, where a lot of it is touring-based and live-performance-based, there's still a place for CDs.

That said, the Internet has made digital sales more important. We started selling through iTunes in 2005, and now our digital business represents about 25% of our total volume. But there's a gap between CDs and digital in terms of cash flow. You got used to a business model of shipping out, say, 200% or 300% more copies of a CD than you were going to sell, and trusting that in return would come a chunk of cash that would help pay for the cost of producing that CD. With digital you don't have that surplus cash. And if all you're doing is netting 70 cents on a digital track or $7 on a full-album download, the business model will have to change.

What's a good sales figure for one of your releases?

It's nothing like the numbers that the major labels deal with. Our most successful records sell between 20,000 and 50,000 units.

How has business been lately?

Our sales last year were the best they've ever been. It was a big release year; we had a lot of our core artists making records. So that skewed the numbers a bit. Even taking that into account, our overall gross revenue has been on an upward trajectory. However, we've seen a downturn starting with the fourth quarter [of 2008]. Retailers' credit is being squeezed like everybody else's, so it's really affecting their willingness to buy records.

How many artists does Compass have under contract?

At any given time we probably have 20 to 30 active artists who are touring. We put out about 20 front-line releases a year and some catalog reissues.

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2006 article excerpt:

Brown's only regret is she wishes the business could have gotten off the ground faster. She and West really didn't know how to run a record company, so there was a huge learning curve, which was time consuming and absorbed a lot of capital. "We realize we climbed a small mountain," says Brown.

Before starting up Compass, West and Brown came up with a business plan, as well as cash flow projections. They invested all the money they had to launch Compass, and accepted additional financial support from a partner they won't name. The label has been run as leanly as possible, with Brown and West giving themselves only modest salaries.

Compass ties its initial success to a fluke. It put a large portion of its seed money into distribution of releases from an Australian label. Unexpectedly, Compass sold thousands of copies of one of the releases, a video of visual music, at The Nature Co. retail store. "Coral Sea Dreaming" featured undersea footage of a coral reef accompanied by a New Age soundtrack. The sale of 50,000 videos at $29.95 apiece helped fund the label's operations. Without the success of the video, Compass might not have survived. It only began with about $150,000 in working capital, which wouldn't have lasted very long.

The best part of being an independent label, says West, is being able to tailor Compass' efforts to achieve goals that are important to the label and important to its artists. From the beginning, a model was created for how the label should be aesthetically, how its reputation will be built and how it would work with its artists.

"As you build the label," says West, "you tend to pick the artists that fit that model."

Compass artist Beth Nielsen Chapman, a Nashville-area singer-songwriter, says that the label operates from the artist-out and that it's very artist-friendly. "They're great people who are coming from a place of being musicians first," says Chapman.

The difficulty in operating as an independent is competing in a world dominated by the majors and constantly having to chase a rapidly changing market. They have to work a little harder than the major labels, which are taste- and trend-driven and have a lot of money to spend. Independents don't have a lot of money, so they have to pound the pavement to promote their artists any way they can.

"The Compass story is kind of unique," says Jim Cuomo, president of New York-based Ryko Distribution, which handles distribution for Compass. "Notoriously in the record business, usually artist-owned labels fail miserably for a handful of reasons, all of which are just absolute death. They get caught up in the artistic end of things and they can't seem to get that business side down."

According to Nielsen SoundScan, U.S. album sales tumbled 7.2 percent last year from 2004 to 619 million. Compass, however, has bucked that trend. Its revenue, about $1.8 million in 2004, rose to about $2 million and is expected to climb to $3.5 million this year.

"Our sales are going up because we're a niche label," says Brown. "We continue to explore and exploit all the riches available to us."

Still, she can't let Compass just coast based on its present sales figures, because when sales go sour for the major labels, there is a trickle-down effect impacting independents. Retailers are less willing to stock slow-turning titles when majors' releases aren't selling in big numbers.

http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/sto...l?page=all

[Haleylvr4evr]

Hey guys,

Did some investigating... and their is a connection to BM. Check out his comments on this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKJxwK9MnPE

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Hypothetically, if she did sign with BM... I can see that being a good place, especially if she wants to go more blues/rock

I hope this is true!!