Looking for enlightened composers/producers

Hi, I've been with Gaia since it was Zaadz :-P

In the past year I've brought my recording label into fruition. It's called “Splendid Imagining” and it's a recording label with a big time difference. It's run by myself, an awakened and compassionate neo-humanoid and has major distribution to all the big digital channels (iTunes, eMusic, Juno, etc, etc).

Splendid is effectively a publisher of digital media, with a focus on quality and creativity and message rather than genre or marketability. Our artists have a strength of character that runs deeper than the top40 “idols” and our songs range from light and fluffy ambient to pounding gritty techno. As long as it's “splendid”.

… from our “About Us” Page..


Splendid is a really different kind of recording label.

1. Artists retain complete ownership and control of their creations.
2. The vast majority of the net sales revenue go to the artist - 75/25 share in favor of the artist. This is un-heard of.
3. We don’t really participate too much in the way of marketing because of the royalty structure is so skewed in favor of the artist. Also, on a philosophical level I personally object to the rampant consumerism that is characterized by the inundation of our senses by marketing messages. It’s having a negative effect on the human psyche, and besides, good music will be heard whether or not you throw bags of money at it. Word of mouth, grass-roots kind of movement is our schtick.
4. We are not genre-specific - although it’s all broadly “electronic” our philosophy is to question authority, challenge the status quo and smash genres to pieces. The only requisite is that the music be… a Splendid Imagining.

Basically, we allow the music to stand on it’s own merit, like the man standing quietly in the subway holding a sign that says “ISN’T LIFE WONDERFUL?” - his message is received and assimilated on a meaningful level more often than the biggest billboards and most elaborate commercials. And we’re not trying to get rich off the works of others, because that’s the economic structure of our current world money system, which is total shit and.. well, dinosaurs will die. We’re the hominids which follow thereafter.

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”

- Hunter S. Thompson

We’re on the fore-front of business ethics in the new reality of digital transmission.

There usually aren’t any hard copies made except for our Canadian artists, where a few copies are made to be sent off to college radio (for Canadian artists, as we have a good angle on that through CanCon).

There are instructions posted step-by-step on how the artist can produce their own professional CDs for handing out at shows and in local shops for a cost of a couple bucks a unit, if they want want (and keep the whole profits, we don’t want a take on that) - but CDs are going the way of the Beta and Cassette tape, and they’re unnecessarily harmful to the environment to produce and ship them en masse.

Most people only buy CDs to put them on their iPods, and into the future this will be more and more the case. Also, it saves the label from having to put up $3K or so just to get a very small run of physicals ready, which increases the risk and therefor would alter the skew of the royalty share.

As a result of the artist retaining total ownership and control, they also receive 100% of the royalties from performing rights organizations for live performances and radio play. We only take a cut - a small one - where we have helped directly (as in, publication for digital download), and besides, those things can only help online sales.

Low risk - we invest some time putting the meta together, mastering the album, networking, phone calls, and administration after release, but no big financial outlay so there’s not too much to lose but a few day’s work.

Everything that comes out of Splendid is impressive and challenging, difficult to define, intelligent, and progressive. No generic, repetitive bump-bump-bump house music, we’ll let the Tidy’s of the world take care of that. Where we are going is the future.

Undefinable.

Beautiful.

Rhythmic.

Clever.

Over the next several months Splendid has several full-length albums from incredible artists pushing the boundaries of definition, blurring the lines between the genres, creating new ones along the way, plus a number of singles and EPs which will be available for download everywhere.

     permalink