FCM Story

You didn’t come this far to stop

Hardware

Whilst I was still working in Oil and Gas I invested in a pretty good computer. It was just before the pandemic and I had bought a flat in a new build apartment block that would need a full internal decoration as it was an empty shell with bare walls and some communications hookup points. Having experienced explaining what would be required "on the fly" to interior decorators several times before, I knew there was no way to avoid it but to do a full 3D design and as there was noone but me who knew what I would need I set about doing it myself. Although I was not an engineer, I had spent enough time in Oil and Gas to become very familiar with design drawings and knew that my space planning skills would be enough for the brief. For this I bought a fine computer with a threadripper 64 core processor, 128 GB of RAM and RTX3090 for graphics. Sure the RTX 3090 was not going to be much good for music but the other specs would be more than enough for my future musical needs. At this time I also invested in a Komplete Kontrol S61 keyboard and the core NI software package. Without an audio interface and no monitors, this wasn't much use, but still, I knew my time in Oil and Gas was limited and decided to get this while I could.

When my Oil and Gas assignment abruptly came to and end I was faced with an immediate problem. My mother now had advanced dementia and needed 24 hour care, something that would be impposible in the UK where she lived due to the high cost of living. On the other hand the flat was not ready and in any case being couped up in a small flat would not be for her, she loved greenery and real fires. So with that in mind we bought a house in Kazakhstan for the cost of a one bedroom flat in the UK, with a green garden and a real working fireplace. It was big enough for everyone and now I had a place to actually start music. I had considered moving into woodworking, something that just had so much appeal and I loved the idea of crafting wood, in particular cabinet making in the traditional old English style, now very common in the US, with real face frames and beading around the doors. The house had a double garage and even a three-phase supply, however the startup costs and logistics of getting the machinery were just too prohibitive, and anyway, in contrast to music, I had never done this before... Thus I went with the flow and decided to just go with the music option.

When my mother died with my part of the inheritance, I invested in some KRK monitors, which were an absolute bargain. Sure with a more economical version of class D amplification they emit a very small amount of noise audible only at extremely low playback levels, but frankly they were more than good enough for the price and because of the class D amplification I could leave them on all the time and never worry about overheating. In addition I got an RME Fireface interface, mainly because "they just work". There is something to be said for things that just work, and over a year later, I consider it an excellent choice for that reason alone. I had experienced problems in the past with cheaper interfaces, software clashes and troubleshooting and frankly, I simply wanted something I could plugin and forget about.

Software

Now I needed the software and I had always been a Cubase user in my youth. I remember fondly using Cubase 1.0 on an Atari 520 ST. I knew Ableton was the weapon of choice of a lot of EDM producers these days and was aware it certainly had some specific advantages over other DAWs, but being familiar with Cubase, and knowing it could do everything I needed and more in a way I was familiar with I chose to stick with it. The last thing I wanted was another learning curve to tackle!

For VST Instruments I went with the full Native Instruments package, Roland Cloud, 8DIO, and Arturia. Later I complemented this with Toontrack's very good Superior Drummer, EZ Bass, and EZ Keys and they certainly help me get things done much more quickly. Everyone seemed to be using Serum, especially for EDM so got that too, and additionally Moog's Mariana.

For effects, I already had the Waves package and a full iZotope package both of which I had bought whilst still working in Oil and Gas. I don't actually use Waves that much, my main weapons being a peculiar selection of Steinberg's own effects, some Arturia effects, iZotope, Fabfilter and looking at maybe trying out SoundToys.

For vocal pitch correction I already had a version of Melodyne so I just updated my license and coninued with that. Its not the easiest software to use, but the task itself is not an easy one either, so it does a very difficult task quite well all things considered.

Samples

I had heard a lot about the sample services but never really "got it" until I signed up to Splice and started dragging and dropping samples into my tracks. This opened my eyes considerably. Of all things, I was suddenly able to sketch complete rock songs in a matter of a couple of days, the last thing I had expected from using samples. The downside is that if you do use a Splice sample in your work, you can't content ID it, and thus it cannot be automatically monetised by the fact of other social media influencers using it on TikTok or YouTube.

Catalogue

I had spent years in my teens and early twenties writing songs, it was a daily thing, so was familiar with the craft and already had a kind of stockpile of ideas, and a good understanding of song structures. But to kick-off with a completely new angle, rather than churn over old ideas, I went to the sites that sell vocals either on a non-exclusive or exclusive basis. This way the old ideas came in naturally in a new environment and were complemented with inputs from the new set of vocals and melodies I was now working with. Very soon I had amassed a register of about 100 songs, ranging from songs I had written entirely myself, songs that contained licensed vocals, songs that contained licensed vocals but completely chopped up and barely recognisable, and songs that contained a mashup of vocal samples from Splice.

SoundBetter

For the addition of real instruments played by real musicians I also needed a solution. I had tried Fivver a couple of times and it didn't really work for me, but Soundbetter seemed a bit more reliable. What I mean by this is, there are certainly excellent people who provide services on both platforms, but with SoundBetter the curation is a bit more consistent being specifically focussed on music. That said, they are both open market places, and pitfalls and disappointment can happen with both. I used Soundbetter to get backing vocals, real drums, bass, guitar parts down on many of my tracks, and slowly grew a selection of goto musicians for my material.

Ace Studio, ElevenLabs & AI Vocals

When money was tight, I had to look for another way to get vocals, as it wasn't cheap getting vocalists to perform, and although I probably wouldn't use AI for vocals on a final track, AI has helped immensely to get my ideas down in a communicable way. For this I signed up to ACE studio, and with some careful tweaking it's possible to get very convincing vocal parts. Indeed I even have one song where I think it would be very hard to find someone who could sing it as well as the AI has... I do find it hit and miss though, sometimes I just can't get the software to give me the right intonations and it ruins the whole thing. Another resource I use for purely spoken words in songs is ElevenLabs. This can be heard in the track "Welcome To FearCreatesMonsters" on the first album.

Visuals

Cover Art

As you can't upload music for distribution without cover art, I use MidJourney for the initial images, and Photoshop to compile images and text into the cover art itself.

Videos

For some of my quick video ads I used Luma.ai to add motion to images used for cover art, and for full blown videos, I generally use Envato Elements for royalty free stock footage which I compile with the music in Adobe Premiere. Thus I have maintained an Adobe subscription throughout this journey. I am aware of the pitfalls and cheaper alternatives, but its just what I know and does exactly what I want for now. Learning another video editing app would be like learning another DAW... fine if you're young!

IP Ownership

I see the growing catalogue of songs as an investment. Songs that I own, I own, and sooner or later they may become lucrative, time will tell. The most valuable are of course songs that I write myself or songs that use exclusive vocals. Those using non-exclusive vocals I see as less valuable, because at any time anyone else can also release a song using it. However, in fact, this is no different to the current status of publishing rights across the board. These days, anyone can release a version of your song, without your consent, they simply have to pay you the publishing royalty, and covers have been around since the beginning of songwriting. So its more of a perceived image control issue than a real hazard. If you want your version of a non-excusive vocal to be unique you can always get someone else to sing it, the license pretty much includes for anything you can think of except reselling it as a vocal because that's reserved for the owner of the vocal.

One of the hardest things for me to get my head around was understanding who owns what with bought vocals. This is clouded somewhat by the imperfections of Content ID systems.

Copyright, Publishing & Master Recording Rights

Bought Vocals

Exclusive Vocals - Depending on your means, these can be prohibitively expensive or alternatively free gifts! From a vocalist's point of view, these are often equivalent to giving away gold for pennies. However, in the real world, people who buy these are often not super rich, and nothing is proven to be gold until it is actually sold for the value of gold. Until then its simply a vocal recording of lyrics and a melody. As a songwriter myself, I get it from both points of view. To be fair, these vocals are nothing until they have been put into a context. I personnally rarely use a vocal in the context it was sung, meaning, literally I have taken a vocal sold as a tech house hook, and written a complete blues song using that vocal, or I have chopped up the vocal beyond recognition, and I think only on one occasion have I ever used a vocal with the actual chords provided with the vocal. When you buy an exclusive vocal, depending on the specific wording in the license, you usually become the new copyright owner. This is important - it means you are the sole decision maker on what happens with it. Usually in this case, you get 100% of the master recording rights (whether you chose to use their vocal performance or not) and 100% of the publishing. In some cases the writer will ask for 50% of the publishing, which means they themselves value it enough to add this as am additional requirement. So I realised that ownership and rights to royalties are not he same thing. For such vocals the vocalist may or may not want you to credit them, more often than not, the vocalist will require that you provide them a copy of the completed work for vetting before they will even let you mention them, but at least with exclusive vocals you usually get the full name of the vocalist and contact details.

Non-exclusive vocals - when I buy these, I buy only from sites that provide a full commerical license with no restrictions, except for reselling as vocals. By definition, as these are non-exclusively licensed, the copyright is retained by the original vocalist, and you generally are permitted to create one "song" out of it per bought license. This flies in the face of what is considered a "song" as traditionally understood in the copyright world. In the copyright world a song has always meant the lyrics and the melody. Generally you cannot copyright a chord progression alone. In this new mainly EDM led world, usually, depending on the specific terms of the license, a "song" is the final work with the chords, the arrangement, the production, as well as the vocals and when put together, this "song" is considered fully owned by the person who put it together, including the both the publishing and the master recording rights. I never buy non-exclusive licenses without full ownerhip rights to the final work. In addition, the vocalist may require a credit or indeed may not. In most cases, its impossible to know who the vocalist even is. I was once told in no uncertain terms when trying to get the name of a vocalist for a non-exclusive vocal, such vocals were to be considered samples and the platform did not give out the personal details of its vocalists for such vocals. It took a while for this to sink in, but I realised that this is why you will find on Spotify different songs with exactly the same vocals credited to different artists, who are in fact the producer of the final song. Its not that these artists don't want to credit the originator of the vocal, they simply dont know who that person is, and in many cases, such vocalists would not even want to be associated with the track. My 50 cents on this topic is that such vocalists could be required to provide a useable pseudonym when signing up, that producers are permitted, if they wish (depends on how they use the vocal) to credit when releasing tracks. This seems like a win-win situation for both parties. It also removes the cognitive dissonance for fans and listeners.

Content ID

When releasing tracks using the various digital content delivery platforms you will very quickly come across content ID restrictions. Before I release anything commercially, I load it to SoundCloud and keep it in private mode. I do this mainly as a web store for my songs, a kind of user testing environmnent. Here tracks using non-exclusive vocals are often flagged and I have been required to provide evidence that I own the master recording rights. I find it extremely cheeky that other users of these vocals have registered their recordings in content ID systems in the first place. This is usually expressley prohibited both in the non-exlucsive license itself and by the terms of the digital streaming platforms, for the very reason that they are not excusive to that user. However, people still do this, and quite often I notice labels do this, I suspect in some cases as a matter of course. Until this stops you provide the license agreement, proof of purchase, and go on your merry way. So far I have not had a content ID block that wasn't resolved although the delay will totally mess up your release schedule. I personnally found Soundcloud to be quick and reasonable with content review. However, some other content review teams are notoriously slow at resolving even the most simple cases, including cases where you have uploaded another mix of the same song and already passed their content review. I seems to be an economy of staffing business decision issue with such platforms.

Ultimately it is fraud to claim exclusivity when you don't have it, it creates unnessary stress but to some extent I put it down to people not fully understanding what they are doing. Content ID also works with samples, but despite extensive use of Splice samples, I have never had a Splice sample flag up content ID, which means they must be doing something right! I also liked Splice's certificate system which, as I never had an issue, I never had to use, but it gives me some peace of mind. I am not sure, but I believe that Content ID works in an arbitrary / technical way on the recording itself, meaning its looking for infringements of Master Recording Rights, not Publishing Rights as such, i.e. the underlying musical composition. I have not tested it by producing a cover and seeing if it flags up content ID, its just my hunch.

If your work contains royalty free samples from the likes of Splice and Tracklib or Non-Exclusive Vocals, you cannot then content ID your song. This is because the current algorythmns used do not distinguish the individual sample or vocal from the track as a whole, thus making it impossible to correctly assign royalties to owners automatically. It's imperative in future that both the algorythms used and the procedures that then follow once content has been flagged are are improved to the point where you can still content ID original works that are fully owned by you that contain such materials.

Business Administration

Catalogue Master Register

What with a catalogue expanding daily and various details that I needed to track against each song, I created a Master Register of songs in Excel putting my Microsoft Office 365 subscription to good use. Here I track licenses, dates, recording statuses, performers, and also the tempo and key of a song, in case I find a great vocal or sample and think that would go great in one of my songs. This register became the foundation for the administration of the business side of things.

Website & Email

I felt I would need an online work presence that was separate from my personal presence. First off I needed a separate email. Although websites these days are not really imperative, I signed up with a website-and-email provider so that my email was tied to my website domain for a more professional image I guess. I use this when performing activities related to "work".

Copyright Registration

Then I needed to start copyrighting the songs and I used US Copyright Office as firstly I see the US as a significant audience, its all in English, and I like their rules. For example if someone is caught plagiarising your work after you have registered it, the payout entitlement is automatic and certainly prohibitive. The cost for registration of each song is quite high, but you can do bulk registration, provided you meet certain criteria. So far, I have been unable to meet the consistency for the criteria, as all songs must have been written 100% by the same person, either all songs released and on the same album or all songs unreleased, but due to be released on the same album...

Distribution

The next decision was who to use as distributor. You can't release music to digital platforms for streaming or download without going through a distributor. I ended up using TuneCore, who are a bit slow with resolving content ID issues but otherwise their service works for me and all other issues tend to be resolved quite quickly. With a yearly plan I am able to release as many tracks as I want at no extra cost. Although the package already included for all the digital platforms I could think of except for BeatPort, as many of my tracks are dance oriented I opted to pay for their service to deliver songs to BeatPort as wellm which was an additional cost, as this is essential if you want to reach the DJ community. Other distributors include Distrokid, Symphonic and Ditto. To be honest, you will find good and bad things written about all of them.

Its worth noting that many of the service providers within the music space that are not primarily distributors also provide distribution services as an additional service. For example, Soundcloud (perimarily a music streaming community), ReverbNation (primarily a music social community), MusicGateway (a multi service provider for all things musician related) etc..

Spotify

Whilst Soundcloud is a great community that allows for comments, messaging and personal interaction, its never really been a place where I saw myself earning any streaming royalties, although it is possible. So far, I keep my whole catalogue of demo level songs here in private mode, and as and when I release tracks formally on Spotify I do also make them public on Soundcloud. For me, love them or hate them, Spotify seems to be the king of online music streaming for now. I much prefer Apple's model, where musicians can actually sell albums and downloads, but their market share is something like only 20%. I look forward to a return to selling music and selling albums, sooner or later musicians will get fed up of giving their music away for fractions of a penny in the form of a trivia lottery and it's only a matter of time before the model will hopefully change. To boot, the system is being gamed by botification and it started from the top down, in my opinion, starting with the major labels, although I have no proof, its just my suspicion. People have pointed out that Spotify doesn't make any money, but it doesn't need to, if (and I suspect it is) its part of a wider business music industry meta-structure, just like Apple doesn't need to make any significant profit in the US, so long as it has associated entities in more tax friendly environments that do. Furthermore its getting worse with the advent of AI music. My personal opinion is that the streaminbg model is applicable to mass media, in the form of trivia. i.e. the kind of thing you watch once and once only, the news, a film, a tv program, a documentary, an educational item - The kind of thing that YouTube was built for. Music is art and real art that is not simply trivia, is something you covet and want to listen to again and again. For this, it should be bought, and downloaded if desired. I remember when a CD was a perfectly good Christmas present, well the current Spotify model certainly killed that.

Royalties

Musical income is derived from either live performances with direct agreements, and I have no intentions of becoming a performer myself anytime soon, or via royalties. Royalties are split into to two main types - the publishing royalty and the master recording royalty.

A third royalty known as the performance royalty is really a derivative mix of both of these two. When music is performed live by a performer a publishing royalty is applicable, and when it is broadcast on radio or a non-interactive intenet radio platform such as Pandora, then .. When it is streamed by users on digital streaming platforms such as Spotify, Tidal, or iTunes the master recording royalty is applicable. When it is sold as a digital downloadable product on iTunes then

Performing Rights Organisation (PRO)

Next I needed to join a PRO if I was actually going to release anything. Your PRO gives you a unique artist number required when assigning royalties. This number is super important and you won't get far without one. I wanted to join BMI but had trouble using their payment sytem and gave up and joined ASCAP instead. I don't think it makes much difference. The PRO registration is typically for a period of two years. Here every song is registered as a work associated with my IPI number. Whenever the work is performed live .... Whenever the work is performed live by a third party... In addition, and perhaps more importantly in most cases, whenever the master recording is broadcast to an audience at a public venue, synched to TV or film that is broadcast, or streamed on a digital platform a royalty is collected by your PRO for the Master Recording.

Songtrust

Songtrust are what is known as a Publishing Administrator service, and as such they exist to collect global publishing royalties from streaming platforms, terrestrial radioplay outside the US, internet radio services in the US

PPLUK & Sound Exchange

PPLUK collect Neighbouring Rights royalties for everywhere but the US. SoundExchange provide a similar service insdie the US.

Soundscan & MediaBase

Soundscan collect and provide provide offical sales and streams metrics, so when your latest single or album goes platinum you will know about it. Mediabase tracks how often your music is played on radio.

Advertising

One of the things I learned very quickly is that no matter how good your music is, nobody is going to "discover it" and its not going to "go viral" all by itself. The better your music is, the more of a positive response you will get to your advertising, and the more real fans or supporters of your work you will get as a result of your advertising. Whilst its true that no amount of advertising is going to turn a bad song into a success, it is also true that no song however good it maybe, is ever going to be a success without advertising. Record labels have used advertising since they first invented record labels, in fact that is one of their primary functions as theoretically they exist because they have access to the capital and the knowhow to promote your work, and the same is true today with independent artists streaming on the digital platforms. The difference today, is there is a LOT more content out there, its a highly diluted business, especially with get rich quick AI schemers, bot scammers chiming in, as well as genuine trivia music content providers (those who make listen-out-of-interest-once-only topical music with catchy tiktok ads).

The point about advertising is its essential, and the whole online digital content world runs off the proceeds of advertising, so its already built into the business models of the social media platforms and the digital streaming providers. The only question is how to use it effectively to ensure the ROI is more than the OPEX and some methods are better than others. In particular you need to make sure your ads (impressions) are sent to the kind of people who will like your music and minimise as far as possible wastage to people who won't like it. In a world of several billion internet users, there will certainly be people who like your music, whatever it is, you just need to be good at targetting them.

Hypeddit

I signed up with Hypeddit and have used it with some success, but it has been a learning curve. Essentailly Hypeddit helps artists create ad campaigns for Facebook, Instagram etc, with links to cross-platform redirection pages for specific songs, given that different people use different streaming platforms. Advertising campaign services like these make life easier, but you still need to know what you are doing. You must understand how Facebook, Instagram and Hypeddit work together, know what pixels are, and learn how to target the right people. I think that its unlikely for any campaign to be super successful without beginning with a bit of a trial and error phase. Hypeddit have recently added a kind of AI addition to their service and I think this probably helps.

Matchfy

I used Matchify to get onto playlists and certainly these boost your exposure and numbers. The downside is that a lot of playlists are kind of automated conveyor belts, so your music gets added, you get a sppike in your streams for a few days or weeks, and then you track falls off the back end of the playlist and thats it. A side effect can be that people discuover your music as a result, but its not the primary purpose of a playlist, more likely the listener will be impressed with the playlist and save it to hear what new content is added. Matchfy also provide other exposure services, which I have not tried yet.

Native Algorythms

Once of the key goals of advertising is to trigger the free platform algorythm. Its a sad but true fact, if you dont reach Spotify's minimum streaming per month of 10,000 streams by yourself, they are NEVER going to recommend your song to ANYONE. Forget it. That someone beyond friends and family is ever going to find your song, is about as likely as finding a grain of sand you painted light brown and hid on a sandy beach. However, if you do invest in Advertising and do reach the minimum algorythm criteria, you can get huge support from the native algorythm with sometimes an increase of up to 10x your streams.

Sync

Growing up I saw sync as a kind of selling out. With the current state of the music consumption market, and the reality of being able to support oneself making music its become a top objective. I don't see much scope for the use of the music I make so far in advertising, however, films and TV series is a whole different ball game. With advertising, you need to focus on the 40 second timeline, with at least three breaks, and somekind of emotive engagement arc over that 40 seconds. Its not that its particularly difficult, its just that thats not what I went into music for in the first place. My objective has always been to convey a mood or a feeling, and the deeper and more profound the better. That simply isn't the goal of advertising, but it is what is required for film and TV series placements. Its worth noting that advertising is more lucrative though.

Online Sync Course

So to get connected into the sync scene I signed up for an online synch course, and to be honest, I have not regretted it at all. I haven't got any synch placements yet, its still early days, but I have learnt a lot and especially who is who in the industry and have been introduced to several of the key players as part of the course.

DISCO

The synch world revolves around the file sharing app DISCO, so forget OneDrive and Soundcloud etc for filesharing. You need to get a DISCO account to even get started.

Independent vs Non-Independent

Before considering which is better, being an independent or a signed artist we should first understand what these terms mean and also what the role of a record label is compared to a publishing company.

An independent artist is one who has not signed a deal with a major record label, so either they are fully independent, with no record label at all, or indeed simply their own one, or they are signed to a small independent record label.

Record Labels

In simple terms a record label is a business enterprise that leverages its capital, not usually afforded by most artists themselves, as well as its industry specific know how to:

• Invest either in specific musical works or in the artist themselves as well as their current and potential future works (you could call this CAPEX R&D) to generate marketable products - in this case specifically Master Recordings. Traditionally as part of product creation they would also get involved in the visuals of a product like the album art and overal visual aesthetic of it

• Once the specific Master Recordings (products) have been created, promote both the artist and the works themselves with the specific goal of selling as much product as possible. Such promotion including arrangement of interviews, placements in magazines, radioplay, tv placements, streaming ads, playlist inclusions, arrageing live performances and gigs, etc. etc. (OPEX)

Thus two things are of critical importance to the label:

• Ownership of the master recording - as this is their product that they have invested in

• The image presented for that product and its dispersion into the marketplace in order to sell as much as possible

In addition, Record Labels should be seen for what they are - niche specific capital investors who at the bottom line, invest moeny for a Return on that investment.

Publishers

Conversely, publishers are interested in the publishing rights, and see record labels as merely one method to the generation of those royalties, in addition to sync placements, and public performances and broadcasts. In simple terms, from the perspective of a publisher, the more record labels and artists that use a work, the better.

Advantages & Disadvantages

What does this all mean from the point of view of an Artist: Here's a breakdown of the differences between an independent artist and a signed artist in the music industry from the artists perspective:

Independent Artist

• Control: They have full creative control over their music, branding, and career decisions.

• Revenue: They keep a larger portion of their earnings since there are no major label fees, although they bear all the costs for production, marketing, and distribution.

• Freedom: They can release music at their own pace without label-imposed deadlines.

• Marketing: They rely on self-promotion, social media, and independent networks to build their audience.

• Flexibility: They can experiment with different styles and approaches without label restrictions.

Signed Artist

• Support: They have the backing of a record label, which provides financial support for recording, marketing, and touring.

• Network: They benefit from the label's established connections in the industry, including producers, promoters, and distribution channels.

• Resources: They gain access to professional marketing, public relations teams, and high-quality production facilities.

• Revenue Sharing: They typically receive a smaller percentage of their earnings as the label takes a cut to recoup its investment.

• Contractual Obligations: They often have to adhere to the terms of their contract, which can include creative constraints and fixed release schedules.

Both paths have their own sets of challenges and rewards. Independent artists enjoy greater freedom and a larger share of revenue, while signed artists benefit from the extensive support and resources of a label. It all depends on what fits best for the artist’s goals and preferences.

So far I dont even have a choice, but not sure I would go with a label even if I did and it would certainly depend on what the label had to offer in return for relinquishing a percentage of the master recording rights and creative control. It used to be the case that labels would provide a massive advance payment, to be recouped on record sales (thus taking considerable risk), but these days most don't even do that. However they do generally have connections and marketing knowhow, the better ones at least. And for an arist starting out this may be a good option.

Label Services Companies

The exponential rise in the number of independent artists has given rise to a significant rise in label services companies, which can provide most of the servivces that a label would normally provide, but on a fee paying basis, rather than an investment basis. This is a good option, but you would need to already have some capital of your own to invest.

LabelRadar

LabelRadar is an online subscription resource that allows artists to send in their music to labels for review a possible contractual offers.

Music Projects

Explore our diverse range of music projects for all genres. Coming Soon

Achievements

The catalogue currently consists of approximate 90 tracks, and trial independent releases will begin in ernest in August 2024

Current Collaborations & Emerging Projects

We are open to offers of collaboration within the framework of the FCMM music project be it from established producers, talented musicians and vocalists, and record labels.