“Passion before profit. People before product.”
This blog is just a tool in gathering like-minded people together. The vision of Bespoke is to create a revolution in the music industry through killer music and through integrity. The best art going around – purveyed with trust, love and through placing value on the artists who make it.
PASSION BEFORE PROFITS
There’s been too much of a focus in recent times on profit, margins and the earning power of an artist. These are certainly important elements, but without creativity as the focus creative people and consumers both become disillusioned and frustrated.
Our vision is to tie killer music to good values – something horribly lacking in the current industry on a systemic scale. Our belief is that making and selling music with strong values will mean creativity can flourish – which means better product for the consumers. Artists and songwriters are at their best creatively when they aren’t being exploited: artists make their best music, music lovers get better music. Everyone wins!
We want to change industry thinking to value people’s creativity over their earning potential. Budgets, revenue and timelines are important – but if they begin to hinder rather than help a project the long term strategy has been lost. Businesses built on profit alone are far outlasted by those planted in raw passion and daily watered in long term relationship-building.
PEOPLE BEFORE PRODUCT
We want to keep people informed, not patronised – no dumbing down, no hiding or disguising elements from clients or consumers. No smoke and mirrors – just true transparency. We would even recommend someone work with a different party than us if we felt they were a better fit (ever seen Miracle on 34th Street?!)- we just want creativity and creatives to be the true winners.
The world is moving towards a greater era of information sharing – end of the Cold War, the freedom of information act, birth of the Internet….no one wants to keep secrets anymore. This is how we want to run our business – openly! Giving away good strategy to artists, letting budding musicians know how they can make it without the muscle (and subsequent control) of a major label. Keeping people informed, building trust and a community where everyone can learn and win together. It’s a new age of doing business and few have caught on in the music industry. The revenue streams are aligning with this global shift (look at streaming, dwindling ownership of music, playlist sharing) but few music businesses have adapted their models to match. This is where Bespoke is different – we’re setting up to run business for the next few decades rather than those gone by.
We listen to, inform and truly care about artists. We focus on killer world class product. What could go wrong?! An obvious flaw is that the model is seeming unsustainable, or we could easily be screwed over for being the nice guy. How can a business survive without focusing on profits? Looking at the long term – that’s how. Building carefully – and sustainably – means we’ll go the distance. We’re not ignoring profits, just not letting them rule us.
We’re a label with bite- defending our artists and creativity as a whole. We won’t be a push over, we’re just focusing our passion and fight in a specific direction. No one said a crusade would be easy!
LINKS
Some thoughts on ‘New Power’ in business, co-ownership and community engagement:
https://hbr.org/2014/12/understanding-new-power
An example of a severe breakdown in artist-label relations and lack of value- Ke$ha vs. Dr Luke
http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop-shop/6288930/kesha-dr-luke-dueling-lawsuits-magazine-story
