The Label Journals - #1

The Label Journals is a recurring blog chronicling my adventures as an inexperienced record company president. As soon as the label's website is set up, I will move it over there.

The challenge with starting a record label is that as soon as one task is accomplished, there's a list of more to do. Thus, we haven't really had the opportunity to pat ourselves on the back or anything - but we can do that when we're older. I'm pretty excited though ... we've a got a June 5 release date, a digital distribution deal, a pretty rad cover, and a CD release party on June 8 at Cafe du Nord with a very special guest. I feel really lucky to have signed a band with a serious work ethic and a strong sense of self-promotion. One thing about the Passionistas is that they really don't stop being the Passionistas. That is, everything they do in their daily lives is either a creative project that falls under the Passionistas banner, or is important to their identity as a Passionista. I guess I'll get more in detail later about what I think it means to be a Passionista.
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As some of you know this project did not start out with me looking to sign a band, but instead began as an extension of our video podcast series. The initial idea was to chronicle the band's story in a series of short videos. I'm happy to say that we have not lost sight of that and, in fact, blogging and podcasting are pretty central to our marketing strategy. The second episode of the Passionistas series is almost done - expect to see it up next wednesday, with a new one two weeks after that. It took a little while, but the structure of the video series is starting to come together. In this next episode, we do some "confessional" interview/narration which is a real departure from the video work I've done in the past. I hope that the aesthetics of the video series will continue to change and evolve. I've also become a character in this story, so expect me to show up again around episode four.
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My current task right now is figuring out how we are actually going to print these cds, and that is thankfully happening a bit quicker than expected. I need to get back to that, now, and make a couple of quick phone calls. Don't forget you can befriend us at MySpace, where we've also got a couple of free downloads.