World Around Records | Behind the Scenes
Posted by Justin Boland on Aug 02, 2010 | 0 Comments
So far on Audible Hype, I haven’t been talking very much about my work with World Around Records. My friend Garrett Heaney from Wishtank did an interview a few months back about exactly that, though, so I’m archiving it here today. (Garrett has also interviewed Dr. Quandary about the making of his Quanny Sitar EP.)
Needless to say, our activity levels have seriously been picking up since this interview was first published…and in the weeks to come, I’ll be explaining it all right here on Audible Hype.
Wishtank: What do the inner dynamics of World-Around Records look like? Aside from being an emcee and producer, what is your role within the label itself? Do other artists in W.A.R. assume “label management†responsibilities? You’re all making music, but when it comes to business, who’s doing what? Is there anyone not on the artist roster who is professionally affiliated with the label?
Justin Boland: We’re basically a mutual promotion team for a group of like-minded artists. We’ve got a large group of people, mostly US but also overseas, working on their own music and their own careers. World Around is where we all overlap, and Dr. Quandary is the center of the operation. The name, the vision, the aesthetics are all him. My business card says I’m the Director of Marketing…that’s partially a tribute to Bill Hicks, but it’s also true that most of what I do is sending out emails about our artists. I also talk about the business of hip hop at Audible Hype, where I talk about World Around projects all the time.
We’re fortunate to have a really dope website and that’s largely thanks to a friend of mine, Charles Choiniere. He built it with Django, which is a flavor of the Python programming language, and I’ve worked with him on a couple dozen projects before. He does bulletproof work and we’re lucky to have someone as skilled as he is on the team.
We’re hugely indebted to a Detroit design team called Triple Dose, who designed our entire operation. The team is Jacob North and GOMAR2. They are serious cats. It was a long process and they dug deep, helping us focus on what we want to communicate to Earth. At the end, we’ve got a fresh website and real deal style guide. The style guide alone has been a valuable tool, because we’ve removed the thinking and shitwork from at least 50% of our design work now. Dr. Quandary probably wants to keep it quiet and humble, but he does a huge amount of project design work for our roster. Reducing work plus making all our design look integrated is a big win.
wt: What are the big lessons you’ve learned about the independent music business since you and Quan founded W.A.R. … what, 3 years ago now?
Boland: The fun part about that is, everything changed completely about a dozen times in the past three years. 36 months ago I was studying the moves of record labels who have since been changing their approach every year. In 2006, World’s Fair management group was the coolest thing I had ever seen, now it’s out of business. In 2005, digital music sales made up 5% of the money getting made in the industry, and by 2008, it had grown to 20%, and in 2009, out of nowhere, iTunes was 25% of the entire damn music industry. Major label rappers are selling less units than independent acts are now. The tectonic shifts have been huge. This has been a fun ride.
Biggest lesson: numbers change, theories change to reflect numbers, but one thing never changes, and that’s relationships. Relationships are the music business. It’s taught me to be a lot more careful. I don’t mean that I hold my tongue, just that I really, really do my research now before I run my mouth about anyone. I still fuck up a lot but I’m doing it less every day. I recently made that mistake with Maino, and when I studied up on him, I came away from that really respecting him. I hope that kind of lesson can continue to guide me through the next 12 months at least. Humility is endless.
I’ve learned what to pay attention to, and that’s a huge time-saver. Honing my nose for bullshit and hype allows me to ignore 90% of the music business info that’s competing for my attention. The more you study other people, the less you have to learn each time, and the more you get reminded you need to be studying you own operation. Doing regular re-assessment is boring and frustrating, so it’s been a process of building up our tolerance. It always pays off because building a better system means reducing work and increasing results in the long run.
So the internal network of our roster and the external network of our fans, that’s the whole Universe for us now. Which is a huge relief! My biggest piece of advice for new artists these days is to get hate out of your mentality. We all think we’re positive people but we live in a really toxic culture. First and foremost, though, know that you’re right. I agree, it’s absolutely true that when other people get shine, you get less shine. In an over-saturated attention economy, everyone hits their brain’s limits for input overload by around 9 am. But that doesn’t matter. The only thing we need to focus on, is our own operations. There’s always a list of 10,000 tasks I need to work on, so when I find myself worrying about another mammal’s business, I know that’s a sign I need to change channels ASAP.
wt: How have these lessons shaped the way you conduct business and guide W.A.R. today?
Boland: It’s been very liberating, for sure. It’s taught me that there’s nobody I have to listen to, no authority to seek out and learn from. The only important things that I learned in the past five years were tools. Tools and blueprints are what’s really mattered, so lately our process has been a lot like math class, really. We’re filling in grids and writing out templates and testing out ideas by running the numbers. We have a really diverse, unusual and global mix of fans and I’m excited to figure out how to connect them and empower them. Obviously, I have larger and weirder goals than mere record labels.
Last year, I put in an obscene amount of research on what the “Big Picture†was for the music industry, the facts, the numbers, the straight dirt. This year, I can see that none of that matters. All we need to focus on is our operation. The only numbers that matters are the numbers about us, our fans, our music. I still read everything and pay attention to everyone, but I’m a lot less invested in “the industry†than I was. I just look for the stuff I can apply to World Around, preferably the same day.
We have a truly independent roster — we encourage everyone to do outside business. We want to see everyone get successful on their own terms, and earn income on their own platforms. We’ve built a foundation on free music, it’s true. The real test is turning that into something sustainable and profitable…something like a business.
Trends change fast and the internet news cycle is giving us all ADHD symptoms we rationalize as “being informed.†We’re definitely trying to build a timeless space with World Around. Although the internet is very futuristic and rad, what we’re doing at World Around is very simple and sacred. We want to make music so dope that total strangers are willing to pay for it, and we want to do that so consistently that strangers will become listeners, keep coming back, and value what we do.
wt: Looking back at all the releases the label has made over the past couple years, from an artistic and professional perspective, which do you feel were most successful?
Boland: Professionally speaking, we haven’t even gotten started. The launch of the website feels like the beginning. It’s been a long process but that’s still just a prelude.
I think our most successful act is definitely dumate. They’re a 5 piece live band out of Madison, Wisconsin that’s been killing it on their local scene. Their live show is bananamal, and they’re opening up for everyone who comes through from Method Man to Lyrics Born. The UK producer s. maharba has also had a knockout year — getting great reviews from bloggers and podcasts around the world, and his debut on vinyl, S/T sold out twice just off the pre-order packages. He’s been getting a ridiculous response, and that’s been a huge energy boost for me and Dr. Quandary in the past month. It’s a great vindication to have this really unique, out-there music that we’ve been believing for years finally hit a critical mass like this.
There’s also a number of projects that we’ve actually been working on the entire time. For instance, Dr. Quandary’s album Beyond All Spheres of Force and Matter was a process that took years. Louis Mackey’s best of compilation, Funky Motherfucker Yeah, has gone through several thousand tracklists and “final†versions now. These silly putty schedules don’t bother me anymore, though, because that’s just part of the process. You really can’t rush art. You can hustle like a real estate agent with a coke problem to promote your art once it’s done, but you can’t speed up the creation end. They gotta be separate zones.
So right now, I feel like everything we’re working on behind the scenes, our future releases, that’s our biggest success so far. It gets easier every time and we’re consistently increasing the quality. I hope I can still say that in 2013. I hope there’s not a ceiling where it starts to get boring.
wt: What gives World-Around Records its edge? From a professional standpoint, how do you keep your product sharp?
Boland: The group dynamic is what makes us work. Playing the role of executive, I feel the responsibility more than any kind of power. As I’ve been documenting on Audible Hype, I was really slacking for a long time — getting discouraged over the vast horizon of Stuff I Cannot Do instead of just focusing on what I can be doing now. Now I just plant seeds where I can and make sure I’m moving it forward on a daily basis. Sundays are my most productive day.
Creating art is a refinement process. Our roster is full of weirdos and there’s no sense in rushing them. So we’ve got two systems for refinement going, and the first is internal. We need to justify our strategy to our artists and we try and get ideas from them as much as possible. There’s not going to be a blanket approach for our roster. In the future, I don’t want to be bringing new artists into our system, I’d like to be taking on new challenges and new puzzles.
Since we’re in the music business, the metaphors are different. We’re not running a factory, it’s more of a vineyard approach. The key is having a lot of different batches going so that we can harvest multiple projects 12 months from now. So the internal communication, the critical feedback we give each other and the projects we work on together, that’s where any edge we have is really coming from. Especially having so many producers on the roster, there’s a brotherhood rivalry and mutual respect that keeps us all constantly aiming higher.
Having studio access and mixing expertise is also important. Man Mantis is working with a veteran mentor, Jim Newhouser, and that’s had a huge impact on dumate’s second album, We Have the Technology, and all of his side projects, like his recent EP with J. Dante. We’re all pretty amazed by how flawless the Man Mantis sound has become in the past year. On my end, I’m working with Custom, who is a spooky talented pro tools engineer, in addition to be an expert in live sound and lighting, and a ridiculous drummer. (He’s also got an LED tuxedo he made himself, but he seldom wears it to the studio.) Everyone on the label is committed to professional sound quality. There’s definitely back catalog that we’d love to re-do, knowing what we know now, but I’d say in 2010 one of the biggest things we’ve succeeded with is looking and sounding like a major label, in terms of quality if not content.
wt: What stands out to you about W.A.R. artists and the music you produce? Or, to skew the lens a bit, what common traits or talents do the folks on your roster share? What saves them a seat at the W.A.R. table?
Boland: The mantra that me and Quandary come back to is “Creative, Honest, Positive.†The name of our company doesn’t come from some global takeover mentality, it’s actually a reference to the work of Buckminster Fuller and Jagadish Bose. Our roster and our music reflects that kind of global perspective: of Earth as a single unbroken human family, no matter how much our leaders and schools deny it. We’re also probably more focused than normal on global hip hop, and most of the acts we’ll be adding to the roster this year are international recruits, like Naturetone, who is a Swiss hip hop production veteran who’s obsessed with Japanese culture — something he’s got in common with Dr. Quandary and myself.
The second biggest common trait is a mutual commitment to always sharpening up what we do. We have definitely made a lot of mistakes. We are learning face-first, but it’s working, too. We want to master the rules as quickly as possible so we can have fun breaking them on a big damn stage. We’re definitely thinking about expanding the roster in the second half of 2010, with an emphasis on finding international acts to give them some United States shine. If anyone wants to reach out or suggest acts we should check out, use this email: holler@worldaroundrecords.com