Editorial - Articles

Many years ago the job of an A&R (Artist & Repetoire) was to find raw talent and mold them into superstars. A&R's used to travel to showcases and listen to demo's. Artists were told to put a minimum of 3 songs but no more than 5 and to place their best songs first. A&R's also would suggest to artists not to do a remake of a strong artists because it could have a negative impact if the new artists doesn't live up to the original. Studio businesses were thriving and offering "Demo Packages" for artists wanting to record a demo. Record Labels spend major budgets went into the development of these up and coming artists from dance lessons, vocal coaches, media training to live with eachother and get accustom to being around one another 24/7.

An A&R used to have a strong musical background by either being a musician or artist themselves. A good example would L.A. Reid and Babyface who founded LaFace Records in the nineties and gave birth to international superstars T.L.C. and Outkast. 

Now, In 2007 this practice is long gone and the A&R position is merely a buffer between artist and record label. The A&R department has been replaced by A&R Research which only task is to study BDS, Mediabase and Soundscan reports (services that track radio play and record sales) for artists who are able to reach the pre-determined number requirement for record companies to place the artist on progress monitoring.

I used to have my own artists and went to meeting with major executives at Sony, Universal and several others and I was told "We don't make the artists, we don't know how to do this anymore, what we do is take what the artists already have and enhance it on a bigger scale". "We look for artists that have their own fanbase and can sell their own records, if they can sell 50,000 units on their own, we can take them to gold or platinum". Sounds like a good business model, but I was thinking to myself why would I want to sign to a major if I sell this many records and the reply was "It's crazy but you can damn near ask for whatever and most likely you will get it!".

Record companies simply do not want to take risks anymore, they have lost so much money in the last decade due to their own fault, an A&R's job lifetime at a record company is about 2 - 3 years and this is depending on how well the artists do under their reign. If an artist flop, out goes the A&R, should the artist do well he extended his job security until the next record releases.

Demos in today's day and time are as useful as a cassette tape. You are better off cutting your own records and try to sell them on your own because the rewards will be much better than to wait for a record company to pick you up.

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