Which record companies & distributors have you been most happy with during the years?
Answered by Edgar Froese
Maybe there is an unknown planet somewhere in our solar systems with a race just like humans and lots of happy artists who feel perfectly represented by agents, record companies or distributors. I would be very pleased – along with thousands of other artists – to find such an address.
As far as my personal, down to earth, experience goes, no creative artist has been so lucky to say merely good things about his representatives. Record companies often act like a prison guard. Once you’ve signed a contract – blinded by all the rubbish said to you about wealth, fame and artistic freedom – the horror story starts right away. If the first release is far behind commercial expectations, you’ll become a kind of prostitute who now has to do what a bunch of strange guys want you to do. You immediately understand that most record company bureaucracy (“bureaucrazy!”) is nothing more than a giant mechanism operated by little dwarves. If you join the rat race, young full of dreams, you will be – in the worst case scenario – barbecued on a stake built by shareholders and stock jobbers. So what’s the solution? Living on a shoestring and praying for a better world? No, you have to set up your own systems via Internet, via various mailing systems, via strong fan bases… Yet not destroy the existing system, but be completely independent of the burden of other peoples’ dysfunctional decisions.