The music industry has changed a lot since 1982, when Polygram chairman Irwin Steinberg and Down Beat publisher Chuck Suber started AEMMP Records, a student-run label at Columbia College that doubles as a music-business prep course. (At the time Suber was also head of the graduate half of the college’s Arts, Entertainment & Media Management Program, which gave AEMMP its name.) The majors were monoliths that seemed like they’d stand forever, and the biggest threat they faced was home taping.
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When Kimo Williams took over AEMMP Records two years ago, it still had those training wheels on—like the great majority of student-run labels at colleges across the country. (Perhaps the best known, Drexel University’s MAD Dragon Records, which has a national distribution deal with Ryko and recently took the Redwalls off Capitol’s hands, is closely overseen by faculty and industry veterans.) He decided that Columbia’s program, like the music industry itself, was in need of some radical new ideas. The classic record-label narrative, where genius A and R guys and saturation marketing turn a handful of artists into megastars whose platinum sales underwrite all kinds of extravagances (remember “fruit and flowers” budgets?), is a thing of the past. With the advent of the digital-delivery paradigm, labels can’t even count on the continued existence of the CD.
“Some record labels in an academic environment can only do so much,” he says. “Like they’re only involved in touring, or they’ll sign an act and that act will really only work under the guidance of the instructor. The worst thing I can do is to save them. I always give them advice—I’ll give them some insight based on my experiences—but then I say, ‘However, it’s your decision to make.’ Right now the consequences are an A, B, C, or D. Outside of academia the consequences are jobs, life, and family. So I want them to experience that decision-making process and the repercussions now.”
The autonomy AEMMP offers its student staff encourages the one thing the music business needs most right now—creativity. Williams talks in glowing terms of a former AEMMP student who’s hearing impaired and has attracted some serious investment to develop an online service to connect deaf people with the music business. And after our interview he was heading to his Record Industry Think Tank class to hear student presentations, one of which was about an elaborate system to enhance the release of Woodall’s album Sine Wave Sea, which will be sold mostly as a download through a student-designed Web site. The details weren’t firmed up, but it will likely involve issuing bar codes to people who buy the record online, which can then be scanned at Woodall’s shows to enable extra downloadable content.
For more on music, see our blogs Crickets and Post No Bills at chicagoreader.com.
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