Brianna nodded as Mark showed his appreciation for her comment, “We have to give credit where it’s due.” She gives a friendly smile, “What you guys have done in the past year has been remarkable especially in this day and age.” She takes another sip of her coffee before continuing, “A lot of labels and executives probably wouldn’t admit it, but I have no doubt that you guys have become the envy of a lot of major label owners and executives. We would all love the level of output you’ve had over the past year, a younger and more hungry roster of talent is certainly the key. The established acts don’t appear to have that fire these days.” She says with a slight shrug of the shoulders, hinting at the idea that she longed for a little more from the talents under her umbrella.

She listened intently as Mark spoke about the personal challenges of his labels success, “It’s such a difficult thing to figure out, I can’t even imagine the challenge of that for a new label. Our label wouldn’t be able to continue to function at our level if it wasn’t for the ten plus years of hits and royalties from that. Legacy artists that we’ve had through our doors over the years are what keeps the light on primarily for us, of course name recognition and revenue from other associations keep us at a profit year on year.” She thinks for a moment, attempting to throw some sort of experience and wisdom Mark’s way, “Expanding from the label into Studio60 Productions was one of the main priorities when I bought out the label a little over four years ago. Investing more widely into different areas of the entertainment industry has been profitable at times but there’s always risk.”

She continues to think in an attempt to give Mark something to take away from their conversation, “We’ve considered the idea of an in-house streaming platform, anything behind a pay-wall these days seems to be the way forward in terms of profitability. But I was vehemently against that idea, I think you’d just be limiting your audience that way which I feel is counter-intuitive for your artists. If you can build up a library of exclusives and live performance or behind the scenes content, I think that could work as a subscription service. But I feel it’s important to keep singles and albums widely available.” She gives a smile, “Something to consider.”

Brianna laughs a little at the mention of tours, “Of course, touring is the one method that still works completely.” She playfully grimaces, “How would you like to try to come over to California and convince some of my roster to leave their beach front mansions in the sun for half a year spent on the road?” she laughs a little, “It’s an uphill battle I’ve been having since I bought the label.”

Brianna nodded, agreeing that the blend of youthful enthusiasm and drive and the consistency and safety of established names was the dream scenario for any label. “Truly. Although the established artists can certainly be a whole lot more difficult and complicated to deal with at times.” She says with a knowing laugh having experienced the ego’s of so-called icons in her time at the label, “Granted, it’s only been a little over four years since I became owner of the label but I’ve ran into some interesting situations with our talent.”

She listened as Mark contemplated the idea and offered a strong argument for why it wouldn’t work for him, she agreed wholeheartedly. “No. Even at Studio60’s level and with the years of back catalogue we have available it’s something I’ve pushed back against from day one. We have a lot of people that are continually pushing the idea to the top of the agenda, but it just doesn’t sit right with me.” She gestures with a shrug of the shoulders and gives a warm smile to Mark, “I’ve got to say though, I admire your integrity. Stick to your principles, it’s served you well up to this point.”
She listened as he expanded with the theory on Sigrún’s success, “If you can create something unique, it’s a beautiful thing. That’s certainly the aspect of ‘Head South’ that has impressed me the most. The different varieties on offer with the artists that you have on board, there’s something for everyone. Sigrún’s record absolutely blew me away and Cerys is somebody I absolutely must meet while I’m back in the UK. I just think she’s such a talent. I would love to catch a show of hers if she has any coming up.”

Brianna smiled as Mark offered his thoughts on the ambitions of artists in the modern day, it varied throughout the industry in Brianna’s experience but of course at Mark’s level it was a much more pure mindset that those coming up through the ranks had. Brianna lets out a small chuckle, “Could I have some of that mentality in my artists please?” she says before elaborating further, “It could be a more broad statement on the culture in the US than just specifically our industry, but it’s very numbers driven at that level.” She shrugs a little, “We’re looking at ways of changing that culture a little, but evidently it’s not something we can do overnight.”

Brianna laughed along with Mark, “Honestly, fuck knows what makes these people tick.” She says, chuckling at the idea of attempting to understand some of the people that are housed under Studio60 Records. As Mark asks the question, she thinks back to the initial hope she had when she first took over the label, “I inherited a mess when I purchased the label, truly. It had the name recognition and reputation, sure, but it was a bloated roster. Outdated roster, I’d even say.”
She elaborated further, “There was a handful of active artists on that roster, but the majority had been inactive for a few years. Because of the long-term nature of the contracts, it was impossible to really hit a sort of reset. So my only hope was trying to get in on that next generation as well as I could. It didn’t quite work out perfectly, but we uncovered a bunch of gems in the process. ‘Orion’, ‘Keshia Love’, ‘Midnight20’, ‘Madison’ and ‘Crescendo’ all brought that youthful ambition to the roster and delivered a lot of great work to truly establish themselves. That cultural shift worked to re-vitalise the label as a living breathing thing, but we’ve been unable to find a whole lot of fresh talent out there recently.” She laughs a little, “Evidently they’re all in Europe and you guys appear to be finding them first.” She jokes before continuing, “Maybe we should be taking a few more chances, we’re possibly being a little too rigid in our scouting department.”

Brianna takes another sip of her coffee, placing the cup back down on a coaster as the mild late summer weather accentuated the beautiful countryside views of vast farmland, the sky starting to showcase an orange hue as the late afternoon began to make way to early evening. She gives a warm smile in Mark’s direction, as he gave her a compliment. There was an ease to his personality that she appreciated, he appeared both fascinating and fascinated, a rare trait in a person.

“Aww, thank you so much. You’re too kind.” She says before considering his question, “It felt like too good of an opportunity to pass up on, honestly. In Jadyn we have someone that has a lot of passion and ambition, whether you agree with his style or not is sort of irrelevant, hard work shines through all of that bluster and gesturing, at least that’s my own belief on that subject.” She says, trying her best to explain her thought process in the decision to launch a subsidiary, primarily run by one of her artists and a dedicated young team around them, “It gave us the opportunity for a couple of new less established artists to work under a different umbrella and really get a lot more of that one on one time, it’s a huge operation at Studio60 and Tric-Jam Records that I was conscious of avoiding having some of our freshest unproven talent lost in that machine.”