Butterscotch Records’ Allen Farmelo – HuffPost 8.19.13

Mike Ragogna: Allen, what advice do you have for new artists?

Allen Farmelo: It might sound like a cliché, but you have to be super, super true to yourself artistically and spare nothing in getting exactly what you want to hear to happen. Make no compromises. I think right now with the landscape being what it is, a younger artist has the opportunity to do whatever they want and get it heard. I think the problem is that a lot of young artists work very quickly and they throw things up on Vine or Soundcloud or wherever…Bandcamp…and there’s this immediate gratification of getting something out there. I think I would tell most young artists to restrain themselves and make sure they’re getting it truly, truly great and try and get as much objectivity as they can and wait until it’s really great, really wonderful, and then charge money for your music. Put value on it. No one’s going to value it any more than you will and if you put “free” on it, that’s what it’s going to be worth. Nothing. My belief is that we love to glom onto these exceptions to the rule. The so-and-so who got in a Coke commercial and now is huge, or the weird video wonder-hit on YouTube. You can’t just play the lottery. You have to make something beautiful and you have to value it. That’s what I hope Butterscotch is doing for younger artists who come to the label, helping them value their music, put value on it, get into the marketplace in a real way and be part of trying to bring the value of recorded music back into the game so we can make beautiful records again, because I think it’s such an important art form. That’s my best advice. Make great stuff and value it highly.