Frank Filipetti – HuffPost 2.27.12

Mike Ragogna: Do you feel that there is any value in taking the time to nurture new artists these days like in the old days?

Frank Filipetti: Well, look at who’s selling. You’ve got U2, The Eagles, Paul McCartney. All of these bands are selling just as well as the new artists and they’ve been around a lot longer. The simple fact is that one of the reasons record companies are losing money every year is that rather than developing talent anymore, they just tap into talent for the moment, and then let them go when sales go down. There’s probably genius talent that’s just being thrown to the side by these companies because they weren’t able to sell tons of records in six months. The simple fact is that learning your craft and building it slowly is one of the reasons that people still go to U2 concerts — they did that. It’s not rocket science. Yes, there is a lot of innate talent everywhere these days, but all of the marketing in the world is no substitute for experience. Madonna is still doing the Super Bowl for God’s sake! (laughs) These are artists that have been doing this year after year, and many of them were under that old five year system that a record company used to develop their talent. They knew they weren’t gonna sell tons of their first several albums, but every set sold more than the previous. As long as that was the case, they kept with the artist. It does seem to be changing now, though. There are a lot of independent labels that are going back to a five year plan system and are willing to sit with artists a lot longer.