Thirty Seconds To Mars’ Jared Leto – HuffPost 12.23.13
Mike Ragogna: I normally ask “What advice do you have for new artists,” but to that point, what are some of the things that have been successful for you? What are some things that you think an artist can do for themselves?
Jared Leto: That’s a good question. One of the things that I’ve learned is to be really entrepreneurial, to not wait for permission, to be proactive. Thirty Seconds To Mars has been a great guinea pig for other businesses that I got involved with as a founder, as a CEO, and that includes technology, e-commerce, VIP ticketing and packages. We’re really proactive in those areas. I would encourage other bands to not sign a record deal until you feel like you have to, until you feel like it’s the right time. You want to walk into a record company with as much leverage as possible, so I would tell young artists to focus on building community, to focus on building awareness, playing shows, touring, working on their craft, on writing, on performing, being the best that they can be. Don’t be desperate for a record deal, that’s not going to solve all of your problems. In some cases, it may add to them. You want to be completely clear about what kind of deal you’re signing, you want to be clear about why you’re signing a record deal, and be clear about your expectations. There are also a lot of things you can do if you’re already an established artist, like we do. We get involved and be proactive and cut out the middleman when we can. There are a lot of great platforms. We started one called VyRT, that allows us to broadcast concerts, and instead of commercials and sponsorships, we make an arrangement directly with our audience, we sell individual digital tickets. So we have this online concert venue now where we can broadcast anything and everything and we use it quite a bit. We premiered Artifact through VyRT and it was a great success; we just broadcast our Hollywood Bowl show there and it was a great success. There are other avenues to look for additional sources of revenue rather than the traditional record label model, and I would encourage other artists to explore those.
MR: That’s great, practical advice. It’s really up to the artist these days since the old school way of doing things is almost gone.
JL: There are no rules, and it’s up to artists to break them, if there are any left. We do what we are inspired and motivated to do. For us, community has always been an incredibly important part of Thirty Seconds To Mars. You have to work hard, you have to be tenacious in order to survive these days. We’ll see what the future holds, I’m optimistic about it. It’s certainly going to be interesting to watch. I’m really proud that Artifact is finally out after five years in the making and we’re able to share our story with the world.