sci-fi author, beatmaker

Tag: Nick Warren

How I Broke Into the Music Business and Made $100K

Jackie at the old Loöq Records office on Brannan.

Jackie at the old Loöq Records office on Brannan.

As I’m trying to launch a new career (fiction writing), I’m also taking stock of an old one (producing electronic music). I signed my first track in 1992, at the age of 23, to Mega-Tech records (an offshoot of the famous San Francisco disco label Megatone). I released my latest record, a reggae/breaks hybrid track, a week ago.

Breaking in wasn’t easy. I remember vividly sending out cassette tape demos in padded mailers to record labels in New York City and Los Angeles, following up via phone, and getting shot down by arrogant label runners (I’ve made a point to never be mean, running my own record label, even though our signing bar is very high).

The Story of "The Dive"

A frame from Kia Simon’s music video of “The Dive”

A couple months ago Spesh and I received an email with a link to a demo.  This isn’t unusual — we get many submissions each week to Loöq Records — but this track in particular was a bootleg remix of a track we had already published.  A bootleg is an unsolicited “illegal” remix — it is made by chopping up bits of the finished track instead of using the individual remix parts or “stems” (supplied by the label or original artist).

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