The Hawk

Issue date: 9/19/07 Section: Entertainment

Never Die Records will be run out of Mandeville.

Students in the Haub School's Entertainment Marketing Track will get a new chance to gain hands-on industry experience this spring.

Never Die Records, for now just an initiative, is set to launch at the beginning of the spring semester. It will be a student-run organization, supervised by David Allan, Ph.D, assistant professor of marketing. Brett Giroux, '09, was instrumental in developing the project. As a musician, he has offered unique insight.

"We've been working with an entertainment lawyer to make [the company] more artist-friendly," said Giroux.

"It's cool because no one is contractually obligated. You don't have to sign on for a year or anything like that."

Giroux also commented that he was impressed with the amount of interest that has already been generated among campus bands.

The label will encourage relationships with on-campus bands, but will also be open to submissions by local artists. It will serve mostly as a platform for musicians to spread their material to wider audiences, but will not immediately deal with recording or production. "It's a matter of artists bringing in their finished products as digital files," said Allan. "Then we decide whether to distribute them, and send them to TuneCore.com." TuneCore is a service that will allow for the distribution of these files to online vendors such as iTunes. According to www.tunecore.com, clients receive 100 percent profit through their affiliations with particular music retailers. Never Die will use the revenue it generates to provide some profits for its artists and pay for itself.

The label will not initially handle booking or concert scheduling.

"For now, we will only book promotional shows, like a Battles of the Bands on campus," said Allan.

He added that booking at other venues would be a long-term goal, however.

Never Die will be run out of an office in Mandeville Hall, but Allan is optimistic about eventually acquiring an independent headquarters. It will be run mainly by students enrolled in a lab course as part of a group of classes specifically geared toward marketing in the music industry, but any student is welcome to volunteer.

With such a strong base of campus bands, it seems as if the future of Never Die Records is bright. The digital files currently roosting on their MySpace pages could easily turn into cash and widespread exposure. For fans, this change also means easy access to studio quality copies of their favorite originals.

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