ISSUE003 Submissions and Voting

As mentioned before, ISSUE003 is well underway.

We alluded to the fact that some things have changed in our previous posts, and here’s where you’ll notice the most difference.

Background

For ISSUE 001 and 002, the community submitted tracks for consideration by the committee, who selected the top 10 tracks. These were put up for a vote on dubstepforum.com and the top 2 tracks were released.

We learned a lot during the process of releasing 001 and 002.  Some things worked, and some didn’t.

One of the major struggles with 002 was because of the success of 001.  We received 200+ submissions for 002 alone, and as you can imagine, these took some time to sort through and figure out which would be put up for a vote.

Now, for typical labels, it tends to be pretty easy to sign a track.  For more popular artists, the label has the option of signing them to an exclusive contract – stating (in layman’s terms) that they’ll ONLY release music on their label.  Great for the label, great for the artist… but shit! That means that Pressing Issues can’t ever release music from that artist.

If the label doesn’t feel like signing the artist on to an exclusive contract, they can just sign the individual track and release that way.

Both ways are decently quick for an artist, and the label has the ability to pounce when it hears something hot.

Not Us!

For ISSUE001 and 002, we hadn’t “built in” any way to pounce on these tracks when they came through.  By design the label was 100% democratic.  What the public saw was the voting progressing on 10 nameless faceless tracks.  Behind the scenes we knew the names and faces that belonged to which track, and we also oftentimes knew that other labels were asking to release that specific tune during the voting period.

It’s a tough position to be in as an artist, and we often encountered people who were less willing to submit their tunes for a vote by the public, as they felt it was strong enough to  be released by a label without any voting.  They were right in many cases, and we absolutely supported their decision to shop the tune around some, instead of submitting it for a public vote.

However, as a business, this left us in a bit of a tough position.  If we came across an extra hot tune, we needed the ability to sign that tune, without breaking the model of being a democratic label (still the only one in the world…).

ISSUE003

So for ISSUE003 what you’ll see is a slight compromise.  We’re still accepting track submissions, and we’re still putting up a poll for a vote.  However, we’ve already signed one side of the release (and the tune is LARGE).

We have a few options which we’re still discussing. Namely, do we release 2 tracks on the AA side, in order to still have 2 votes?

This is a change from how we’ve operated in the past, and we made this decision in order to position the label for long-term success (layman’s terms: we like doing this and want to make sure we continue to put out top-notch tunes).

Every release will still be voted on, and we’re working to come to a solution for how to handle the situation in which we jump on a tune before the next public vote comes around.  There are quite a few solutions possible, and we’re weighing our options.

We don’t want to become “just another dubstep label”. This label was founded by the community FOR the community, and we’re dedicated to that intention from start to finish.  However, this label is a business, and we’re also concerned with making sure we can keep on existing.

Here’s where we need your opinions.  What do you think of the change? Do you have any suggestions for us? Feel strongly one way or the other? Comment and let us know.

Tags: ISSUE001, ISSUE002, ISSUE003, vote