I think it depends on where you are in your career. I mean if you’re just starting and you can somehow survive, doing it on an independent basis or controlling it, it meaning the music, may be a smart way to move or a smart way to go. If you have a major label that hears it and wants it, then you have to make that decision. But you have to be aware of the fact that it’s very hard for a major label, based on the economics of the business to do what we used to do with Neal Young or Prince or others when the record business was different and wonderful. Where you ddin’t have to spend whatever you have to spend.

There’s a tremendous amount of pressure on labels and it’s very hard for them to stay with an artist. They’re trying. I think there’s a great awareness, that vibe is out there amongst the artist community, and it may not be an organized community, but certainly there is an artist community of sorts, that major labels don’t stick with artists and I think major labels will try to reverse that perception.

I don’t know what to say about it. It’s the individual. If the individual does not want to put it out there in a major way, then maybe controlling it is a great way tot start and realize that it’s going to take time and you’re going to have to grow as an artist, and maybe growing at your own pace is a better way of doing it.

It’s a tough question. It really is a tough question. Ultimately I think that if you’re looking to be an artist with a career, a long term career, for the most part major labels is the way to go. Now there are off shoots of major labels too, labels that are owned by major labels that are accepted as being slightly left of center where it’s ______ or whatever the label might be and those are wonderful alternative depending on the artist. I know that Interscope is trying. Even though Interscope is a major label and acts like a major label in good ways and bad ways, it’s trying to build some kind of label identity with all the different labels so that you have some diversification, and Warner’s is doing the same thing and has done. I mean that’s what we did when we started Reprise many, many years ago. We wanted to be able to differentiate the two labels and also have more focus where you’d have a handful of artists that had more people working on the records.

So from that standpoint where you have the opportunity to be on a smaller label, but still part of a major label, that’s good too. I don’t know, there’s all sorts of alternatives, and again the ability to make something that’s really good and get it heard today is more doable. The radio isn’t quite, look you still need radio. The world has not changed that much yet. We’ll see what happens, again we don’t know. We’ll see what happens. I’m sure distribution, radio; all of the things that were so important to the record industry will be revised in a dramatic way. I really believe that, but how you go about it is a difficult one because your main focus as an artist or a musician is doing good work. If you can do something that’s great, often that takes you to the right place either to be discovered or heard, or the obvious often you can put a record out and a major label will pick it up. There starts a career.

So you can get caught up in the problems of the music business, major labels, independent labels, but there’s one constant that does not change, thank goodness, to keep your equilibrium at bay and that is quality. If you’ve got something that’s great it’ll get heard, and how you choose to have it heard is your business. But that’s the only way not to get so confused that you just sort of throw up your hands and give up. I wouldn’t give up. I would just stay true to what you’re doing and make sure you’re doing it as good as you can do it.

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