Interviewer:
Mr. Cody, tell me, what does Green Eyed Records actually mean to your musician, your average musician? What does Green Eyed Records mean to you?
Nick Cody:
Right. Well, Green Eyed Records came from a lot of soul searching and discussions with a whole variety of different musicians, most of whom lamented the launch of being an independent musician, or having been signed to labels, and then finding that they either had limitations financially, or they had limitations creatively on what they could do. So my problem solving brain basically looked into this to think, “Is there some other option?” If you think of this very simply, there is a demand for entertainment, without doubt. There are people that want entertainment, that want good music. The question is how are artists supported and how are artists creatively nurtured in order to be able to produce that content?
Nick Cody:
In the old days you might have … Record companies would sign people, and certainly there was an era where there were huge advances of money, and essentially these are investments in companies, or loans against future earnings. Which sounds great, but just like in the authorship, not everybody’s going to be the next J. K. Rowling, although they expect to do so. So my own thinking was that that model doesn’t really work for a majority of people. So what are you do instead? Well, we can rage at the universe and go, “Oh, they should be like this,” et cetera, et cetera. We can rage at social media and say, “Well, streaming should be fairer to artists.” Well good luck with that, basically.
Nick Cody:
So my solution and coming up with the GER platform and the idea, was unlike a traditional record company where you sign for a label, the emphasis is on collaboration and communication through … Within artists with other artists. So this may work on a whole range of different ways. One would be education and good information. So who’s got access to different musicians, to venues, to support bills. Might be to equipment, might be to people who can help in a practical sense on that level. Another might be in terms of actual physical collaborations, where people are actually playing on each other’s albums, or doing reciprocal favours in that way. There could be a whole range of different factors. But the idea is that the artists become more empowered, and the creative output is more through the collaboration rather than working for a record company, record business.
Nick Cody:
This is not to say that this removes any kind of sensible commercial business sense. Because at the end of the day, the idea that you may feel that your music should be … You should be paid thousands of pounds for playing venues is a wonderfully romantic idea. The question is, what does the venue owner get from the artist that’s performing? So it’s to level it up to find some kind of balance where the artists are more empowered, and ultimately the music goes back to the people. And there’s greater value placed on the quality of music, and it’s not all just thought of as being all for free for people.
Nick Cody:
There are various ways that people can actually get involved. We have, for example, a Facebook page where people can interact and we put out sort of regular news information, useful, practical information out to people. There’s Instagram account, which people can look at that’s on Instagram. There’ll be a YouTube as well. So there’s a resource for people to have access, because all musicians mostly know the reality of what it’s like to be a musician, rather than what they’re taught in music college, music school, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Nick Cody:
So it’s bringing a more realistic vision, both commercially and business wise to a wider group of people. And then through talking to each other and working with each other, we can figure out how we can better help each other. This does not mean we’ve got this euphoric panacea where everybody is equally helping with each other, because people have different ideas, and that’s fine. But it’s bringing the emphasis back to the artists having more control, rather than having to work for other entities. Which often put them in a very severe commercial and business and creative disadvantage.
