JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Brian Austin Whitney Blog Tuesday, May 16th, 2006

Sub,

First of all I don't consider you a plumber doing it in your spare time. As for "little guy" versus "big guy" it's also important to point out that the 2 companies we suggested above are run by a single and active JPF member as well. Joey Finger, the founder of Session Players, is a well respected session player himself who performed at our last awards show with several other well known and respected session players to back up nominee St. Paul. Since that time, we've gotten to know each other and regularly chat for hours at a time about a wide variety of issues that affect both his company and JPF. In addition, because I believe in what he's doing and the integrity in which he's doing it, I even hooked up our former NYC Coordinator (now SEMA coordinator) Christine Mascott to go work for him because I trusted he'd treat her well and I knew she'd do a great job for him. He's been totally open at every stage to our suggestions, and even restructured his main focus (which is to offer some of the most amazing (and often world famous) session players to play on anyone's project to also offer a far more affordable set of services for songwriters who simply need a quality demo at a fair price and with outstanding quality. I've probably spent more time talking with Joe over the last year than anyone else not directly on the JPF staff or community partner list. It's part of the process I usually undertake before we add someone as a community partner. I want to know them personally, beyond just business, so that I can vouch for them as people just as much as a business. It's been clear to me that Joey is the real deal and so he's an obvious choice to partner with on every level. He can handle volume. He can offer quality service. He can give equal service to the big or little guys. He's flexible and fair. He won't likely ever be the cheapest (and in fact, I've already told him to raise the price of his basic demo because with the quality of performers he's using, it was too low and he was basically giving it away. As someone who knows a LOT about giving quality work away, I want him to be around and to continue to grow so that there's always a large scale honest company out there for our members to use. And frankly, his main business model of having world class superstar musicians who are happy to play on your CD (for a significant fee of course)is both exciting and amazing. Back when I was actively recording stuff, I would have LOVED to have been able to hire some of these folks for the projects I was working on. (If you haven't seen the world class list, that keeps growing, check it out on Sessionplayers.com, you'll be amazed!).

So that's why Session Players is one of the resources I am considering. In addition, I know as Joey's site grows, he wants to give back to JPF in a similar way that TAXI and DIsc Makers and CD Baby currently do. Right now he's still a little guy and can't do it. But early on the companies above couldn't do it either. But we formed long term relationships and now they're what keep us going and keep the awards possible.

The other name I suggested is even more directly involved with JPF and is also a "little" guy in the scheme of things. Mark Keefner has been a JPF mentor since 1999 and has hosted meetings, spoken to chapter meetings, worked with a wide variety of members on various projects and has also offered me info and advice (and vice versa) over the years. We've even discussed a lot of potential projects (like creating a JPF licensing site to place award winning music into films and TV shows that Mark works with). That's a giant project that will take some time to put together, but while that is being discussed, he's offered a different type of production service and recording package than what Session Players typically does. It's a very hands on, service intense production and development thing focused more on artists than songwriter demos. He's already worked with quite a few JPF members who have all been happy to date and is working with 2 currently as we speak. Since he's worked with major artists and on quite a few major TV broadcasts and movies, I know he can produce top level stuff. He's also not the cheapest, but he's offering a very different set of services than a demo house. I position what he does sort of in the middle of the 2 focuses of Session Players. (i.e. the basic high quality songwriter demos and the top end world famous session players for artist releases).

Both guys I consider very active and involved JPF members. To me, that's very important, just as it is with Sub. He's done a great job making members happy. Though he hasn't "partnered" with us (i.e. we're obviously not getting a cut of the profits) he's also not charging much money. He IS (as he's obviously noticed) getting a lot of business from our site though. My goal is to simply find partners who are willing to share some of the gain and benefit they get from the work I have done back with our group so we'll still be around to generate more business for them, and offer more support and services for all our members. In the cases of both Joe and Mark, they've been involved and offered support long before we've ever sent them a single customer. In the case of Sub, he's put his work right out in the open for scrutiny and has had universally great feedback and has also chipped in with feedback etc. That's the kind of people we want to work with. I've gotten some "endorsements" from members of other outside studios, but the big difference (beyond the fact I haven't heard of them) is that they've never reached out to JPF as an org. or shown they wanted to be actively involved previously, before there's a big carrot on a stick hanging out there for them. Though I am not saying I wouldn't consider the right "new" partner, I have to say they'd need to do a lot for me to refer business to them over the folks who are actively involved here AND who have demonstrated they can make our members happy with quality service and support.

So that's my viewpoint so far on all of this. I've still gotten very few responses about Demo places and even fewer who have supplied the info we asked for. But I do want to thank those who have given us what we need. Once I have a collection of examples, we'll post our findings here.

Brian