It’s (already) been a bit more than a year since Traxsource.com has appeared to the light and about the same time since our last chat with CEO Brian Tappert. What a better opportunity then to have him reviewing these 12 first months of activities, the current state pf the scene and have a few words as far as Miami 2006 is concerned.
Hey Brian, wassup? Guess you must be slightly recovering from Miami.
Hi Frederic, All good thanks…yes, still getting it together.
How was it this year?
I think it was pretty good actually. Seems like everyone was there for the right reasons again. It has been a difficult year, so everyone that came really did so for the love, and I’ve felt that.
Favourite tunes? Best DJ sets? Best nite? Best souvenir?
Waow…it’s all a bit hazy and I’m sure I missed tons of things. But – I did hear some great records…as per recent times, seemed like most of the big records were not exactly brand new. Some were Afromento – Human Wave, Dimity’s mix of Muthafunkas, Quentin Harris Mix of Mr V, New Claude Monnet on SSOH, Jamie Lewis Dub of Jinx on MN2S, Kathy Brown “Find Another Love” on Defected, Hardsoul – ‘My Life’ Knee Deep Mix as well as 2 others…Don’t let Love Weigh You Down and Deep Inside.
As for DJ sets…of course everyone who played at the Soulfuric party J and without a doubt Timmy rocked it at the Shelter Party…
As for Souvenir…The Traxsource Beach Ball haha…and the Brown “Deep” t-shirt…
Many peeps here and there wonder why house music as a whole isn't bigger
than that as compared to other genres. Any comment?
Well… people will always moan. If the scene becomes ‘too commercial’ they moan… If it’s too underground’, they moan. At the moment it seems that House is seeing a little renaissance in the UK with some great records getting played on radio etc… I personally would like to see this continue… But either way, we’re in it for the long haul. Happy to see Defected leading the way…
As years go, although I didn't do it this time, it looks like it has become more and more a DJ to DJ thang with nothing really done for the press as compared to say Midem or ADE. Don't you see this as a shame? I mean, what is it to have a song heavily played in Miami with no support from the press part from the usual After Miami reports?
Like I said earlier…if you went to Miami this year, you paid a shit load for hotels and the rest, and was most def a labor of love. A shame maybe… but I mean if there is a story shouldn’t the press go on their own?
Would it be because most of the current people around are condamned to react at short term due to the fragility of the economy ? And if so, isn't that a bad calculation at the end of the day?
Maybe so… hard to say.
How come isn't there anymore a central place where people could meet, exchange material, ideas and blablabla like at the Fontainebleau by the pool back in the daze?
Have to agree with you… I miss the old days, but like everything else, times change. Either we roll with them or go extinct. WMC lost the plot long ago and now it’s all about the parties and flexing your muscles…
And I'm not even talkin' about the incredible increase of nights over there, including local nighters from NYC or Chicago lookin' quite far away from what's supposed to be the intial goal of the Miami parties at the time: Promotion!
…
Don't you fear that keepin'on like this, the Miami festivities end up lacking a bit more of their interest from a year to another, while being a more and more Ibiza oriented thing?
You may be right… Time will tell.
So back to some more positive things, it's been a year now since our last chat. How has been this first exercise for Traxsource? Did you reach your initial expectations? More or less?
Honestly, we are all extremely happy how Traxsource is going…we never set out to be the biggest…just the best. Each month there are tons of new sites popping up…and we feel we are hanging tough with the best of them.
Has the Miami period had an impact on your activities?
Yes, Miami deffo gets the sales moving for sure. And for our team it’s a very challenging time to keep everything on point… as we sponsored around 20 parties this year along with putting on our own Soulfuric Party while keeping the operation running full steam. All in all was a lot of work, luckily we have a fantastic team and they all handled it flawlessly.
Your organization looks quite impressive. How many peeps are currently?
running the whole?
Marc (Pomeroy) and I couldn’t be happier with our team. We have 11 people full time and a couple more people who we consider part of the family that help out often. Each and every person is integral to the whole…
My role is now more of overseeing day to day while keeping our infrastructure strong as well as A&R’ing for Soulfuric. Marc is in charge of all the technical magic that occurs… and believe me, this is some high tech shizzz… He has 2 full time programmers who work under him coding like lunatics Rolly and Scott.
Sheldon Prince is Head of Operations for Traxsource and Soulfuric and man this guy has a lot on his plate… from overseeing all aspects of traxsource including A&R, he’s the man to speak to. Additionally he oversees all of the Soulfuric Operations from manufacturing to promotion. Sheldon has 4 People that work to help him achieve all of that…
Mike Waldhorn who is the Technical Director for traxsource and the man responsible for getting all the tunes up as fast as possible… that is a full time job lol. Ryan Mishkin is our utility man… His official role is Promotions Director but he does so much more, including Producing the Traxsource Radio Show, Artwork, Mike’s right hand on the tech side and… helping us out in the studio. Patrick Green also has a few key roles with the official title being Product Manager… But his duties are integral in many other areas. Scott Prieto is our Customer Service/ IT man whose role is to keep all our customers happy as well as all our office computers running…
Megan Szatmary is financial manager/ business affairs director and is responsible for all of our accountings… and believe me THAT’S A LOT! Not to mention running our office and dealing with all of our Licensing and Business affairs. Meg also has a great assistant named Liz…
We know how technology's running fast with people already talkin' about the
after mp3. I guess this is something which you're pretty much aware of. Has
this put you in the obligation to have like a research dept?
For Sure…technology is always moving.
Any idea of how Traxsource will be in the future?
Moving with the times…
Then what's the future of Traxsource? Have you thought about new categories of products to come? New genres? New services? New partnerships?
Absolutely… There are some amazing plans in the works, although I wouldn’t want to let to much out just yet. But I’ll just say… yes for now!
What's the day to day/week to week life at Traxsource?
Hectic!
To those who might say that you're amongst those killing the vinyl sales, what do you respond?
I would say they are not seeing the big picture. Technology has hurted vinyl…what we are doing is helping labels and ultimately House Music survive this evolution.
There are gossips here and there about the programmed death of the vinyl in
2008/2009. Anything you know/could confirm about this?
It seems that the substance that vinyl is made from is difficult to come by these days and this has driven prices up. Hard to say when it will no longer be profitable but one thing is for sure… Soulfuric will continue to press and sell as long as humanly possible.
Looking at the fees requested on your site for havin' the right to download material, it looks like it's about the same amount for havin' all the versions that buying a vinyl,except one don't have to pay for the S&H thing. Any comment?I don’t think that’s true at all… For example, a Soulfuric record will sell in Europe and UK for around US$ 14 to 18. The same exact download is much less… plus you can choose to buy only one mix or the whole thing for a discount. You can buy a whole title “promo” with 4 mixes for US$ 7.98. A commercial DL is 1.49 or 1.99 per mix… Hardly comparable to vinyl.
Have you had this internal fight between your MP's in America like in France recently whereas we had some of them supporting the legalization of free downloading in exchange of extra fees to be paid to the Net providers which would be reversed to the artists ?
This type of thing will kill music….We are against it.
What's the next stage/fight?
Stopping file sharing through education, technology and legal means.
Thank you and congrats to your team.
Thank you too…all the best. B
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