“Shea has the clearest sense of who she wants to be, what she wants her music to inspire, what kind of community she wants to build around the things that she does. Her ability to express that has basically coalesced all the business we do around her,” says Joey Lafyatis head of Rose’s management team for Shea Rose Entertainment.
Since graduating from Berklee College of Music in 2011, Rose has transformed from student and emerging artist to performer, fashionista, philanthropist and now businesswoman.
In January 2013 she was approached to sign with a major record label. During that same time, Rose launched a Kickstarter campaign for her project D.T.M.A. (Dance This Mess Around) — a blend of rock ‘n’ roll, soul and hip-hop. A goal of $5,500 was set, and the campaign raised $7,154.00. »
Rose secured the music contract that April, negotiating on her own without a manager or a lawyer. “The transactional aspect of negotiating with the label was very aggressive, not necessarily from anyone personally,” she said recently in a phone interview with the Banner.
“Once I started feeling that my voice was getting lost in the negotiation process…that’s when I was feeling boxed in and paralyzed. And I said, ‘my voice is being lost in this part and I haven’t signed. What’s going to happen once I’m signed?’”
She trusted her gut, declined the deal, and decided to take the independent route, which meant putting her team together.
“I have my band who I consider my team. We were a team in terms of the music and getting the music up and running live on stage. But the behind-the-scenes, which is marketing and branding and social media, and finding producers and collaboration, kind of all the things that a record label could provide, I didn’t have that support.”
A friend who had been mentoring her through the ups and downs of the label negotiations introduced her to Joey Lafyatis of Green Line Records in late November 2014 to discuss support for her album release. They had one meeting and immediately connected. What began first as a possible campaign for her album evolved into a full-service management mini-team devoted to developing Rose as an artist.
Lafyatis recalls the moment of meeting Rose as “…we kind of just sat down, talked about where we were coming from, the experiences we had in business. We very quickly hit it off. I think the decision to work with her grew naturally out of a synergy in the type of business that we were looking to do.”
Before joining Rose’s team, Lafyatis ran Green Line Records, a student-run record label at Northeastern University. The organization initially had 15 students. After three years under his supervision, it became a fully functioning record label that teaches kids how to work in the music industry. Green Line now serves about 100 students a semester.
“The experience set me up to work with Shea,” says Lafyatis by phone recently.
The two now are working together on building Shea Rose Entertainment. The company is run “like a small record label, not necessarily a conventional record label, but all the parts one would need to launch an artist, and new music, and build platforms,” says Lafyatis.
Rose, whose EP “D.T.M.A.” is being released independently this summer, decided to use crowdfunding to produce the project because “that is what manifested,” according to Lafyatis. “We’re still looking at all the different and unorthodox ways that artists are working nowadays to raise capital.” One of the alternative methods of raising capital that they’re discussing is sponsorship.
“The way we’re looking at it is that it’s even greater than music. We are looking at a certain level on how to recreate trends within the music industry. Again, it always comes back to Shea’s voice, Shea’s message, the brand that we’re trying to portray, how that manifests not only in music but also in fashion, in philanthropy, in other business decisions that she makes on the back end, like working with other brands,” explains Lafyatis. “It kind of identifies the idea that although her fans are listening to the music… they’re actually purchasing and getting involved for deeper reasons and I guess that’s what we’re really trying to tap into.”
Author: Photo: Debra RoseShea Rose speaks at TEDxBeaconStreet in December 2014.
In December 2014, Rose was invited to do a TED Talk at TEDxBeaconStreet. Since then, she has been approached by an influx of artists who are either her peers or younger aspiring artists in their teens. “I’ve started consulting, which is not something I ever expected to do. Consulting, mainly in a creative direction, how to build your brand, how to pull together all of the materials that you need to first establish yourself out there in the market through social media and a website presence. That’s been helpful for me.”
Rose also has been curating shows for other artists at a few venues in Boston. “It’s not something I expected. As soon I kind of let go of one opportunity, I started to kind of see the value in myself which I thought I could only be valuable if I was in a structure like a record deal. That value is now being affirmed by all of these artists and different institutions coming to me and asking me to consult for them in various ways.”
When asked how it felt to be involved in the business aspect in addition to being a performer, Rose said, “I guess for me it was the only route. I think there are artists who don’t enjoy so much the business side of it, the marketing, the mailing lists and some of the administrative grunt work that comes along with running a business. After I stepped away, I realized that I do enjoy that. I love being hands-on and really understanding all parts of my business and how it operates.”
This article appears in the May issue of Banner Biz – click here to read digital version.
