The Blue bird Café in Nashville was place where unknown singer-songwriters could play and be heard. On one trip made to Nashville from her home in Pennsylvania, Swift played to a small audience at the songwriter’s venue and caught the eye of an up and coming music mogul. His name was Scott Borchetta and he signed her to his newly formed independent record label called Big Machine Records.
Who Is Scott Borchetta?
Scott grew up in Southern California where he played in several rock bands then came to Nashville in 1981 and like a lot of other artist, never went home. As an accomplished musician he toured with many big country acts. But he wanted to learn the industry part of music and got a job in the mailroom of a record company. He worked several years for DreamWorks in the radio promotions department helping to break in Toby Keith and had big country music hits songs with Randy Travis, Darryl Worley, Jessica Andrews and Jimmy Wayne.
Borchetta founded Big Machine Record Label in Sept. 2005 and serves as President/CEO. In the first year they had a #1 hit with Jack Ingram’s Where Ever You Are. Placed 5 singles in the Country Top 30 and were nominated for Record Label of The Year. He placed all 3 of his label’s new artist releases in the Top 10 Most Played New Artist for 2006. Big Machine Records formed a partnership with Universal records in 2007 they set up camp in Nashville on Music Row. They joined forces to propel Taylor Swift to Top 40 radio and beyond.
After The Dust cleared On Music Row-Republic Nashville Was Born
The new joint record company was called Republic Nashville and Borchetta appointed former Capitol Records Promotion Executive Jimmy Harnen as the President. Harnen previously worked with Borchetta at DreamWorks Nashville. Big Machine’s signature artist would be Taylor Swift, the biggest star in country music today.
Her first self titled album went multi platinum. The first single Tim McGraw reached #6 on Billboard and the album peaked at #1 Billboard Country Albums. She toured with McGraw and Faith Hill and performed at the Country Music Awards. She also toured with George Strait, Brad paisley and Rascal Flatts. The second single from her debut album was Teardrops On My Guitar went to #2 on Billboards Hot Country Songs Chart. The third single of the album called Our Song spent 6 week at #1 on the Billboard Country Charts. It was huge.
Her album Fearless in 2008 debuted at #1 for 11 weeks on Billboard 200. It sales were the biggest of any country star in 2008. Its lead single Love Story became a cross-over hit on Country and Pop charts.. Fearless sold more than 339,000 digital downloads, becoming the best selling country digital album in history.Second was Taylor Swift's first album. Swift's country music lyrics search and country chords are the most popular in country music today.
Big Machine’s signature artist Taylor Swift was the best selling all-genre artist for 2008 and to date of this article sold over 10 million records. Taylor's worldwide smash hit Love Story became the first ever Country crossover single to hit #1 on the Billboard and USA Top 40 Charts. She was also the first artist to have 2 albums in the Top 10 at the same time.
She was name Artist of the Year in 2009 by Billboard Magazine and won a Grammy for Album of the Year and along with other top honors. She has won The Hal David Starlight Award for Songwriting in New York City. Taylor Swift's Lyrics are downloaded and incredibly popular and are written like a pre-teens diary. She was rated the 12th most powerful celebrity earning over 45 million dollars by January of this year. She is the top digital artist in the history of music with over 24.3 million digital tracks sold and 10 million albums sold worldwide. She is defended by Borchetta no matter what everyone is saying.
Scott Borchetta's Philosophy Of Music Marketing The internet
In an interview with The Nashville Music Guide in 2007, Borchetta was asked how Big Machine was utilizing the internet for their music marketing strategy and his answer was “Huge.” He was asked for the reason for declining sales in country music albums. Borchetta said ” It was much bigger than country albums sales. It was a shift in the way entertainment was being utilized and enjoyed.” Borchetta said ”It’s the most amazing revolution of our lifetime and very soon companies or providers are going to have to take responsibility for the problems.” He went on to say that “We can’t fix the problems with the RIAA suing col.” He said that real conversation will take place with people like Comcast and Cox Cable and then the wild west mentality that anything goes legal or not on the internet will come to an end. He said the real solutions were coming, and that will be the next seismic shift in music sale etc.
Swift has been featured on the covers of a number of magazines from Rolling Stone to CosmoGirl she and has a clothing line, appeared on SNL, started an acting career and is the spokesman for the National Hockey League. The future will realize whether Borchetta's wild west view of the music business and the internet marketing strategy he uses, will be successful again for the next Big Machine Records artist.
References
Nashville Music Guide-Scott Borchetta-article written by Dan Wunsch Aug/Sept issue
Celebritypro.com/Taylor Swift bio
Jim Galloway - Professional Musician/Published Songwriter for 30 yrs. With over 200 Articles in Recording/Music Buisness/ Resources/Vintage Instruments
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