This is actually a couple weeks old, but a disgruntled former employee, Ramsey Dean, from Victory Records fired off about the company in a million-word tirade calling the label and Tony Brummel every name in the book.
It's a pretty good read, actually. Check it.
I'm surprised that Dean would even attach his name to this piece. That's pretty ballsy. If there's anything I've learned it's that a) Victory is a notoriously litigious label and b) no one walks away from a libel or slander lawsuit unless they're Oprah.
I'm not at all shocked by the contents of Dean's article, in fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find any independent label that didn't model itself after major label excesses and such. This is especially true of pop-punk genre labels, as they are currently finding much of their rosters picked at and repackaged for mainstream acceptance.
This situation has me thinking, "Do bands even need labels anymore?" With the relevance of sites like Purevolume, Myspace and Facebook, bands are once again relying on word of mouth to get themselves out there. P2P sites are the new tape trading forums and blogs are the new zines. As the music industry is collapsing on itself, one has to wonder, is it even worth a damn to say, "My band is signed to ____."? The way I see it, it's more relevant to brag about how many MySpace friends you can get to go to your crappy show on a Wednesday night.
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