"So what exactly is Independent? Independent means that for the past 10 years, William and his wife Galia, have successfully released 3 GOLD Selling albums, 2 of which went top 10, from their living room so to speak. With this 4th album “Open Country” they Celebrate 10 years of independent music and again success…"
We are very proud to be part of a great success story! William White just entered the Swiss Album charts at #2 with his new album "Open Country", which is distributed independently through iMusician. Not bad for home grown… ! To celebrate the release, we had a chat with William about the album and independent distribution.
Your new album "Open Country" enters the Swiss Album Charts at No. 2, congratulations! From what we understand this whole project was quite an ambitious one. What was your approach this time?
Thank you.Yes this album is special. Usually in the past, an album was a “one man show” of course with lots of help from my friends. Early last year I started to write and collect songs for my fourth album… I had lots of material and ideas… and doing a reggae Album in Jamaica was just one of those ideas. Most of all it was about having my music played by and interpreted by musicians of another musical culture. I have heard enough of my own work and I really enjoy hearing what others do.
We were lucky to have met the right people in Devon Bradshaw (Burning Spear) and Ian “Beezy” Colemann (Ziggy Marley) at their Axx Studios in Jamaica, so we went after this idea and the rest is history. We came home from Jamaica in December and I spent the winter finishing the production and mixing the album. It was, and still is really refreshing to hear my music played like this…
For you it was very important to have a physical version of the album as well. Why is that?
Really I wish we were all still in the vinyl age. If I really like music then I want a hard copy… like a good book on the shelf. It seems that most of my fans also feel this way. We take great care to make a CD beautiful; for the ears and eyes and hands and hearts.. These things go together. And yes, we have pressed a small number of Vinyl LPs of “Open Country” and we’re really happy with that. You can get them cede.ch.
Something we hear a lot these days: Today for an artist it's only possible to make decent money by playing live, selling music has only a promotional aspect. Would you agree, what's your approach?
That’s difficult to answer. We need both. Switzerland is a small country there are only so many gigs and so many sales… but as I said before my fans like to have a CD and we sell them at concerts so I guess that playing live and the selling music still work well together.
YouTube becomes more and more important. Especially younger people are using YouTube as their main source for music. What's your opinion on YouTube?
As a musician I have no problem with YouTube. Maybe I should use it more.
For you it’s always been of the highest importance to remain independent in the production and distribution of your music. … What advice would you give younger artists who are starting from scratch and have it difficult to build up their career without the support of a traditional label?
There is no one and only way… everything is changing all the time. This is one big advantage of being independent. You are very flexible that way. Otherwise I can only talk about the choices I made in my career but that doesn’t mean it would be right for anyone else. I do strongly believe that if you know who you are and know what you want to say, you already have a great advantage… the rest is work and belief …and more work…so I hope you love what you do.