Spaceflight Records' Nonprofit Clears for Takeoff
An ambitious vision for debt-free record deals attracts notable music industry interest
By Rachel Rascoe, Fri., April 22, 2022
The Spaceflight Records takeover of the annual open-to-the-public Auditorium Shores stage on Thursday, March 17, of South by Southwest, was noteworthy for multiple reasons.
Onstage, the show assembled all-locally sourced heavyweights like …Trail of Dead, Heartless Bastards, and Golden Dawn Arkestra for skyline-backed sets off Lady Bird Lake. Behind the scenes, the event marked the first time musicians were paid $200 per individual for each hour spent performing, by the city of Austin. The new base pay rate, previously set at $150 since 2016, was passed by the Austin Music Commission the week prior.
Between sets, the record label announced the launch of their own effort at improving financial equity for musicians. Spaceflight is officially a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, a long-sought goal of founder/CEO Brett Orrison. The status allows the label to roll out an experimental concept: Whereas record labels typically must make money off their artists to stay afloat, Spaceflight plans to support artistry without the expectation to recoup.
"I just can't tell you how many artist friends I've had that get super stoked to be signed to a label, and two years later, they're right where they started," says Orrison, calling from on tour mixing live sound for Jack White. "Nobody, the label or the artist, got paid. Small indie labels are great for the community, but they don't seem to be able to get that artist lifted up financially enough to keep making music, which is the most important thing. There has to be a better way."
While a few other indie outlets have obtained 501(c)(3) status, Orrison wants to be the first that can provide major-label-level support to artists. In five years, he's already assembled a roster of over 30 majority-Austin artists, pinpointing engaging talent across genres on the up-and-up to grow beyond their hometown.
On the Jumbotrons over Auditorium Shores, the label announced fundraising efforts in their intergalactic visual aesthetic.
Going forward, Spaceflight plans to fund releases through fellowships. Envisioned as a record contract without the debt, artists won't owe the label for the investment made in their album rollout. Rather, they'll begin collecting a percentage of profits immediately after the release. With details still being worked out, Orrison imagines a customized investment offer anywhere from $15 to $50,000. True to Spaceflight's existing practice, fellowship recipients will retain 100% ownership of their music.
"Unfortunately, to succeed right now in this business, artists have to take on a lot of debt and give up anywhere from 50[%] to 80% of their profits right off the top," says Orrison. "This totally sour deal has become commonplace, and causes so much exclusivity and lack of diversity. We want to see if we can structure it a better way, so artists make money off their first record."
The fellowship will cover a variety of services already in Spaceflight's wheelhouse, including PR, radio promotion, licensing opportunities, and legal services.
Rollout of Spaceflight's first fellowships, planned for later this year, naturally depends on increased fundraising. Alongside public donations, Orrison plans for the nonprofit status to usher in grants and corporate sponsors, including adding and utilizing a team member with grant-writing experience. Corporate sponsors have supported Spaceflight's growing bookings, including free happy hour sets every Friday at Scholz Garten.
Orrison would also like to eventually pay his all-volunteer team of around five, plus interns. The founder supports himself as a producer and engineer, while Spaceflight Chief Marketing Officer Sam Wainwright Douglas works as a filmmaker and PR Director Samara Simpson teaches live music & talent management at Austin Community College. After being laid off from Old Settler's Music Festival in 2020, Simpson expanded into day-to-day operations at the label, typically helping out with around 10 album releases at a time.
"We're trying to find a way to change the game and do away with record advances," she explains. "That's how record labels make money: They need to recoup. With the fellowship, part of our corporate sponsorship would repay our staff, so we wouldn't need to be recouping at all."
Informational resources also factor heavily into what Spaceflight provides to its roster. A new advisory board includes Widespread Panic's Dave Schools, Black Pumas' Adrian Quesada, Free Lunch organizer and event producer Jazz Mills, former MTV marketing exec Mark Greenberg, C3 Presents talent buyer Quinn Donahue, Austin Music Foundation Director Jennifer Dugas, KUTX's Laurie Gallardo, and entertainment lawyer Brooks Rice. Orrison describes the assembly as "basically people that have promised I can call them at any time."
Other advisors, like Nine Mile Records' Rick Pierik and Light in the Attic Records' Matt Sullivan, draw from label-world experience. The latter, connected with Orrison through shared involvement with the Black Angels – one of the few contemporary acts on Sullivan's tastemaking reissue label, wrote to the Chronicle: "I don't think there's anything like Spaceflight in terms of it being a nonprofit and its dedicated mission to help artists grow their career. The music business is a mess, so what Spaceflight is doing is needed now more than ever. I'm happy to lend a hand in any way I can."
Orrison's decades of music industry relationships have bolstered the label's quick growth since 2017. After producing Kalu & the Electric Joint's debut Time Undone, Orrison started Spaceflight to support the psychedelic soul record. A year later, after a conversation with city Music & Entertainment Division Manager Erica Shamaly, Orrison closed down Spaceflight's LLC to relaunch as a nonprofit called Spaceflight Mission, initially just state-recognized. Days later, he connected through friends of friends for ongoing distribution through Ingrooves Music Group, owned by Universal.
Since then, the label has also established a deal with Austin-based Frog Music Licensing, placing around a dozen Spaceflight songs on TV shows in the past few months. They've partnered with local Gold Rush Vinyl and White's Third Man Records for vinyl manufacturing. Alongside international distribution, a central goal of Spaceflight's nonprofit effort is to afford vinyl pressing – currently paid for by artists.
All of the above applies to label act Urban Heat, helmed by vocalist Jonathan Horstmann. His band's forthcoming July EP, Wellness, joins Spaceflight's calendar of incoming releases from Big Bill, Primo the Alien, Calliope Musicals, the Tender Things, and latest addition Garrett T. Capps. An angel investor fan has offered to privately fund Urban Heat's vinyl.
Currently, Urban Heat has free access to Spaceflight's lawyer for contract negotiations with a publishing administrator. Further label connections, Horstmann considers C3 booker Donahue an unofficial team member to seek advice from. Alongside consultation from Simpson, he also values the community nurtured by Spaceflight's roster and events.
"Being part of a family of artists locally, especially during the pandemic, has been really great," says Horstmann. "Now it's about seeing how long it takes for them to be able to make enough money to really change the career trajectory of some artists. It's an interesting experiment, and part of being a musician is being a dreamer. Spaceflight has the potential to make us grow much faster than we would on our own, so it's also like, 'Why the hell not?'"
Spaceflight's admins dream big, too. With no office, the label works on plans for a campus integrating a recording studio, content creation, and film studio – available to their artists at no cost – as well as a music venue and record store. Simpson wants two nights at Auditorium Shores next SXSW, and Orrison intends to poach from major labels.
"Our goal is to sign any big artist with a shitty record deal," he says. "Whatever we make from that goes back into subsidizing our artist development, so it's this big reciprocation. We can be a modern-day, new kind of deal. It's not a mom-and-pop nonprofit; it's not Austin-centric. There's no ceiling to it."
