Tuesday, April 26 – New York, NY
If you are making music I think you will agree with me when I say for better or for worse “What an interesting time it is for the recorded music industry.” There are a few elements that really make it “interesting;”
Music creators now have options such as SONAR X1 to create finished masters without having to pay for studios, therefore having the luxury of time to hone in on perfecting the art of making great recordings.- It’s a fact that music consumption is at a record high, but at the same time the money (in dollars) flowing into the industry as a whole is at a record low.
- Major Labels are no longer developing artists.
- Labels have lost the revenue of the “full length” record due to the fact that consumers can purchase singles for next to nothing now and bypassing those “throwaway” tracks.
- One can click a mouse and literally “distribute” a song to thousands of people at once.
…add in a few money making American Idols along with the astronomical amount of money it takes to be heard on CHR radio, and there you have it; an industry that is really tough to figure out right now.
With all that being said, modern technology including the internet has brought one thing to the table for sure; “the truth.” If you’ve really got something going on and the talent to back it up, cyber-authenticity kicks into high gear and recognition follows. The internet has created an upward filtering platform where people gravitate towards the entertainment by which they really want to be engaged. Javier Colon is absolutely a pioneer of this revolution and is about as authentic and talented as they come, which has landed him an audition on the new highly anticipated NBC television show “The Voice” airing Tuesday, April 26th.
Ironically, before working for Cakewalk I first came into contact with Javier while working for the record company Capitol Records to which he was signed. At the time his world-class voice and musicianship was still the focus point of his work, but the direction of the project seemed to be a bit off from what he was truly all about as an artist considering that the label had channeled him down a stream of the typical “Urban R&B” artist. The word “typical” really should not be in the same paragraph as Javier. The word “prodigy” has been thrown around to describe him, but there is sometimes an association to that word which comes across as robotic and trite. The uniqueness about Javier is that he has the elements and skill level of a prodigy, but he also has the “feel” that is sometimes lacking in musicians of his caliber. The selling point though is his stage presence and electrifying performance to go along with his gift of voice. To experience his talent in a live setting is really where you understand where he came from and where he is going.
Leading up to this point in his career, Javier has not only put in his dues as an artist but has also used his experiences along the way to keep moving forward. After graduating from the esteemed University of Hartford Hartt School of Music, he was recommended to Allman Brother’s guitarist Derek Trucks of the Derek Trucks Band where he then spent almost 2 years touring with Trucks, exploring onstage everything from rock and soul to blues, jazz and beyond. “Being in that band really helped me grow vocally. I had never actually fronted a band or done anything like that before. I found another gear that I could kick into that I didn’t know I had,” he says. And Javier continued to kick into more gears as time went on sharing the stage with iconic artists such as Joss Stone, Darius Rucker and Chaka Khan just to name a few.
Along the way something else happened, Javier discovered SONAR which enabled him to take control of his own music. “I started using SONAR and was quickly able to start getting down my ideas. Before long, my ideas and demos started sounding better and better sonically and I was really able to get my message across. A lot of the times now, my demos turn into commercial releases where I record everything and then just send out my tracks to have them mixed,” Javier told me last spring on the golf course (where he had also told me about a recent “Ace” he had at the BMW Charity Pro Am 😉 ). Javier is now running SONAR X1 and a V-Studio 100 for his recording setup and is loving it. “I don’t use or need anything else in my home studio.” Check out the video of Javier using a V-Studio 100 and SONAR.
Fast forward to now, and Javier’s music train has made yet another stop along his quest. The only difference now is that this stop is fueled with all the components to catapult him into the living rooms of more people than any record deal could provide. I remember Javier telling me a couple years ago, “You never know where the real life changing opportunities in this business are going to come from. You just have to do go out there and grind and do everything that looks worthwhile and hopefully something will pay off.” I think Javier might have been onto something with that philosophy. Unless you live under a rock you most likely have not been able to escape the promotional push on this new television series “The Voice.” On a few of the promos Javier is actually featured, and although he can’t say absolutely anything about the show at this point, my guess is that he has a good chance of doing very well. All of us at Cakewalk will be wishing him the absolute best and you can be sure that we will be reporting more information from behind the scenes as the show moves along.
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