The relationship between musicians and record labels has always been complex. One can’t live without the other. The label must operate efficiently as a business if it is to survive and provide the money necessary to furnish artists with a professional environment to produce albums, market artists to the public, provide proper management or managerial oversight, advance money to artists for living expenses and provide legal services to protect the rights it shares with artists.

Artists on the other hand need to earn enough money from the label to maintain a good standard of living. Of course the label has very different ideas about how much money an artist is entitled to given the risks involved in selling music. No label can predict album sales or influence the thinking that makes and breaks musical trends among youth.

It has been the custom that many labels do not inform artists about the business end of recording, promoting and selling music. Many labels have used this lack of knowledge on the part of artists to their own advantage over the years. Interestingly, this custom may have been the result the nature of the early relationship between artists and the businessmen who ran music publishing companies in the late 1800s, when sheet music was the way profit was made in the music business.

American publishing companies based in Manhattan’s "Tin Pan Alley", an area based around 28th Street in New York during the late 19th century, paid artists a low flat rate for the scores and words to their songs. It was then the publishing company’s role to market songs to traveling minstrel shows. These minstrel shows went across the United States performing tunes from various music publishing companies. If a publishing company could convince the manager or star singer of a popular minstrel to incorporate songs from their catalogue in the act, there was the chance that the song would become popular nationally. Once that happened American consumers could be expected to buy the sheet music from licensed retailers across the country. It took some patience, but profits were made.

Of course, the relationship between artists and major music publishers got way complicated once technological advancements like radio, long running LPs or albums seriously enriched the major players of the industry. By the time technology made record players available to most homes globally, the major American music companies had already divided territory among themselves across the globe and established licenses with retailers all over the world to disseminate America’s music. When we speak of a "record industry" or a real "record label", we speak of the might of this sophisticated corporate network.

Once American artists realized the enormous profits their collective work brought into the major music corporations they began to unionize and organize to fight for more payment or royalties or a larger share in the publishing agreements they had with these major music corporations.

The Haitian record business was and remains a much simpler beast in comparison. Those who got involved in the business were music enthusiasts and not necessarily businessmen looking to establish major corporations to compete across a vast market of people with money to spare. When the American music industry was taking shape, Haiti was no longer the richest Island in the Antilles. It was a third world agrarian economy that was barely touched by the European industrial revolution.

Before the advent of the American occupation of 1915, most Haitians had not been exposed to advancements in the day’s music technology. Cuba established its own recording facility as early as 1902 and it was in Cuba that Haiti’s first professional Orchestra - the El Saieh Orchestra – recorded its tunes. Haiti would not have recording facilities until Ricardo Widmaer established Radio Haiti in 1937. There, Haitian luminaries like Dodof Legros, Anilus Cadet and many others finally gained access to modern recording facilities.

Unfortunately for early Haitian music entrepreneurs like the U.S. educated and Jazz savvy Issa El Saieh, there was no market for music records in Haiti. Most families did not have disposable income to buy record players, so there was no tradition of record collecting on the Island. El Saieh gave away the music he recorded for free to his audience and made his money in live performances.

Haiti’s "major" labels were established in America during the 1960s and 70s. There was Joe Anson’s Ibo label, his son Patrick’s Macaya label, Marc Duverger’s Marc Records, JD Records, Giroboam Raphael’s Geromino Records and more. Unfortunately, the market for the music remained small, uncommitted and distribution networks, where they existed at all, were very modest. There was no promise of profits to help foster anything like the growth of American labels.

The young expatriate audiences of the Mini-Djazz era bought records a bit more consistently than native Haitians. Fred Paul’s Mini Records catered to that generation of Haitian consumers who were actually living in America. Mini was perhaps among the few Haitian record labels that could boast of anything close to an American corporate model. Fred paid bands and musicians for their master recordings and registered his products and one assumes took all publishing rights.

One might also assume that Fred took his risk outright because of his passion for the music. He actually had a real faith in Haitian music’s eventual global appeal. It might look a bit self serving for the head of a label to take full publishing rights, one must remember that the gamble was taken at a time when Konpa was in its infancy, in the hands of talented and one might assume unreliable teenagers often pursuing other academic goals and moonlighting as musicians.

There was no significant market for Haitian music outside of Haiti and the French Antilles. The lack of a native infrastructure to track music sales, limited distribution networks, lack of marketing and funding to sustain an enterprise anywhere near the American model was unavailable.

Fred Paul survived with the backing of trusted family and friends by diversifying his risk and recording a wide variety of Haiti’s music. He invested heavily to guarantee that his product could compete along the lines of American releases. He spared no expense in seeking the services of talented photographers, sound engineers, composers, professional backing musicians, etc. In hindsight, Mini Record’s catalogue seems to have had a monopoly on the best Haitian music ever produced.

Many forget that at the time of these releases, these young Haitian musicians whose brilliant output graced Fred’s studios were considered vagabonds by Haitians and were often ridiculed for using their talents to produce this "simple" music instead of something more, hmmm, classical, French, European even! (smile)

The American record industry is adapting to widespread changes in technology that has affected its once fat bottom line. The advent of technology coupled with the many true and perceived abuses of major American labels have driven many of today’s American artists to establish independent entities capable of using the latest technological advancements to produce and sell their music. Unfortunately, these independent ventures are still hard pressed to produce the kind of financial results the American majors with their sophisticated production, marketing and retailing networks were able to produce.

So, what is the future of the Haitian record business? Tough question! There is a real opportunity to take advantage of the growing Haitian-American market. It is a market already outfitted with a protective and patriotic attitude towards Haitian products. It has disposable income and will have more in the future. Haitian artists definitely need the consistent business backing it takes to properly present and popularize their music on a national and global level. iTunes has revolutionized how we purchase music and how quickly it is available across the globe. These advancements take a lot of overhead expenses out of the equation for the savvy entrepreneur.

All these factors in the mind of a moneyed entrepreneur should spell a viable future for at least one good label for Haitian music. Where’s Chris Blackwell when you need him?