Artistic Entrepreneurship: Vinyl Records

WHEN Allen Mask studied at the Berklee College of Music, he also played in a band, promoted its shows, produced its recordings, and tried to book new gigs.

“I thought, what if there was a service that would do this for student musicians so they could concentrate on their music,” says Mask, a journalism and mass communications major and music and entrepreneurship minor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

That was the beginning of Mask's idea for Vinyl Records, a student-run record label and booking agency that gives student musicians the help they need while also enabling other students to get experience in the business side of music.

Vinyl Records, now an official UNC student organization run by Mask and co-founder Tripp Gobble, operates out of donated space on campus. Student volunteers provide key services and support: graphic design, photography, fund raising, promotions and advertising, booking, event productions, artistic development, Web and technology, and music production and engineering.

Mask says that they wouldn't have gotten this far without the help of UNC’s Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative and its campus support network and services, which include a major focus on artistic entrepreneurship. Through CEI, Mask and Gobble found advisors who connected them with resources to begin turning their plans into action.

Vinyl Records learned the process of developing and pitching new ventures in the Carolina Challenge, UNC’s entrepreneurial business-plan competition. It also won a $25,000 grant from the CEI Innovations Fund, which seeds new entrepreneurial programs at UNC, contingent upon its attracting additional venture investment. That money was to help them set up a studio to record their bands’ demo records.

“The biggest thing CEI did for us is to help us understand the scope of our opportunity," says Mask. Vinyl Records now envisions a network of campus organizations across the country that produces and promotes student performers. Artists receive affordable production and promotion assistance. Performers and non-performers gain experience working in an artistic enterprise. CEI experts advise and guide

“It’s been wonderful to find people who take time out of their busy schedules and listen to us,” says Gobble, “to know that they really believe in what we’re doing, and they respect us enough to give us feedback and guidance.”