Lewis Sinclair is the Founder and CEO of Cygnus Music, a leading electronic music distributor from the United Kingdom. Lewis talked in-depth about starting and growing Cygnus Music in 2009, running record labels, and pitching to Spotify to get in those needed playlists. If you’re looking at starting a record label or music business, this episode is for you. 

Teaser

Here’s a transcript teaser when Lewis arranged started setting up Cygnus: “We’ll contact iTunes, and we’ll say, “I’d like to set up an agreement with you. We’re a distributor,” and they’ll say, “Great. Okay. How many record labels have you got?” I respond, “Well, just a one for myself,” and they’ll say, “all right, so you’re not really a distributor. Come back when you’ve got some more labels.” And so you’ll go back with 10 labels, and they’re like, “no, you, you need to have a hundred labels to get on board,” – you go “Right. Okay.” And then you build things up to a hundred labels. And then by that point, as the industry has grown, their criteria for what they will allow has grown, and they’re like, “no, actually you need 500.”

Listen

Find out more about Cygnus Music here.

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