The history books are littered with the corpses of corporate record labels started by companies that had no business being in the music industry. Bose thinks it can be the exception to the rule. It thinks it can be Red Bull. And, while Bose has more of a right to dip its toes into the media world than Build-a-Bear, there’s little reason to believe it can succeed where so many others have failed.
In an interview with Business Insider, Bose CMO Jim Mollica said the company had created Bose Studios as part of a move away from traditional “campaign-driven marketing.” A big element of that is going to be Bose Records, a new label the company has formed to “help break underappreciated or new artists.” The competition isn’t the big three — Sony, UMG, Warner — it’s independent labels already being squeezed in an era of bedroom producers and self-distribution.
Mollica was transparent about the real goal, though: build a library of music that Bose could feature in its commercials without having to pay the licensing rights for. He said that the company wouldn’t own the artists’ masters or take a share of their streaming or sales revenue, and that they’d be free to sign with other labels. That sounds extremely artist-friendly on its face, which is great. But there’s still a lot we don’t know about the new business venture.
Bose is primarily known for making consumer-grade audio gear that tries to put on airs.
