Today the modern music industry faces a big question: is it necessary to have a record company? Most labels have only one aim – making profit following the old rule – “buy as cheap as possible – sell dearer” along with maintaining all rights to material. Artists’ interests have been beyond their attention. This is why Madonna, being a pioneer in many ventures, has already made her choice of Live Nation, a company which has no experience in releasing albums but can organize tours, merchandising and licensing. Some music labels are already losing artists. Nowadays, nobody needs a pager because it doesn’t compete with a mobile phone. Tomorrow anyone with access to the Internet won’t need a record company. Many artists will soon follow Radiohead and Prince, who chose alternative methods of music distribution because of their negative experiences with record labels.
    Before launching a contract with a record label VFSix had completed their first album “vfsecret” and designed their own cover. Music of that non-released album was played by multiple radiostations such as Silver Rain, Radio Jazz and Renaissance Radio (Ukraine). Videos of Tears and Say What You Want were rotated on O2TV, MusicBoxTV, A-ONE, NeoTV. PLAY magazine published reviews and a lively performance of VFSix at Jazz Koktebel Festival won many hearts.
    They could have continued an independent and successful popularization of their project in exactly the same way. But VFSix decided to outsource all exclusive rights to WWW.Records, a company which had worked at that time with musicians such as Lena Perova, Vyacheslav Butusov, Gosti iz buduschego, 7B, Drugie Pravila, Lumen, Serga, Incognito.
    At the same time, following VFSix’s recommendations, other interesting projects like Bassworks, Lounge Du Nord, Nels, Ornitology, Ma3x, Deti Vinila have contracted WWW Records.
    Victor Schapovalov, bass-guitarist and the leader of VFSix, based on his own festival organization experience with «Intellect Deep Music» in 2003, suggested to WWW Records the idea of putting together a Lounge style music festival, and convinced the label of the importance and necessity of such a venue. Schapovalov referred WWW Records as a successful Russian record-company to Pat Appleton, soloist of a popular European group «De Fazz». And in 2007 she released her solo album «What’s Next? » with WWW Records.
    During the course of two years VFSix released two albums: vfsecret in 2005, and VF’s World in 2007. In 2006 and 2007 NuNote Lounge Fest successfully took place. Music of VFSix is regularly played by popular Silver Rain station. Radio Jazz rotates four songs from VF’s World, the Internet broadcasting JazzNet plays music of VFSix daily and the audience for VFSix continues to grow.
    On the other hand, according to WWW Records reports music of VFSix is not selling and the record label sustained losses with the band.
    At the present time the label seems incapable of any serious sales of VFSix’s music, and unfortunately the artists collect no royalties and the audience has difficulties purchasing VFSix’s music.
    You may read about record companies’ malpractice on the Internet (www.ko.ru/document.php?id=17891).
    VFSix won’t bring their record label to court as Leningrad and Vopli Vidopljasova did. Also they aren’t planning to switch to another label because there’s no guarantee that the situation with another label will be different.
    This is why VFSix decided to terminate their contract with WWW Records and now offer hassle-free music and video downloads from their official web-site www.vfsix.com. Obviously they will incur more moderate results than Radiohead, but there’s no doubt that VFSix’s music popularity and the number of fans coming to their shows will increase.

VFSix Press Attache
                Anna Kosiakina