Independently Wealthy: Brett Gurewitz and Epitaph Records

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With a new album on the way from his band Bad Religion and the responsibility of overseeing a roster of active bands selling tens of thousands of records, guitarist and Epitaph Records honcho Brett Gurewitz is ready for another busy year.

Billboard caught up with Gurewitz to talk about this 26-year-old label, which began in a bedroom in his parents' house and now boasts a staff of over 50 employees in North American and overseas offices. That's what happens when you release huge sellers from the likes of punk bands like The Offspring, NOFX and Rancid and allow your business to grow organically.

Over the years, Epitaph went from being a localized Southern California punk label to signing artists like Tom Waits, Mavis Staples, Neko Case and Blackalicious to its Anti- imprint. The fact is that unlike many of its comteporaries, Epitaph has been eager to adapt and vary its focus in order to remain relevant.

We won a Grammy for Solomon Burke a couple years ago. We have Motion City Soundtrack, who are one of the best pop-punk/indie/emo bands out there. We've released hip-hop artists [Atmosphere, Sage Francis]. All of that was unthinkable when we first started.

We truly had a niche then. We were Southern California hardcore. That's what we called it. The way to be an indie back then was to have a sound and a niche. That's what we had to do. Nowadays, sounds and niches are like an automatic shuffle in Vegas. A new niche is new every three weeks, so we have to stay on top of everything.
Rather than taking the typical party-line about digital downloads, Gurewitz is ready to embrace the industry shift to digital retail and the falling sales of CD's and other forms of media; a change that he claims will be simple for Epitaph ease into.

[...] as a fairly decent-sized indie, we have much less to lose if there's a full conversion to digital. We have no vertical integration. We don't own any pressing plants or distributors. We're big enough to have all our masters on all the important digital sites, and we're small enough to not have the encumbrance of these giant brick-and-mortar distributors that the majors have.

For me, there's less to lose with a sale on iTunes, and what I have to gain is pretty nice. There are no returns. There's no overstock. I never again have to worry about overpressing.
Gurewitz is also eager to implement new ways of tracking what an artist sells and maintaining personal data collections. Gurewitz envisions a virtual "data bank" which can "house" every individual's MP3 collection and keep an accurate account of who has purchased what.

For any individual who buys a song, it should go on record somewhere that that person bought the song. Then the individual has that song and has access to it forever. The data should be kept in a bank, in the way you keep your money in a bank.

So wherever you buy it from, be it a PC or a handheld mobile device, it goes into the bank, a digital locker. You never have to back anything up. It's like a Chase Manhattan for your family photos, your music, your TV shows. And you shouldn't even have to buy it. If you want to watch or listen to free stuff, you have commercials. But if you own it, it goes into the data bank, and you don't have to buy different devices and different gig devices.
The most inspiring part of Gurewitz's success has been his refusal to panic and his eagerness to branch out and try new things, all while maintaining an indie ethos. Though the label has its fair share of critics, it cannot be denied that Epitaph has been able to carve a niche for itself while refusing to be pigeonholed as a traditional "punk" label. Other indies can afford to take a cue from Gurewitz's open-minded approach if they expect to last in an ever-changing world where indies and majors are routinely aiming to sign the same bands. Good luck in '07, Brett.

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