Local PR Guru Michelle Roche Launches Label Rara Avis

Michelle Roche's new record label has been a long time coming.

"I called it Rara Avis, which means a unique thing or person," she explains. "I chose that name about five years ago and I've been thinking about doing this for a long time."

Many in the region know Roche for her self-titled Athens PR firm, which has put the word out for acts like Ken Will Morton, The Drive-By Truckers, Delta Moon and The Lee Boys in its half-a-dozen or so years of existence. But Roche is soon going to be known for a lot more than just PR, as she launches the label with Ken Will Morton as the guinea pig.

"I started this to get Ken's new releases out there because I'd talked to labels and labels these days are not giving anybody money upfront," Roche says. "So, I asked myself, 'Why should we sign with a label?' I did all the work for the last record, even though Ken had a label, I ended up doing most of the work and I know after working in five labels what needs to be done."

Though she is very focused on digital marketing and distribution, using a contact at Los Angeles' Digital Music Marketing to set everything up, Roche also stresses that licensing will take up a large amount of her efforts.

"That's the way the label and the artist can make money," she says. "Of course, the artist will make more money because they'll get their performance royalties from BMI or ASCAP. Even if it's just a 'handshake' deal or a one-page contract, if you do a 50-50 split on licensing, you can make a lot of money. It's highly competitive, but I feel like eventually something is going to come through. We just licensed Ken [Will Morton]'s song, unfortunately not a song that I have the rights to, but it was a very modest licensing fee and he'll make some money on BMI and the label that holds the recording rights to the album will get half the money."

Roche has been lucky enough to see all the changes in the music business from the inside, having worked at several different record labels in the 1990s and early 2000s. From working with Five-Eight at Atlanta label Sky Records to moving to L.A. to head projects for They Might Be Giants and others at Restless Records to coming back to Atlanta to work at Capricorn Records with artists like 311, Roche has headed publicity at many companies and has seen the changes coming for a while now.

"I've been in business for almost 20 years and it's been a real wild ride the last 10 to 12 years to see what has happened with everything from the digital recording to digital downloads," she says. "The whole realm of music has just changed so much. I received an email just this week from a guy in Germany, who fell in love with Ken's music. I asked him how he had discovered it and he said, 'YouTube.' When I'm interviewing my interns, I ask them, 'How do you find out about new music?' They're not saying, 'I heard on the radio. I saw a video on MTV. I read Rolling Stones.' They find about the music from MySpace and from friends. It's a more organic process."

It's this organic process that Roche, along with the help of her army of interns mostly plucked from UGA's Music Business Program, hopes to employ to get her artists noticed. Which means less money won't equal less attention.

"I almost think that I should have called my company Elbow Grease because that's basically what I'm hoping to do. I just want to work on a partnership level and I'm not going to have a lot of money to spend, but I will have a lot of elbow grease. That's what I'm willing to do."

www.michelleroche.com

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