Minnesotan Music Moguls in the Making

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I tailor my work to every artist. My main guerilla warfare technique is to find niche opportunities. For example, we have one artist who happens to be a vegetarian. I wrote to Vegetarian Times, and she got a feature in the magazine. We don’t have a lot of money to throw at ads, and a feature sells a lot more than getting written up in Billboard. I try to find offbeat outlets and be innovative with marketing on a small budget.

Chris Campbell ’02
Operations Manager, Innova Records
St. Paul, Minnesota

In school, I was a full-time composer doing ‘new music,’ which is, you just sit in your room for seven hours staring at paper. I got tired of the isolation. When I came to Minnesota, I wanted to be in the marketplace getting this music out to people. I found Innova and I said, “Oh, a lot of my heroes are here. They have Harry Partch. They have Anthony Braxton.” I started interning because they didn’t have any money. Finally, they said, “It looks like we’re going to have to start paying you, because you’re not going away.” I listen to new submissions and I deal with artists. Right now we have about 370 artists on the roster so a lot of my day is spent helping them. Each artist is so unique, and it’s really gratifying helping them actualize their vision. I also handle distribution and work in tandem with Heidi, and am still composing and making video art at every turn.