Robert Shahnazarian Jr.’s life and work dispels the idea that the music industry is an oligarchy. For those who wish to swallow the candy-coated American Idol version of the American Dream, L.A. is the schizophrenic uncle of the entertainment industry. One day he’s crowning you queen, inviting you to blow your nose with hundred dollar bills; the next, he’s smashing your skull in with a typewriter, and screaming like the Queen of Hearts, “Off with her head!” He also has the strange propensity to mistake beauty and popularity with talent. This perpetuates the appeal of L.A. Easy money—just as long as you have the right look. But in Robert’s case, he has approached his career with a voracity and willingness to do the hard work that pays off in the long run and builds longevity.
Shahnazarian’s trek being president of Feudal Records, an indie music label based in Los Angeles, wasn’t a straight shot. He grew up in Palm Springs with music wafting through the home—a strange mix of Elvis, Pavarotti and Neil Diamond. Such disparate mixes have been known to drive a man insane. But Shahnazarian laughs in the face of danger; he boldly tossed the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack into the mix, and then added Queen’s soundtrack for the 1980 feature adaptation of the serial classic, Flash Gordon, just for kicks. Ba-da-da-da-da-da-da—Flash! A-ah! Savior of the Universe!
After interning at Capital, Columbia, and Epic Records, and then an in-house temp program at Sony Music, Robert wasn’t impressed when an attorney for Sony offered him a position in business affairs. “It was a complete one-eighty from what I had my mind set on,” says Shahnazarian. His true aspiration was to lead what he believed would be a “romantic” and “glamorous” life in A&R. He initially declined the offer. Placidly drafting contracts, publishing and licensing deals were a far cry from staying out late, going to shows, and discovering new artists. But at the attorney’s insistence he took the position in business affairs—and for two years before finally landing a spot in A&R.
“I went to SXSW and would go to three or four shows per night.” Musical diets of that magnitude would naturally kill the average man. According to a surgeon general’s warning, massive quantities of music intake have been known to cause a nomadic and lonely lifestyle, antisocial behavior, severe depression, and ulcers. “After about a year of that,” he says, “I realized most bands out there aren’t very good, in the sense that no one’s born writing a three and half minute pop song… And going night after night to all these shows—and sometimes you have to go to a show just because you’re doing it as a favor to an attorney or as a favor to your boss in A&R, it wasn’t satisfying to me. I didn’t have anything to show for it except saying ‘This band is good’ or ‘this band is bad.’ I didn’t create anything from it. And I started to get bummed out about being in A&R. It wasn’t what I thought it would be.”
Meanwhile, he observed A&R outsourcing demo recordings, overdubs, radio edits and radio spots to the studio just a floor below. This didn’t sit right with Shahnazarian. “I put together a little cost benefit analysis for putting together a little studio within the A&R department, and presented it to my bosses in A&R, and they approved it. Sure enough, two weeks later it all arrived, and I didn’t know how to use any of it. I had never gone to school for producing, engineering—none of it. What I ended up doing was I found a ProTools expert, and I hired him to come at nighttime when everyone was gone to train me on it… As I got better, the A&R guys trusted me and started having the artists come in to do acoustic guitar vocal piano demos in the studio.” Within a few years Robert earned the role as chief producer for the exclusives at Sony’s online music store, Connect.com.
“I started noticing everyone around me was getting let go at Sony,” says Robert. “Everyone that I worked with in the twelve years that I worked there were gone.” For most people this is precisely the time to dive back into the foxhole and pray you don’t get shelled too. “That’s when I said, it’s time to go off and start my own thing. I’ve learned the business affairs side, I’ve done the A&R thing, I know how to produce.” And so he started his own music production company, Feudal Music Group. “[Feudal Records] would be the part where I invest in bands, my time, money and sign them up and put out their music… The whole goal of FR was just to find compelling artists and put their music out there,” says Robert.
“[People] go on the website—they’ll find an Irish pop rock singer, then they’ll see a Swedish, Lebanese female pop singer, then they’ll see a screamo rock band from Northern California, or they’ll see an electro pop band—they’ll see all these different genres, and it perplexes them.” But Robert’s goal is not to become a predictable niche label. “Because I come from the producer background, I’m just attracted to anything that’s good. I don’t care about the genre.”
In the land of the bottom line, and where it rains as often as a band “makes it,” one wonders what the key is to cope with all the madness. “Work ethic is really important,” he says. “It’s great to write a great song or record a great song, but if you’re not willing when it’s commercially released to go out there and tour or play shows, or find new ways to find fans or build a database or do any of those things, then what we created doesn’t really matter.”
Bottom line: Write great music, and then work your tail off.
Written by Adam Hildebrand
Robert Shahnazarian Jr, president of Feudal Records, enjoys his work, but only after holding nearly every job in the music industry he didn’t want.
