Celeb News: Diplo from Major Lazer SLAMS Interscope & EDM Artists

Swag

Huffington Post (Full Article) Very interesting read

Highlights:

*As the head of Mad Decent, an independent record label that recently notched a Billboard No. 1 in the form of Baauer's "Harlem Shake," Diplo has found himself on the edge of the biggest music festival in the world: the internet. "Harlem Shake" leapfrogged to the top of the Hot 100 chart on the back of hundreds of thousands of fan-made YouTube videos that featured only 30-seconds of the song. (It also contained unlicensed samples, a mess Diplo says he has since "sorted out," despite the fact that Baauer told Mad Decent there were no samples on the song and signed an indemnity clause when the label picked up the song.)

"We are a label that exists on the internet, so when something like that happens, we know how to incubate it and make it go crazy," Diplo said. "There are no rules to running a label anymore. We have, like, seven people working for us, but Interscope probably didn't even have a record as big as 'Harlem Shake' last year and they have thousands working for them."

* "Interscope dropped Major Lazer when we asked for money for a video for 'Get Free,' and we sold 150,000 copies of that song," he continued. "So that just proves that labels have no idea what's going on anymore. They just want to jump on EDM dick -- **** that sucks because they don't feel the music but think it's happening. We are in these streets."

*While Interscope is doing pretty well in electronic dance music (it snapped up Zedd, one of the most-liked middle-of-the-road house producers on the scene and also boasts Modestep and Nero), Diplo's right that major labels haven't exactly been hip to the many subgenres that Mad Decent specializes.

*"Dance music is so interchangeable," Diplo bristled. "There's not a lot of face to it. It's a bunch of Dutch DJs with the same haircut. You go see a dance stage at a ****ing dance festival and I'm bored out of my ****ing mind. That's not going to last very much longer, because kids see that it's the same **** every single time."

Eaten By Lions

lol he's kind of right though. Labels don't really know what's going on.

babyboy44

Major Lazer is way better than most of the **** now tbh!!

toanythingtaboo

Ugh. He used the term "EDM".

Haus

Diplo, you're working with Dr. Luke, shut up.

Pie-kun

Quote:

Interscope probably didn't even have a record as big as 'Harlem Shake' last year and they have thousands working for them.

Um, Harlem Shake was not that big

. Carly Rae Jepsen is under interscope and Call Me Maybe was at least 3x bigger than Harlem Shake was, not to mention other artists under the label that have had big hits.

Quote:

Interscope dropped Major Lazer when we asked for money for a video for 'Get Free,' and we sold 150,000 copies of that song

Wow, 150,000 $1.29 copies of a song = less than $200,000 dollars. Good luck making a profit off that after you've paid for a music video.

Chrome

He just needs to keep doing his thing and brush off the saltiness.

Marco_g2

Well i like Major Lazer, Watch Out For This is my tune rn. But he comes off very arrogant, he's dissing dutch DJs while he's working a lot with The Partysquad (known as generic Party-DJs) Also signing a song so trashy as Harlem Shake which per accident went viral is not something to be proud of

BambooBanga

I'd feel much better about this if he wasn't such a sell out ... A bit hypocritcal considering the artists he's worked with lately. Is he really complaining about dj's doing the same thing when he's been no better.. He also gave major lazer up to the generic edm fad with messy uses of dubstep and electro. Please Diplo please

paulyyyozd

He spilled the true tea tbh.

Vignesh

Jimmy Iovine is a bit of a mess honestly...

Belle

You guys don't understand music as much as you think you do.

J-esper

Interscope is a mess, they keep sigining people, but keep marketing their artists the wrong way.

SevenFootSounds

"Dance music is so interchangeable," Diplo bristled. "There's not a lot of face to it. It's a bunch of Dutch DJs with the same haircut. You go see a dance stage at a ****ing dance festival and I'm bored out of my ****ing mind."

Idiot.

eli's_rhythm

Quote:

Originally posted by Pie-kun

Um, Harlem Shake was not that big

. Carly Rae Jepsen is under interscope and Call Me Maybe was at least 3x bigger than Harlem Shake was, not to mention other artists under the label that have had big hits.

Wow, 150,000 $1.29 copies of a song = less than $200,000 dollars. Good luck making a profit off that after you've paid for a music video.

CMM didn't blow up because of Interscope. And a small budget act like Major Lazer wouldn't get a video that expensive anyway. Diplo gets his label money from producing and writing credits.

Eric.

Quote:

Originally posted by J-esper

Interscope is a mess, they keep signing people, but keep marketing their artists the wrong way.

Yeah, he does have a point with this. They're signing whomever they think is going to blow up, then just wait for it to happen and give up on the artist if it didn't work as planned.

Tsuko

Interscope became awful in 2008. It dominated the music industry up until about 2007 when Gwen Stefani and Fergie were finishing off with their solo careers, and then just panicked that their biggest two pop stars were going away and has never been the same since. The Black Eyed Peas and LMFAO were successful I guess. But Interscope is such a flop label now.

toanythingtaboo

Quote:

Originally posted by Tsuko

Interscope became awful in 2008. It dominated the music industry up until about 2007 when Gwen Stefani and Fergie were finishing off with their solo careers, and then just panicked that their biggest two pop stars were going away and has never been the same since. The Black Eyed Peas and LMFAO were successful I guess. But Interscope is such a flop label now.

Not you ignoring a certain pop megastar on their books who will bring in more than all the others.

zach

He told 0 lies.

Interscope is such a messy label. Of course it's not just them, but they have so many issues.

zach

Quote:

Originally posted by Tsuko

Interscope became awful in 2008. It dominated the music industry up until about 2007 when Gwen Stefani and Fergie were finishing off with their solo careers, and then just panicked that their biggest two pop stars were going away and has never been the same since. The Black Eyed Peas and LMFAO were successful I guess. But Interscope is such a flop label now.

Their problem was getting rid of A&m and Geffen and merging all artists to one label. They got too big. They wanted to make more money and have to spend less. And it backfired.