MArteLabel is the first world label that certifies vinyls and not only as artworks in collaboration with MyTemplArt®. We talk about it with Giuseppe Casa, Label Manager and MArteLive’s Artistic Director.
The digitization of the music and the consequent crisis of recording industry has paradoxically encouraged the rediscovery of Vinyl in a new habit, in which gains value not only as a product for listening the music, offering the plus of an analogic listen rather than digital , but also and expecially as an object, such as physical artwork to own and, in many cases to exhibit. The purchase and the possession of a vinyl doesn’t mean stop to listen the content on different digital platforms, often also provided with the same product.
On the other hand also the CD has seen a proliferation of increasingly personalized and special formats far away from the classic and super-cheap plastic jawelbox. The same applies to the CD. The product, if differentiated from the classic formats and improved by particular aesthetic characteristics, can become a collector’s item, which you own for the fun to owning it. We are in a position where the CD, like vinyl, becomes a merchandising product more than a phonographic media for listening music. This highlights an increase and decisive role of gadgets – t-shirts, posters – as promotional tools and artist’s brand awareness.
Reasoning on these conditions, MArteLabel wants to turn these common objects of “classic merchandising” in real “artworks” giving them an added value, a new life, a new position in the music market and not only; this innovation would allow the product to find a space in different cultural sales circuits, becoming a multi-form product.
An eclectic product that is a music user but also conceptually involves art, painting, design. It means offering a better chance of selling at a time when the music market seems totally saturated.
Art helps art. Through videomakers, graphics, artisans, painters and anyone who is member of one of the 16 artistic categories that MArteLive merged into a single cultural center, MArteLabel can offer manifold services.
In this context, MArteLabel offers the certification service managed in partnership with MyTemplArt®, who created an innovative system of archiving, cataloging and sharing of artworks.
Paola Sacconi: How did you come to the idea to certify a work as a disk, a vinyl or artistic merchandising products?
Giuseppe Casa: Like most of the ideas become the characteristic innovations of our structure, Certification Works born from a question.
For years I wondered how the recording and music industry in general could cope with the crisis of record sales, especially at a time when music is available to everyone through new technologies, where streaming and downloading (often free) are the masters.
I had the impression, that peg away in simply wanting to continue to wait until the situation had changed, was an anti-productive attitude and so stupid.
The disks are not sold? Okay, let’s understand how to make a product, to all effects obsolete for the general public, the new object of interest.
The solution seemed almost obvious, physical synthesis of our label philosophy. Where hybridization and mixing of various art forms characterize the DNA of the structure. Significantly.
So I thought why not elevate a disk from a simple music user into a true artwork? This means choosing to buy a disk for completely different reasons, totally innovative, from those we are used to. It means choosing to buy a phonograph product, for the pleasure of owning a true form of art, like a painting or a photograph or a sculpture. But to really make revolutionary the product, it was necessary to make it unique, non-replicable. Hence the idea to certify it.
In 2014 I was in ArteFiera, the art fair in Bologna. Walking through the various pavilions I was attracted by MyTemplArt® ‘s stand. It must be said that at that time I was in a very strong creative phase, already felt the need to experience something new, so I looked at things with a completely different curiosity. Perhaps at another time I would pass in front of the stand without asking much attention, concentrated on something else.
I don’t know but I always thought of that moment as a true serendipity. I was at the fair for anything, I was looking for anything. I had this idea of certification in the head for some time and that was the moment when has closed the circle. Or rather, I discovered a new world.
Looking around I was completely intrigued, so I began to ask for certification. I had immediately the insight, at that precise moment. But it need to give it a final shape. When I got home, I studied the website, I analised the system. I didn’t know where to turn for several weeks.
Two years have gone and now we are going to present the first certificate record in the world. Our structure is based on a very complex System, and many of our services are exclusive internationally and nationally. But Certification Artworks is definitely the one I’m most proud of. And it’s the proof that our industry is not as fixed as we people would have us believe, actors are who represent to have chosen to fix them, it’s different. But if you want, if you really want, you can innovate it, you can give a new shape, a new skin. And this is not just to survive, it means being able to give life to something that is great starting from a very small one.
P.S.: What means to certify a musical work?
Giuseppe Casa: The problem of authenticity of a work is a key issue in the context of the art market as each artwork or artistic heritage, as well as having an intrinsic aesthetic value, has a specific economic value, which depends directly on the Certificate of Authenticity of the work, an essential element for the sale and purchase contracts.
Behind the cover and the packaging of a CD, a Vinyl or a poster and a t-shirt there are always one or more creative and professionals (graphic, photographer, illustrator) but the final result is still a unique artwork which should be valorise at a record market even more postmodern and crafts rather than industrial.
A fundamental rule in the art market is to ensure the authenticity of the work by the sellers: the buyer of an artwork is in fact required to apply at the time of sale the Certificate of Authenticity and the seller is obliged to provide such certification.
We think that this system can also be applied to the recording industry by certifying a limited number of copies (10 to 30) for each production with a innovative service offered by MyTemplArt® and applied to music exclusively with MArteLabel.
P.S.: Why certify a disk or vinyl as an artwork?
Giuseppe Casa: Today a ever wider audience, not just collectors, is interested in buying a product that is not only a phonographic support, but an object that makes unique the ownership experience, that is pleasant to the touch, to the sight. Today, the public wants to buy an emotion. Buying a CD or a vinyl is a practice that fortunately still exists. The reasons are different and of considerable importance. There is the desire by the fans to support the artist (crowdfunding) or the desire to own the “fetish” (almost always after the experience of a concert). Music fans, sound purists, those who still have the CDs on the shelves near the stereo, those thankfully still exist.
We believe that there is a good part of the market interested in the purchase a musical artwork at 360°. Through disk artwork certification, MArteLabel wants to offer a new point of view where the artwork is the part that gives the most value to the musical artwork becoming a protagonist in the practice of buying a CD or vinyl.
Over the years vinyls collectors have always looked for special or limited works, we are not the inventors of this practice but, with the certification of the work related to signing and numbering in limited quantities of them, we will give an added value that is unprecedented until now.
Buying a certified work today with a few Euros it can be an investment for the future when the band or the same artist who created the cover image and graphic layout will have been successful or will become a cult.
P.S.: What are the news and the uniqueness of Certification Service?
Giuseppe Casa: The innovation of the Certification service is that each CD, vinyl, t-shirt or poster becomes a unique and authenticated work, of greater value than any product replicated industrially. The works have a limited and unchangeable run (numbered 1 to 30), they are signed by the artist and, finally, signature and number will be certified by a special QR-Code introducted by MyTemplArt® that locks down the work to collector archiving it in the cloud platform www.mytemplart.com. MArteLabel offers in collaboration with MyTemplArt® the first certification of musical works in Italy and in the World.
It is a reply to the lowering of the commercial value of the disc. It’s a way to say and repeat that every musical work is unique in the world that is invaluable but paradoxically accessible to everyone.
P.S.: What are benefits?
Giuseppe Casa: The assurance that the work acquires greater value over time as it represents one of the few certified works in the world. Certify the work is the best investment for the safeguarding of its cultural and economic value. Buy a certified work, with a minimum cost, it means to get hold of a work that will be of great value tomorrow.
P.S.: How does the certification work in detail?
Giuseppe Casa: MArteLabel proposes a innovative system for electronic certification of Certificate of Authenticity in paper version of artworks in collaboration with MyTemplArt®. Through a special QR-Code you can check in real time who released the Certificate of Authenticity, the veracity of the data related to the artwork and the artist.
Today there isn’t an official certification institution for the artworks in the world. This practice, in fact, is usually done by the artists themselves, from galleries or from the archives accompanying the artwork with a written and signed certificate by the author.
Obviously this system has several problems, one in all the falsification of Certificates.
MyTemplArt resolves this legal problem through the computerized management of the process for requesting and release of Certicate of Authenticity by the platform and especially thanks to a geolocalized QR-Code made of a material which self-destructs if someone tries to remove it. MyTemplArt® website is a cloud archive of artworks where there are all information about the artwork and the artist guaranteeing the privacy and security of data.
Paola Sacconi
Communication Manager di MyTemplArt®
This post is also available in: Italian