Bruce Tyler’s office in Elkridge is covered with gold and platinum records from his years of working in the music industry.
Now, the former executive at Sony Music Label Group wants to help independent artists get some best-selling records of their own with his new company aBreak Music. The company aims to give musicians a direct line to industry insiders — and maybe even a record deal — through its online radio station, which features a curated list of songs aimed at record executives looking to sign new artists. Eventually, Tyler hopes to expand aBreak Music into its own independent record label.
Both Tyler and his business partner, Jay Stevens, have long careers in the radio industry. Stevens was previously the senior vice president of programming content at Urban One, where he worked with 54 radio markets. Tyler served as an executive vice president at Sony, where he helped artists like The Fray and John Legend find an audience. That goal of discovering new talent is what drives him at aBreak Music.
“Finding, discovering and helping to break new stars is what I want my legacy to be,” Tyler said.
aBreak Music, which launched in May 2022, recently raised $400,000 from the Maryland Technology Development Corp. and has additional money from angel investors.
While aBreak Music's station is available freely online, the station is aimed at a niche market of listeners who work in the music industry, rather than the general public. The goal is to help musicians cut through the massive amount of content online and get the ear of a record company, which is the hardest part of making it in the music industry, Tyler said.
“There's 100,000 songs uploaded just [on streaming platforms] every day and 96% of that comes from independent artists. So [artists and repertoire] agents throughout the world, can't listen to everything,” Tyler said.
aBreak Music builds a 58-song playlist each week, combing through submissions to find people who have the experience to get signed. Modern listeners do not just pigeonhole themselves into one genre, Tyler added. Most young people listen to everything from electronic music to country and that variety is reflected in the music played on aBreak Music.
There are a lot of scams in the independent artist space, such as pay-for-play internet radio or pay-for-song critique websites and aBreak Music tries to separate itself by being free for artists to use, Tyler said. Tyler plans to expand aBreak Music into an independent record label focused on moving its artists up into a major label contract within two years. The company will make money by taking a percentage of the income from any record deals.
The hardest part of the business for Tyler is identifying serious musicians who are interested in taking the time and making the sacrifices necessary to become a professional, and who also have something, whether it's their personality or sound, that makes them different from what is dominating the pop charts.
“We're looking for that intensity of somebody who's going to make life easier for the record label that signs them," Tyler said. "When a record label signs an artist, they forget about you really quickly, because they’re signing somebody else, so you better be self-producing."
