Music legend Linda Perry launches 'Backing You' campaign with Intuit Quickbooks to shine a light on the hidden of the music industry

In every industry, there are behind-the-scenes movers and shakers that are usually never even seen by the general public.

Perhaps there’s no industry where this rings more true than the music entertainment industry.

Couple that with the fact that there and hundreds — thousands, even — of independent artists and music workers who are never celebrated by the public at large, and the need to start shining a lot on these people that are so often left in the dark seems to be almost urgent.

That’s why Grammy-nominated artist and music legend Linda Perry is teaming up with Intuit QuickBooks on a new campaign called ‘Backing You’.

The campaign, which has launched a commercial showcasing 13-year-old Willa Amai covering the song ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’, aims to spotlight the independent workers and artists of the industry who are never given a voice.

Perry broke down for us exactly how those independent workers hustle in the music industry:

“Independent workers are companies that are running without a major label —meaning you don’t have the backing, the finances and the distribution of a major label. What goes on is you start a business … and everything has to be independent. You hire out— you hire out a PR team, a creative team, a radio guy, you have to make connections with Spotify and iTunes and all the social [networks] — it’s a lot of work because you’re starting new so you’re building new relationships, and with someone like me, it makes it a little bit easier (and my partner) because we do already have a reach because I’ve been doing this for a while and people do know me, so I have one up on some of the independent labels.

You know, it’s a lot of work, but what you’re getting, though, in return, is that you get to do it your way, You get to sign the artists that you want, you get to follow absolutely no rules — we make up our own contracts … We made a seven-page contract that my three-year-old son could read and understand!”

Though it’s a challenge — and a challenge many would be skeptical of taking on — Perry points to the nostalgic element of having an independent label, especially in reference to the closeness and transparency between the artists and their business counterparts, something that doesn’t quite seem to exist in today’s industry:

“We’re developing partnerships, and honestly the small business is more intimate. It’s going back to a long time ago. You used to go into the radio stations and you’d have your DJs — you didn’t have pre-recorded radio programs, you had actual real DJs that were spinning what they wanted to spin. And you would go in there, you’d bring them pizza, the band would come in you guys would sit, you’d get on the radio and start talking — you’d try to swoon them and get them to come to your show. It was very intimate, it was very personal. And that’s what’s missing right now.”

Still, Perry is quick to not call her company a ‘company’ at all — Perry tells us that she and her partner, Carrie Brown, refer to their label as “a ‘creative energy brand’ where we’re harnessing creative energy and putting it out there.”

This is perhaps why Perry’s 'Backing You' campaign with Intuit Quickbooks is ideal, as it aims to shine a light on those intimate relationships, and how they can be the driving force to success for so many musicians and music-industry workers alike.

It doesn’t hurt that Perry and her company are avid fans and users of Quickbooks in real life, too:

“[My company] uses Quickbooks, so that was even cooler … they help support the underdog and the small business and we’re a small business that uses [quickbooks] for all our artists — for invoices, budgeting, all of it. It makes our lives easier, and it gives me all hands on deck with less people focusing on money issues.

We love Quickbooks, I’m not just saying that! I love these people, they can live at our studio all day long I don’t care! … i love their intention. intention is everything for me. And the fact that [Intuit uses] the real people? That is awesome. That is fresh, it’s new and that goes back to the intimacy thing, about how to build a company — they’re doing it. They’re helping build companies. And that’s what we wanted to team up with.”

Perry couldn’t be more thrilled with how the commercial turned out, especially with the message that it stands for:

“It’s behind the scenes. It’s like Willa showing up to the studio singing a cappella, and the engineer putting a microphone in front of her, and then the guy bringing the food in so everybody can eat, and then the speakers bringing her vocals to life through the control board to the producer to the photographer to the person who designed the flier to the person who put the flier on the wall … it was all the behind the scenes and we absolutely loved the concept because it was everything that we stand behind — the underdog, working with the people, supporting each other.”

And it’s that idea of supporting each other, and all working together, that Perry sees as crucial when trying to start a label, or any business for that matter:

“You have to be on the same page, you have to have the right intention and both of you have to have the same goal … you have to sit down and talk it out. And then, you have to have the right team. You can have the greatest ideas, but if you don’t have the right team that’s a go-getter team, you get screwed there as well. So, you have to make sure all the players are the right players in the story … The money will come — we need to have the plan, and we have to move forward and I don’t really get concerned about the money because that would really stagnate our process. We get it, we figure it out, we survive, we move forward — but I don’t ever want paperwork or money to get in the way. I feel that you can be very creative with a shoestring budget.”

That concept of having the right players and the right people surrounding you is an concept that, most people would seem to say, is more important than ever, given the current climate in Hollywood and the music industry with the watershed #MeToo movement.

But to Perry, this watershed moment within her own industry was long overdue — centuries overdue, even:

“There’s a lot of discomfort, a lot of skeletons in the closet that have been here for a very very long time — probably since the day we all showed up on this planet … the fact that it’s taking this long to #MeToo this sh*t, that’s the problem I’m having. And that’s not just a male thing, it’s an everybody thing. The whole world at this point as a #MeToo because we’ve all been f*cked.”

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