Big Machine’s Scott Borchetta: ‘Music Has Value’

BMLG’s Scott Borchetta. Photo: musichasvalue.com

During his time as mentor on this season of American Idol, BMLG founder/CEO Scott Borchetta has used the opportunity to not only give solid advice to the promising up-and-comers on the show, but also to throw some not-so-subtle publicity toward an important cause.

Borchetta has been seen wearing clothing bearing the tagline “Music Has Value.” The record label will soon offer merchandise promoting the saying, with a full line currently in production. An official release date for the merch has not been set, but a website appropriately called musichasvalue.com is now live, allowing visitors to sign up for notices about when the line launches.

“Music Has Value” is a message supported by not only music executives, but artists such as BMLG’s Taylor Swift, who pulled her music from streaming service Spotify last year.

“Music is art, and art is important and rare,” Swift wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in July 2014. “Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is. I hope they don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art.

“In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on their music when it goes out into the marketplace,” Swift also said. “Piracy, file sharing and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically, and every artist has handled this blow differently.”

Borchetta also recently combined his ties to Idol with his love of racing. He arranged for Idol‘s Top 11 remaining contestants to perform the national anthem at the Auto Club 400 NASCAR race recently in Fontana, Calif. The contestants offered a strong rendition of the song, and served as grand marshals for the race with Borchetta. For the 2015 racing season, Big Machine Records is a sponsor of the the Chip Ganassi Racing Team.

Scott Borchetta with American Idol contestants at Fontana. Photo: BMLG