Social media stars turned musicians, Jack & Jack are no newcomers when it comes to the do-it-yourself mentality. Having grown their fanbase from the ground up with Vine and YouTube and releasing their music independently, the duo has a firm grasp of the ideas they want to portray and the direction in which they want to go. So entered Kobalt Label Services (KLS). The label without being a label offers musicians the access to the perks of a label without taking away any creative freedoms.
The duo, composed of Jack Gilinsky and Jack Johnson, had had meetings with labels such as Republic, Columbia, Island and Universal, and it was those meetings that ultimately led them to deciding against going with a major label. “There just had to be enough meetings and kind of seeing how much we’d have to give up and how much less control Jack and I would have,” Johnson says. “Kobalt kind of stepped in at the right time and contacted us when we were looking for a distribution plan.”
“We honestly want to see how strong radio still is.”
The deal that the Jacks ultimately decided on with KLS allows the childhood friends to maintain the final say on their music on a project-by- project basis while also providing them radio promotion, distribution and industry input from an experienced team. “Sometimes their input is stuff that me and Jack would never even notice because we are so new to the music game,” Johnson says. “We definitely are giving their input a lot of thought, but at the same time there are things that Jack and I, as artists, can’t change in our songs or are in love with and we really want to stay true to how we initially envisioned them.”
With plans to release a new single within the next couple of months and an album they’re hoping to release early 2017, Jack & Jack are most excited to see how Kobalt’s services will help them with radio play. “We honestly want to see how strong radio still is,” Johnson says. “A lot of people are saying that everything is shifting towards Internet-based streaming services, so we’re definitely excited to see at this current stage, near 2017, how strong the radio still is and what we can do in that aspect.”
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