Todd McCarty

Raised in the suburbs of Washington DC on a steady diet of 80’s hardcore, Todd McCarty is a music industry vet currently living in Japan. He credits driving a cab with getting his music business career off the ground. In 1998, while listening to music between fares, he plotted his future one cab driver confessional at a time. Todd released over 200 cover songs on the “Punk Goes” series while serving as GM and head of sales at Fearless Records for 13 years. He’s also been a VP of Sales at Sony Music, and still consults for record labels. Recently he started www.HeatOnTheStreet.com where he shares his process and encourages musicians to build their band’s from opening act to headlining act.

Oct 062017
 

In Defense takes a second look at a much maligned cover artist or album and asks, “Was it really as bad as all that?”

punk goes pop covers

It’s clear that many people despise the erroneously titled Punk Goes cover compilation series. Much has been said and written about how awful they are. Yet, just like the emo and pop-punk genres generally, they are wildly popular with teenagers despite not getting any critical respect. Since the series began in 2000, there have been 17 volumes and over two hundred songs released in the series. In the U.S. the cover series has sold one million albums, nine million tracks, and it streams in the hundreds of millions. But most people out of high school seem to hate them.

Well, I’m here to defend some of these as great cover songs. I’m an insider, you could say – I was the Fearless Records salesperson behind nearly all of these albums. During my 13 years at the California independent label, I was the head of sales and also served as general manager. I didn’t contribute to the Punk Goes compilations as a curator or A&R. My role was to make sure the albums and tracks had the best positioning at major retailers like Target, Best Buy, iTunes, Amazon, etc. Continue reading »