This problem you almost every time encounters. It’s not a pleasant problem and can lead to quite much pain. Many artists take in friends when they are small to do things for them, like taking the Promo Pictures, design the cover art and shoot the video. Sometimes it even that close that it’s someone’s girlfriend/boyfriend who is doing the production, or even the band doing the production.

A part of the silence deal is that these persons will shine when the artist make progress in the ranks. Unfortunately it will never work. The higher you go narrower it gets. I know at least three repressing in our catalogue that was an extra cost since the cover was made by a girlfriend/boyfriend in the band that didn’t know how to deliver things in the right measurements. Money we then lost on PR. And all these countless hours we have waited for someone to deliver a thing and when it turns up doesn’t hold the normal qualifications.

And it’s hard. Suddenly you someone has to go home to their partner and just tell them, well you are not good enough, and we have to choose someone else.

We actually see the same pattern when we sign bands. It’s not unusual that right when we sign the band a member jumps off. Usually it’s because it became real, before it was on a hobby level suddenly the demands on you are so much higher.

You always come to the step where it becomes too big. If it is a real friend they understand and works on shine that they did these early works and get other stuff to become bigger with. Sometime it’s just becomes nasty, the super fan becomes the big hater. This part is never easy.