Full Sail University recently welcomed Jimmy Nichols, President of Black River Music Group, to campus to talk to students about his career and the music industry at large. Based out of Nashville, Black River Music is a record label whose primary goal is to find new and progressive means to promote their artists and distribute their music.

Throughout the course of his 36-year career, Nichols has worked with numerous recording artists, including Faith Hill, Reba McEntire, Keith Urban, Elton John, and Jessica Simpson. He also served as the musical director for Faith Hill and TimMcGraw's Soul 2 Soul Tour for two years before hopping onboard with the recently launched Black River Music Group.

Coming from a musical family, Nichols started his career off as a self-taught session piano player and eventually worked his way up in the music industry through country music scene. True to his label’s philosophy, one of Nichols’ big messages during his lecture was the need to adapt to the times in which we operate.

“Now, more than ever, we as an industry need to start thinking outside of the box,” Nichols told a classroom full of students. “Things have changed so much, even from the day that I started in this business. It used to be that if you were an independent label, you were kind of avant-garde and no one really took you all that seriously. But right now, I don’t think there’s any better time than to be operating independently. Today, many major labels simply aren’t able to work as fast as they need to in order to accomplish some tasks – the whole infrastructure that they have is just unnecessary.”

Black River Music began with the idea that there were other methods that could be used to push artists to the public. Nichols was particularly excited about a new artist on the label, Sarah Darling. After discovering the local talent in Nashville and signing her to a record contract, the label is currently traveling around the country to shoot multiple music videos at various universities and schools throughout the US. Full Sail students would join acclaimed director Ryan Smith on campus a few days later to shoot a video for Darling’s “I Never Do What I Should.”

Nichols also fielded questions from students about what it’s like to work on an independent scale, and he was very vocal about the opportunities that technology has afforded those looking to break into the industry.

“The power of the Internet just increases the speed and the ability to interact and stream audio and video in high definition,” he said. “The things that we can do now would have been impossible even just five years ago. We’ve basically set out to set up a one-stop shop based on the Internet to cater to all the needs of a recording artist.”