"I took the process of doing as much myself as I could like a duck to water. I set up my own label and publishing, etc, and it was a fun learning curve two decades ago"
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Knopfler’s “duck to water” isn’t just a cute idiom; it’s a quiet flex about competence in a music economy that punishes passivity. The line frames self-management as instinct, not desperation, pushing back against the romantic myth that artists should stay pure while suits handle the real-world machinery. By saying he “took the process…as much myself as I could,” he signals a deliberate reclaiming of leverage: rights, timelines, distribution, and the boring-but-decisive decisions that determine whether a career is owned or merely rented.
The phrase “set up my own label and publishing” is where the subtext sharpens. Publishing, especially, is the unglamorous power center - the revenue stream that outlives touring cycles and trend shifts. Dropping it in the same breath as “label” suggests he understood the whole ecosystem, not just the stage-facing parts. The casual “etc” is telling too: it implies a long checklist of operational labor he doesn’t even bother to enumerate, because the point isn’t martyrdom. It’s agency.
Calling it “a fun learning curve” does rhetorical work. It reframes necessity as curiosity, turning entrepreneurial grit into creative play. And “two decades ago” places him in that pre-streaming, post-major-label-peak era when DIY meant actual infrastructure, not just uploading tracks. The intent reads as a corrective to any narrative of artists as victims of industry gatekeepers: he’s arguing that freedom is built, not granted, and that the work can be satisfying if you treat it as craft rather than compromise.
The phrase “set up my own label and publishing” is where the subtext sharpens. Publishing, especially, is the unglamorous power center - the revenue stream that outlives touring cycles and trend shifts. Dropping it in the same breath as “label” suggests he understood the whole ecosystem, not just the stage-facing parts. The casual “etc” is telling too: it implies a long checklist of operational labor he doesn’t even bother to enumerate, because the point isn’t martyrdom. It’s agency.
Calling it “a fun learning curve” does rhetorical work. It reframes necessity as curiosity, turning entrepreneurial grit into creative play. And “two decades ago” places him in that pre-streaming, post-major-label-peak era when DIY meant actual infrastructure, not just uploading tracks. The intent reads as a corrective to any narrative of artists as victims of industry gatekeepers: he’s arguing that freedom is built, not granted, and that the work can be satisfying if you treat it as craft rather than compromise.
Quote Details
| Topic | Entrepreneur |
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