We needed a third place.
Red Plastic Records is a curated independent record label for AI-inclusive music with human authors at the center. It exists to take the third seat between AI-hostile traditional indie labels and AI-slop dumping grounds: A&R-driven, craft-first, and human-authored, with AI used as an instrument rather than a replacement for the artist.
The AI-music conversation has been a binary since 2023
AI-hostile traditional indie labels on one side. AI-slop dumping grounds on the other. The platforms (Suno, Udio) are tools, not labels. No one has taken the third seat: A&R-driven, artist-development-driven, craft-respecting, curated. That's the seat we're taking.
Music Ally's May 15, 2026 next-gen-labels piece groups AI labels without drawing the craft-vs-dumping line. The boutique curated tier is undefended. We're defining it, not joining it.
Human authorship, PRO-aligned
October 28, 2025: ASCAP, BMI, and SOCAN aligned on accepting partially-AI compositions for normal royalty registration. Fully-AI works excluded. Four operational tests live underneath: composition, lyric, arrangement, production direction. At least one of those must be human-authored. That's the floor; every Red Plastic Records release crosses it. SESAC is not party to the alignment; we work within the three-PRO standard for now.
Disclosure is craft
September 25, 2025: Spotify formally rejected the binary is-AI-or-not classification. The use of AI tools is a spectrum, not a switch. DDEX voluntary AI disclosure launched in Song Credits beta April 2026; every Red Plastic Records release ships with disclosure. This is alignment, not defiance. The platforms that matter have signaled they want craft, not gatekeeping; we meet them there.
What we sign
- Human authorship floor (per PRO alignment). Composition, lyric, arrangement, and/or production direction must be human-authored. Pure prompt-to-output workflows do not qualify.
- Craft over virality. Work shows iterative development; multiple versions; considered choices. Single-prompt output, even when polished, does not meet the label craft bar.
- Lineage clarity. The artist names three to five lineage references that situate the work. Demonstrates a tradition, not a sound-chase.
Signings are relationship-driven. Erased Tapes precedent. [email protected] handles inquiries. Most submissions get a read; a few get a reply; one in a blue moon gets a release.
Est. 1996
Red Plastic Records, established 1996. The name traces to a little-known teenage rock band, Red Plastic Cup (Sam Gibson, Jeff Floyd, and Travis Bonnet): industrial-tinged hard rock, talent shows, park gigs, and a couple of downtown Austin venues circa 1995-96. Sam Gibson and Travis Bonnet went on to form Breaks and Flow and released a couple of albums, and the label name kept getting thrown around. As Travis kept self-releasing, the name stuck. The label has spun under it across the broader travisBREAKS catalog: nine records and collections, fifty tracks, the Sunday Practice devotional collection, the Forge bard catalog, the DJ archive. Now, with a deep catalog behind it, the label is becoming real.
The label went public June 21, 2026 with Many Names, a five-track EP by travisBREAKS that moves from restraint to the spill and then to the wordless and the unruly. The catalog has been AI-inclusive and human-authored all along; this is the release that puts a name on the front of it. The founding artist is also the founder; the roster expands by relationship, not application portal.
Distinctions
- Not Hallwood Media. We are boutique not mainstream, A&R-led not chart-virality-driven.
- Not a Suno or Udio platform. We are a label, not a generation tool.
- Not AI-hostile traditional indie. We engage AI-inclusive artists as artists, not as threats.
- Not an AI-slop dumping ground. Every release meets the human-authorship floor and the craft test.
The thesis is positive, not reactive. The work is the argument.