Ulf Oesterle spent the first six years of his life living on South Campus while his dad was working on a degree.

Oesterle, chair of the department of music and entertainment industries, went from being a three-sport athlete with a health science degree to sole operator of an independent record label and professor in the Bandier program at Syracuse University.

He left Syracuse and moved to a small town with two traffic lights on the edge of the Catskill Mountains.

Though Oesterle’s new home was remote, it also gave him his first exposure to “cool music” through alternative radio station WEQX. The grunge and indie tunes caught Oesterle’s ear, and he couldn’t stop taping the songs off the radio and playing them back.

During his undergraduate years at SUNY Cortland, Oesterle’s heavy involvement with the college radio station and the college television station steered him away from athletic interests and geared him towards becoming more media focused.

In the spring semester of his freshman year, Oesterle had a slot on the college’s radio station, playing alternative, punk and ska from 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. on Sundays.

“We had virtually no listener base, but it was amazing and I wanted to get more involved,” Oesterle said.

By the time he graduated from Cortland, Oesterle took on a leadership position at the station. All the time and effort he spent in radio shaped his decision to pursue a master’s degree in media management at SU’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

After completing his degree in 2001, Oesterle’s professor, Dennis Kinsey, encouraged him to join the PhD program. It was toward the beginning of his higher education journey in September 2003 that Oesterle decided to start his independent record label.

At the time, he was working as the central New York representative for a New Jersey-based marketing lifestyle company, selling merchandise and helping bands prepare for their shows.

When he was working a show in Syracuse, he started to chat with the band performing that night and they told him to check out their material.

When they came back to perform later again in Syracuse, the band remembered Oesterle. They decided to meet up on Marshall Street and talk about the band’s latest work and Oesterle convinced them that releasing an EP over a full-length album was not a smart idea.

“I told them, ‘you’re better off taking a couple more weeks to write more songs or take songs out of your catalog and spend a little more money on recording so you have a full-length album,’” Oesterle said. “When they agreed it was a good idea, I said, ‘Hey, let’s do this. Let’s put out a record.’”

From there, he started developing his independent label Aux Records, which has been operating and based in downtown Syracuse for 12 years now. Oesterle runs the entire business solo.

Aux Records has released many central New York-based artists with genres ranging from singer-songwriter to metalcore and names such as Honor Bright, Anorexic Beauty Queen, The Brilliant Light and Caleb Micah.

Though he’s met many artists and managers over the years, Oesterle still maintains the relationships he’s formed. When groups he’s worked with are touring, he finds time to hang out with them.

“It’s great because every one of the records that I’ve put out, I’m now friends with everyone that was part of the process,” Oesterle said.

When Oesterle isn’t working at Aux Records or spending time with past clients, he’s teaching music industry and music business classes in SU’s Bandier program and participating in music conferences nationwide.

Oesterle’s best advice to individuals interested in entering the music industry or starting a record label is to be conscious about where the money is being spent and to be ready to release a lot of content and have that content take multiple forms.

“If someone’s got a good song and a good album, they’ll rise to the top,” said Oesterle. “It’s just got to sound like great music.”

Published on December 8, 2015 at 10:43 pm

Contact: rcplaut@syr.edu