MEXICO CITY – Guatemalan singer-songwriter Ricardo Arjona will launch his next album from his own marketing and branding company for artists, he announced in the Mexican capital while shooting the video for his first promotional number entitled “El Amor” (Love).

“I got fed up with complaining like everyone else, only to keep signing contracts and winding up in the same situation we all complain about,” the 47-year-old artist said.

The idea of creating the company called Metamorfosis was to give the music its due, “the chance to be managed by people who believe in it.”

“It took some nerve but it’s pretty logical if you look around at what’s happening in the recording industry, which has become nothing but a single-minded disc vendor, where the content is given little importance and no one bothers to even think about the emotion it can inspire,” Arjona said.

“This industry without risks and without faith is becoming a machine, and songs don’t get along well with machines – that’s why I started this project,” he said.

When asked if he planned to do a fashion line to assure his sales as many of his colleagues have done, he replied with an emphatic “no.”

He will continue to favor compositions with social themes and others that reveal his own frank views when dealing with subjects that are nothing new in the world of music like love.

As the setting for the video whose concept he created, the singer chose a wedding celebration in a parish with Gothic architecture, where the different amorous entanglements of the guests are brought to light.

With regard to the new album, to be entitled “Independiente,” he said that it has a fresh, sophisticated but not ethereal sound, and represents an important evolution in his career of more than 25 years.

The video of “El Amor” is scheduled to premiere during the second week of September, both on television and the Internet.