Of course, giving is deeply emotional. But supplementing emotion with research makes it more likely that a gift can have a bigger impact. It's like any investment. After all, you wouldn't put funds into stocks or bonds without understanding the potential return. Why wouldn't you do the same when investing in society?
I think it gave us the freedom to be more creative and do things the way we wanted to do them, so if a label liked it that was cool and if they didn't like it fine. Ultimately it was up to us to sink or swim and there was nobody telling us what direction to go in. I think that made the entire record more diverse.