C/D : setting up a label

1) start the label anyhow, you know you'll feel totally great when the first release comes out
2) expect to lose money
3) be happy when people like the records you put out
4) be pleasantly surprised if you realize any profit

As with so many other enterprises, if you go into it strictly for the fun of it, then it's all gravy. Please yrself first, etc. Also, please release lots of free jazz, as I am really into free jazz these days

As somebody who's been doing it for going on eleven years now, I say please make very sure of your answers to the following questions:

1) How is my label going to be significantly different from and superior to the jillions of other micro-labels out there? What can I do that nobody else can do?

2) Is there something I want so passionately to make available to the world that I can actively embrace the idea of spending several thousand dollars on it only to have virtually the entire pressing sit in boxes under my bed forever when nobody buys it, just because it's SO DAMN GREAT?

3) What can I do to make this enterprise worthwhile to the artists whose work I'll be releasing?

4) Why might other people want to buy these recordings, and how can they have their attention called to this?

5) Can I deal calmly and cheerfully with the hordes of people and organizations who believe that it is urgent and key that they get everything for free, and identify the few for whom it is actually useful (hint: they're usually the most polite and least demanding)?

Beyond that, note that there is a way to do virtually _everything_ on the cheap, and that it's often wise to ask established small labels about the details of how they do things for $$ rather than $$$$.

In regards to #2, all the overstock from my old label which I had stored (without paying rent) in the back of a record store recently "disappeared" (I suspect they got dumpstered by the guy who runs the store, which is totally fine because, well, that's what I was going to have to do eventually anyway). Moral of the story: If you leave product in the same place for two years unattended, it will eventually not be there anymore. That's my tip.

NickA : what does your band do? In particular, does it do free jazz, cause I'm seeing a market niche already with J0hn.

Douglas : thanks. I take it your label is Dark Beloved Cloud?

As to your questions :

1)is "it would focus on the music I particularly like" a suitable answer to question 1. ie. should we think about this from a business perspective. What's the USP? Can a particular taste be a USP?

2) No, not yet. But I can imagine being so taken with something I'd do this.

3) That's a good point, I hadn't much thought of. Why should an artist come to me rather than someone else? What do you find artists really need from you?

4) I hope they'd buy them because they liked them. The rest is advertising ... and all tips on that are invaluable too.

5) Hadn't thought of that at all :-( but I am now. Cheers.

Aaron : thanks for the indiecentre link. And the tip.

If you had a stack of records no one bought. In a record shop.
And you suspected you'd have to dump them. Couldn't you put a stack of them up by the door to be given away free. This would at least get them heard by people. Or would this send out the wrong signals to the shop and buyers?

Yeah, I probably should have done that. I think my leaving them had more to do with not ever wanting to face the "failure" than being concerned about selling them. And the funny thing is that artistically speaking, my label was a huge success (one band had the drummer from the Rapture, another was the Sights who are now being heralded by the NME, etc. etc.). Which isn't to be all big on myself at all, but just to say that the artistic part and the business/execution part have to BOTH be on target. Personally speaking, I was far too young, naive, inexperienced, clueless, etc. etc. to ever follow through on the venture.

At the moment I'm glad I'm working for another label that seems to have those areas much more together where I can put the little bit of experience I gained to good use. Anyway, hope this personal stuff helps. The physical "how do you get records made" stuff is easy (just very expensive). The deeper questions like the ones that Douglas brough up are very tricky, and you might want to ponder them for a bit.

Another suggestion would therefore be: try working for a label you like (depends on where you live). This will let you figure out if it's what you really want to do plus you'll gain invaluable experience and contacts. Less glory in terms of "doing it yourself," but it's probably a wise place to start.

Focusing on the music I particularly like (and, usually, that can't be heard elsewhere) has been my program for the label since the beginning, and it's what's made the label immensely rewarding to run. I don't recommend it as a commercial approach, necessarily... (What's a USP?)

Advertising is tricky; it can be great if it's done right, but you can also spend a lot of money on it and have it not do you a bit of good. The advantage of running a label according to one's own personal taste, though, is that you can tailor your promotional ideas to be the things that work on _you_ personally--that is, the things that make you buy records. (College radio? Press coverage? Ads in the back pages of Rolling Stone?)

Combining points 1 and 3, I find that a few of the records I'm proudest to have been involved with are projects I've more or less commissioned. ("Hey, Uncle Wiggly, want to make an instrumental album?" "Hey, Magick Heads, want to record your new songs before you break up?" "Hey, wouldn't it be great if there were a Family Fodder CD?")

oh, yeah, fine. lay the blame at the BANDS' door. do you know how hard and how EXPENSIVE it is to tour if the label doesn't pay you any kind of tour support?

even more frustrating is when you TOUR LIKE FUCK but your distribution sucks so much ass that you get to towns where you play well-attended gigs, have massive local press exposure, then you go to the local indie record store and THEY DON'T HAVE A FUCKING COPY OF YOUR ALBUM IN STOCK.

don't even think about setting up a label unless you can get decent distribution. which, if i listen to our label bosses, is getting harder and harder to find...

and please. no more free jazz. three out of four people in our tour van voted to BAN free jazz from the stereo. is there a reason for this music? cause if there is one, we haven't found it yet.

I always wondered why bands come to town without CDs to sell....

Accounting difficulties? Labels wouldn't trust artists/management with stock. Plus it would go against the record industry's way of doing things in the sense of controlling revenue flow and doling out what's due to the artist only when they see fit (and to the letter of the contractual terms - '90 days..' that sort of thing).

the touring/distribution dilemma is a chicken/egg problem: basically, nobody wants to distribute your records unless they have a reason to, which, unless you have the bassist from Rage Against the Machine or something in the band, or you're a label that people are automatically going to pay attention to (Touch & Go, Matador), is because they tour and people are going to hear about them that way. But if you tour and your records aren't out there, people are less likely to hear about you and run out and buy yr records the day after the show and so on.

Boy, that last paragraph sucked grammarwise.

and free jazz rules, although admittedly it's not an all-purpose music.

as for label identity, we've done a piss-poor job of it: our first release was indie-rock and our second one (a split release with another label, which is always a nice thing to help reduce costs) is free/avant/improv trio winds/Moog/percussion. But I love both records, and I'm glad they exist. We've also been doing MP3 samplers on our website, and I've been happy with those as well. (#2 should be up in January.) Our next couple releases are probably going to be CD-R - if there's not the demand to get distribution, we'll just make a supply that matches the demand instead.

anyway, it comes down to this: regardless of how good you think your record is (and EVERYone, just about, thinks their record is good), people aren't going to buy it because of that. They'll buy it because they see the band open for somebody and they're great, or they get played on local college radio obsessively, or they download an MP3 that they like, or a friend puts a song on a mix CD, or Pitchfork reviews it, or whatever. But college radio and media are suffering from getting too much stuff that they can't wade through already. Hell, look at John Vanderslice (regardless what you think about him) - he put out three records with MK-Ultra that were great that nobody bought, and two more solo records, and then people finally started paying attention to him. I don't think advertising does much, either, other than give some vague level of name familiarity. Others may beg to differ with me on this point.

Way way more than two cents worth. Largely redundant anyway, since both John and Douglas are OTM anyway.

I've been thinking about going this route myself. Does anyone think the internet still has the potential to solve the distribution problem? I heard somewhere that still only 4% of all music is bought over the internet. But isn't that likely to increase? If someone can find you online, does it matter if they can also get you at their local Barnes and Noble, Wal-Mart, indie shop, or whatever?

i think the big thing to do is to copy the evil multinationals and brand. i've been doing some netlabel research and it's amazing the number of netlabels that describe their music as 'good dance music' (or 'experimental techno') and leave it at that, giving me no real reason to actually spend my bandwidth on them.

if you want to start a label, figure out what makes the music you're going to put on it different from all the other music out there (invent something if you have to, that's what nike did), and only then do it. and make sure you tell everyone what your difference is, in < 4 words if you can.

I'll never forget the first time I read the newsletter and I was thinking - wow look at all this fantastic stuff - it was only when I actually bought something that I realised that they can be..er...slightly overenthusiastic.

-- Ned T.Rifle (...), January 30th, 2006.

that's the other thing too. tell people your music is amazing and they'll just believe you. enthusiasm is highly circular.

True in some surprisingly dumb ways. So many lazy "reviews" of Science Park albums were just basically reprints/retreads of the press releases, which made assembling a fat folio of positive reviews an easy task.

That said, it also gave real value to the reviews - good or bad - where people clearly actually listened to the damn records. Although it definitely helps to have others making enthusiastic noises on your behalf.

I loved running a label when I was doing it. I didn't love also being the principal artist, songwriter, creative force, bandleader, etc. etc., at the same time. I found it almost impossible to be both artist and businessman well, or to draw the proper lines between them. People with better business sense than I might say differently, of course, but I wouldn't have minded a little help in the end.

And I made far more money selling records out of the back of my car than I ever did securing national distribution and going the "official" label route with co-ops and retail politics, etc.