Are Record Companies still viable?
Two new ones reckon so...
When the fine french techno imprint Institubes decided to close last month, their suicide note sounded an ominous chord for small record companies. “The way we do business is defective,” stated the co-founders. “Our values are defective, our contracts are defective, our postnapster economy itself is defective.”
Quite a statement, but happily ignoring that Gallic gloom are a couple of wildly different chaps with very different plans. Dan Le Sac is best known for his work with beardy poet Scroobius Pip, but can often be heard bigging-up another Sunday Best alumni, oddball ‘shithopper’ Kid Carpet. So much so, in fact, that he’s now set up a label, Dumb Drum, initially just to release Carpet’s less-than commercial output. Which sounds like a recipe for bankruptcy…
“You cannot control the Kid, I’d be on for a hiding if I were even to try,” agrees le Sac. “As for bankruptcy, Dumb Drum will be fine! To rip off an idea from [proper hip-hopper] Sage Francis, this label is no profit, all prophet.”
Admittedly Carpet’s first work for Dumb Drum has an added curiosity factor. Through an odd turn of events involving a mysterious bloke in Japan and a fortuitous check of a spam folder he’s ended up soundtracking Repo Chick, the sequel to Alex Cox’s cult movie Repo Man, for which Carpet is “over the moon, cock-ahoop and yet shitting myself at the same time”.
Carpet sounds happy enough on Dumb Drum then, but what are Le Sac’s longer-term ambitions? “To be honest I fancy running a label less and less the longer Pip and I continue in this industry,” he admits. “We’ve learnt more from cunty industry cunts fucking people over than we have from labels actually doing it right.” Ouch. Coming from more of an industry angle, but taking a less than-traditional approach, is Ken Rose. A former staff writer with EMI and Warners and guitarist for the likes of Marianne Faithfull, he’s now ploughing his hard-earned resources into a start-up called Telescopic Baby.
“Most labels don’t respect the punter at all, most A&Rs have no ears,” says Rose, who already has eight acts signed up. “I think the labels of the ’60s and ’70s got it right and that’s why most of the artists developed during this period have kept and added to their fanbases and still outsell most new acts. Their balance of artistic expression and commercial potential, in my opinion, was just right.” Based at London’s Livingston Studios, where notable records from the likes of Björk and Buena Vista Social Club were born, Rose is taking the long view, harking back to legendary label bosses like Ahmet Ertegun, Jac Holzman and Berry Gordy who “let acts make three to five records in order to grow.”
It sounds ambitious, perhaps a tad naive, but Rose isn’t clinging to times past: having nurtured his school of talent he’s actively pushing them toward film and TV work, then link-ups with bigger labels. One of Institubes’ problems was its refusal to ‘sell out’ to bigger fish, but Rose reckons it pays not to be too precious. “Besides, look around you,” he concludes, “look at the state of the world. It’s only music!”
When the fine french techno imprint Institubes decided to close last month, their suicide note sounded an ominous chord for small record companies. “The way we do business is defective,” stated the co-founders. “Our values are defective, our contracts are defective, our postnapster economy itself is defective.”
Quite a statement, but happily ignoring that Gallic gloom are a couple of wildly different chaps with very different plans. Dan Le Sac is best known for his work with beardy poet Scroobius Pip, but can often be heard bigging-up another Sunday Best alumni, oddball ‘shithopper’ Kid Carpet. So much so, in fact, that he’s now set up a label, Dumb Drum, initially just to release Carpet’s less-than commercial output. Which sounds like a recipe for bankruptcy…
“You cannot control the Kid, I’d be on for a hiding if I were even to try,” agrees le Sac. “As for bankruptcy, Dumb Drum will be fine! To rip off an idea from [proper hip-hopper] Sage Francis, this label is no profit, all prophet.”
Admittedly Carpet’s first work for Dumb Drum has an added curiosity factor. Through an odd turn of events involving a mysterious bloke in Japan and a fortuitous check of a spam folder he’s ended up soundtracking Repo Chick, the sequel to Alex Cox’s cult movie Repo Man, for which Carpet is “over the moon, cock-ahoop and yet shitting myself at the same time”.
Carpet sounds happy enough on Dumb Drum then, but what are Le Sac’s longer-term ambitions? “To be honest I fancy running a label less and less the longer Pip and I continue in this industry,” he admits. “We’ve learnt more from cunty industry cunts fucking people over than we have from labels actually doing it right.” Ouch. Coming from more of an industry angle, but taking a less than-traditional approach, is Ken Rose. A former staff writer with EMI and Warners and guitarist for the likes of Marianne Faithfull, he’s now ploughing his hard-earned resources into a start-up called Telescopic Baby.
“Most labels don’t respect the punter at all, most A&Rs have no ears,” says Rose, who already has eight acts signed up. “I think the labels of the ’60s and ’70s got it right and that’s why most of the artists developed during this period have kept and added to their fanbases and still outsell most new acts. Their balance of artistic expression and commercial potential, in my opinion, was just right.” Based at London’s Livingston Studios, where notable records from the likes of Björk and Buena Vista Social Club were born, Rose is taking the long view, harking back to legendary label bosses like Ahmet Ertegun, Jac Holzman and Berry Gordy who “let acts make three to five records in order to grow.”
It sounds ambitious, perhaps a tad naive, but Rose isn’t clinging to times past: having nurtured his school of talent he’s actively pushing them toward film and TV work, then link-ups with bigger labels. One of Institubes’ problems was its refusal to ‘sell out’ to bigger fish, but Rose reckons it pays not to be too precious. “Besides, look around you,” he concludes, “look at the state of the world. It’s only music!”
Kid Carpet
