Things You Wish You Knew Before You Started a Record Label

I always say if you’re not making money and having fun, you shouldn’t be doing it. My brother is up to his ears in debt and let me tell you, it’s not a fun life to live. I’m not saying you have to make loads of money, but if you have more costs than profit/revenue/sales - which one you’ve chosen to focus on, then to me it seems like a waste if time.

Art is fun but rarely makes money, so no one should make art then?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in six figures of debt because of university, I get that you’re talking about the difficulty of living with debt, and that it isn’t worthwhile if there aren’t returns on your investment, but if the only concern in running a record label was making money, literally no one would start labels. DMZ, Tectonic, even Warp Records would never have been created if their only concern was profit. That’s why to me your point is a bit moot in the context of this conversation.

As I said, im not saying you have to make lots of money, it would be rational to say to make more money that you are spending on costs.

Before the recession, it probably wasn’t as big of a loss to start a business like this, but we’re still in recovery, so I would say it’s a little bit impractical.

Fair point.

Yeah the whole term doesn’t tell you anything at all. Only digital releases are unlimited.
Completely depends on the demand.

limited is supposed to mean no represses, it doesn’t mean anything about how many records were pressed in that run though. Seen ltd apply to colored wax versions and art sleeves etc though, so while there may be another run of the record itself, that particular version of it is not getting repressed.

Thats how its supposed to work at least, seen many exceptions to the ‘rule’.

I always thought limited implied less than 1000 copies, but I pretty much just assumed this so I could be totally off.

Yeah it kind of makes sense when it’s used like that, but like you said people
don’t always stick to it.

digital releases could be limited by the amount of time they are up for purchase before the artist wants the track removed from a website or the download link is removed or something.

I have a question for those of you who do physical.
If I were to go about trying to get some vinyl into shops, should I contact the shops first and see if they’d be interested in carrying my music before I press it or the other way around?
Thereafter, should I be counting on them to buy ‘x’ records for sale, or would I have them sell a certain amount and then return periodically to collect?
Never pressed before, is 100 a good number to start with? Would shops expect more or less? Either way, seems dumb to press more since I’ve got less than 200 followers and average about 6 individual listeners per upload lol.

i think it’s more likely that you work with a distribution company eg uneathed. look on some innamind records for example, it says “distributed by ______”

they handle that stuff for you, advise you on how many to press. i’d expect that they even take the financial risks (for bigger labels at least), assuming they get a higher share of the reward.

have you sold music previously? how well did it do? I feel like it all depends on how much it sells and not just listens on your SoundCloud.

I have, and mediocrely at best, but mostly under other aliases anyway. I go off soundcloud because personally I’m rather lazy with promo and that’s probably as far as I’d go with it. They were all digi too.
What do you think the move ought to be? I think it’d be a bit dumb to press up many more, but then don’t see the point of going with much less? I imagine it becomes ineffective to cost if I press less, no? In the unlikely event that it does well, a repress is easily arrangeable anyway.
Is it ‘okay’ for me to approach shops directly like that? Because if so, they can just sit in the shop and do their thing with time, which I’m more than fine with.
Also, any word from you on the other questions? You mentioned earlier that you’d been moving into physical territory, any pearls of wisdom?

Less supply = more demand or something? I dunno…when you put £100s in to a pressing and then the plant presses nearly twice as many as you asked for, and you have to put in £100s more, it makes you panic. A few of my mates have stacks of unsold records sitting at home…we didn’t wanna join that club

100 is theoretically easy to shift yourself but you’ll end up paying a lot more per record than you would on a 300+ run, and that’ll mean you have to sell them on to shops at a premium, making your self-distro job even harder.
Contacting shops in advance might be useful, but self distro is NOT easy and most people will ignore you.
Linking up with a distributor would make your job a lot easier, but they’re gonna ask you questions like “what’s your release schedule?” and 100 copies is almost certainly not worth their time.
Where are you getting 100 pressed anyway? China or something? PM if you want

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Who are the good distros these days? I have worked with so many in the past that have gone under.

I think the key for self distro is actually having a bit of reputation. Really hard for some internet rando to walk into a store front (or even worse, shoot off an email) and just start chatting about stocking tunes.

If you actually know the people that buy tunes for your local shop it is pretty easy to do. Esp working a deal where you just drop records at the spot and get money when they sell.

The truth is that most record shops do not and will not do this.

Its tough to gain a rep, and until you do, its pretty much impossible to self distro imo. The market is so insanely saturated with people trying to do the same thing that most record shops reps will turn you away without a bat of an eyelash

for reference, i’ve been trying to self distro for the last 2 years and failing miserable, even with being homies with buyers at the local shops lol (that being said, my tunes might just b trash. take it with a grain of salt)

Appreciate the contribution to the thread, I think it’s absolutely an important thing to realize and that most people when starting a label don’t really think about that, it takes a lot of time building a rapport esp enough to even consider distributing vinyl releases.

There is something I was curious about, on this topic of “limited” vinyl. Visceral Vibrations, who recently put out the massive Sub Basics 12", put out for their first release a 12 by Flaccid Ashback, which in the description stated it was limited to 100, and it was for sale on Juno. My question is, do you think they make some kind of deal with Juno to have them distribute their extremely limited release?

Edit: or could they have really pressed more and just listed as 100 on Juno for, like was mentioned earlier, “less supply more demand”?

Wasn’t that a joint release with Luana’s? The whole Luana’s/Mism/Re:st complex is fairly well connected due to being in the game for a reasonably long time.

trick the audience.

have titles on the records that blame them into getting your product. have an exlusive line you call something like: ‘you dont want this’, ‘not for you’, ‘just not available’ and have a more common one where you more openly rejects them and their decisions, like what the opposite or reverse of what a bomfunker is like in the example^ or: ‘plebs’, ‘I also listen to this’, ‘obviously not the best but definitely not the worst either’

combine these principles and -voila, presto, heureka…