fck BEATPORT...

::BLM:: · Post by **::BLM::** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 5:58 pm

Not enough to warrent doing it. 500 records is going to cost you what? £600-£700? And buy price for a shop is going to be like £2.50 (thats on a sale or return basis). You then have to take into account the shipping to all the different shops etc and all the other overheads like remix costs, promotion etc... For all your effort chasing shops/ringing them up etc.. you're going to make a couple of hundred pounds and thats only if you sell all your units. The UK is really hard as well to sell records so most of your phone calls will be abroad. For example in Germany our last release sold 450 units and in the uk it sold 95. Can you really be bothered to ring around all them german shops? Then you have Italy, Spain, Japan, USA, Russia, Belgium, Romania etc.. Man the list is endless...

Torque · Post by **Torque** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 6:57 pm

::BLM:: wrote:Not enough to warrent doing it. 500 records is going to cost you what? £600-£700? And buy price for a shop is going to be like £2.50 (thats on a sale or return basis). You then have to take into account the shipping to all the different shops etc and all the other overheads like remix costs, promotion etc... For all your effort chasing shops/ringing them up etc.. you're going to make a couple of hundred pounds and thats only if you sell all your units. The UK is really hard as well to sell records so most of your phone calls will be abroad. For example in Germany our last release sold 450 units and in the uk it sold 95. Can you really be bothered to ring around all them german shops? Then you have Italy, Spain, Japan, USA, Russia, Belgium, Romania etc.. Man the list is endless...

Call me crazy but just because the profit isn't as much as you want it to be is not a reason not to do it.

Look...
Some of you will be able to get distribution deals and some of you won't, that's life but if you let things like that stop you then you don't deserve to be doing this. If you want to have success like you see labels like Minus are having and whatnot you have to look at what they did. When rich and them started out there were hardly any places to go for distribution locally besides places like BuyRite and whatnot in Detroit but Rich and John decided to take their fate into their own hands and distribute themselves under the name Inntellinet. This is what got them paid and they kept rolling that money around and look at what Rich has now, a minimal empire. This sh!t is hard work and you have to be down for battle and really believe in your own vision enough to make it happen no matter what the circumstances are that are put in front of you.

The people that are not afraid to lose everything are the ones you see at the top. Some of them aren't afraid to lose everything because they can't, they were born with money and that's just the way the cards were delt. The ones i know here in Detroit that aren't afraid to lose everything are the ones who never had anything to begin with so the worst that could happen is that they would go back to the way they were to begin with and do it all again from scratch. If you're going to do this don't ride the fence because that is a sure ticket to failure.

patrick bateman · Post by **patrick bateman** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:01 pm

@Torque:

In my opinion, you can't compare because of the almost 20 years of time difference... !

rationalism · Post by **rationalism** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:45 pm

What Torque meant is that with hard job and giving everything to the label development is probable to get somewhere, and if not you start again!
I mean when rich and john started there was almost nothing and today they are too much stuff going around, but I think that music is like the people that work making funerals they are in one place for a looot of years and people start recognizing them, beacuse they went to a funeral there or beacuse they have 25 years in the business! M_nus is what it is mainly because of rich and he has over 20 years in the business therefore he knows how it works... Sorry for the analogy but that´s what passed by my mind now

Cheers

patrick bateman · Post by **patrick bateman** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:49 pm

rationalism wrote:What Torque meant is that with hard job and giving everything to the label development is probable to get somewhere, and if not you start again!
I mean when rich and john started there was almost nothing and today they are too much stuff going around, but I think that music is like the people that work making funerals they are in one place for a looot of years and people start recognizing them, beacuse they went to a funeral there or beacuse they have 25 years in the business! M_nus is what it is mainly because of rich and he has over 20 years in the business therefore he knows how it works... Sorry for the analogy but that´s what passed by my mind now

Cheers

Of course 'hard work' will get you somewhere, what I mean is that the time is just SO different from back when Rich started, so it can't be compared in my opinion... (and I guess only a very very few people will get to his level anyway, so he is a bad person to pull out in a discussion like this)..

::BLM:: · Post by **::BLM::** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 9:20 pm

^^ Yeah exaclty. Look I run two labels one with a distro and one without and im telling you from my experience in this current music climate that you need a good distribution company behind you to sell records. There are people selling 300 records with the likes of Intergroove Germany, and they have a massive contact base full of record shops.

I know lots of people that have done it themselves in the UK and have only really managed to push around 100-150 records which is nothing.

Tone rubudub in Scotland also do distro and I just signed my ltd label up to them because its so hard getting shops to take records off you when you are just a single person running a new label.

tone-def · Post by **tone-def** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 9:49 pm

I'll try and get the best distro i can. I know someone who works for one of the big ones so maybe i'll get a deal there. I should really learn how a distribution company works.

Torque · Post by **Torque** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 2:40 am

::BLM:: wrote:^^ Yeah exaclty. Look I run two labels one with a distro and one without and im telling you from my experience in this current music climate that you need a good distribution company behind you to sell records. There are people selling 300 records with the likes of Intergroove Germany, and they have a massive contact base full of record shops.

I know lots of people that have done it themselves in the UK and have only really managed to push around 100-150 records which is nothing.

Tone rubudub in Scotland also do distro and I just signed my ltd label up to them because its so hard getting shops to take records off you when you are just a single person running a new label.

This may sound harsh but the Gods honest truth is if somebody can't move at least 300 copies on wax of what they're doing then most likely they're not making what the market wants. If you are stubborn enough and have a big enough set of balls you can wait it out and take the loss for a few years and hopefully sway the market you're way by just outlasting the next guy.

If a label owner is the kind of guy that can't separate the business from the music and takes everything personally then he shouldn't be doing it. This is why artists usually don't make good label owners, sometimes they take it personal that their music isn't selling and get their feelings hurt.

If there's anything this industry needs it's more non-artist label owners.