So you may have seen yesterday that we are now selling the Tiny Cinema album Designs for £1 on CD.
Sometimes when a label does this, it can seem like it’s a ‘fire sale’ or an ‘everything must go’ situation as they desperately chase lost revenue. Not for us. This is about remembering why we started this label in the first place.
This time last year we were just four friends on a University course. Chris W and Callum were putting on a gig for one of their modules and needed an artist to play. I have known Darren (Tiny Cinema) for 20 years and have played in countless bands with him for the last 15. He has always been my favourite songwriter, and since our last band parted ways he had started to produce some solo work. I recommended him to the lads for their gig, and they fell in love with his music too.
All Darren has ever wanted to do is write music, but he (by his own admission) is not a promoter. It’s the side of music that he has always hated, and always avoided. We decided that we could help get his music out there, simply because it deserved to be heard. We got Ryan on board, and later Shearer, and we started planning out how we could work this label.
We work with some really inspiring and forward thinking people, and we all have really strong views on the music industry and how people should strive to do interesting things, and create interesting products. The only way people will want to pay you for music these days is if you create something they want to pay for, something different, something cool. This, of course, is why we went out and got “Standard Jewel Case 4pp CDs” made.
Yeah. We fucked up.
We got caught up in the ‘old’ way of running a label, and we did things that we fundementally do not agree with.
It is not that the product is bad. The artwork by our friend Gavin Weir is beautiful, the package is well made, and I don’t think I need to tell you how much we love the music. It’s just that there is nothing different in this physical package, there is nothing to excite, there is no unique selling point.
The main problem that this has caused is that we had started to make decisions based on “well, we might shift a few CDs” and we had forgotten our orginial reason for starting the label. We no longer wanted to make decisions based on “shifting CDs”, it was taking all of the fun out of running this label, so we are taking them out of the equation.
On every other level we have delievered on our intentions for Tiny Cinema. Close to 200 people have downloaded his music from Bandcamp, he has played to new audiences and we have got him press coverage that gets his name out there, and we will continue to do this for as long as he lets us.
This post may be quite candid, and not something you would expect from a record label. Most of the time labels like to paint themselves as always right, but we are still learning, and importantly we have learned from this. We are not invincible, so we try to be brave.
Don’t ever expect to see us release a bog standard physical package again. Indeed, keep your eyes peeled as we have some really cool stuff happening soon.
The important thing we hope that anyone looking to release music takes away from this is to do things YOUR way. Don’t think just because you are releasing music everything has to be ‘major label standard’, like you would see in your major high street music shops. Fuck those places. They are dying, and if you align yourself with them then you will do.
Finally I will go back to why we started this label. To get the music that we love heard. So with that in mind, head on over to Tiny Cinema’s bandcamp and download some music.
Hey, and if you feel like buying a CD, that’s just fine too.
Much love
Nick x
