so I'm gonna full on apologize for being a jerk -- I'm really sorry for any bad feelings my posts have caused, and I'd like to accept the mantle of The Biggest Idiot for being dumb about this

Hah, I appreciate that, but no need really I would have the same suspicions/misgivings, so yer not getting that mantle!

Part of the difficulty is having to present the collective or whatever it is as a decent 'label' brand wise so that people want to follow along and buy the tapes... but also at the same time letting artists know that it's a DIY collab style thing with someone else in the chip community, rather than some corporate outfit looking to make a buck. I obviously haven't managed that very well here! Lesson learned.

and by all accounts it seems like this is going really well and the tapes look really dope! any time I see anything about artists having to put up money to be part of a thing it sends up red flags for me because of previous bad pay to play experiences. but that doesn't excuse my dumb ass wading into something a year old to say dumb stuff in a public forum

so I'm gonna full on apologize for being a jerk -- I'm really sorry for any bad feelings my posts have caused, and I'd like to accept the mantle of The Biggest Idiot for being dumb about this

here is some
counterflirting
in the peregrine nest
going it alone

Been listening through this morning. Nice work! I really like:

https://aanaaanaaanadaily.bandcamp.com/ … g-it-alone

It's different from the usual chip/electronic stuff, which is nice to hear.

Yeah. For me, I like to try and support independent artists' music, but paying £5-10 for a digital only release isn't as rewarding as actually having something physical - even if I don't end up even listening to the cassettes that often. I think of it more as a solid piece of artwork than the musical delivery mechanism, if that makes sense. I think a lot of people are probably the same. It's why I prefer to do the releases in small batches, and spend time hand painting them all etc, as it makes them more unique than just whacking on a printed label.

Pretty good. I've sold a bunch of tapes, and gotten to work with some really cool artists. Like I said, it's really awesome to get orders in from Japan and Australia and all over the world - something that wasn't really as visible when it was download only releases in the past. My one problem is that each release takes up quite a bit of time to put together, so I can't really do as much as I would like to.

sandneil wrote:

this is really cool, the tapes look really cool, and i also think your business model is cool

i remember a few businesses in the uk that would sell amiga software on disk if one provided both the software and the disk. it was a win-win because most people don't produce enough amiga disks for personal usage for it to be worth buying the kit to make the disks themselves. here the only difference is that you are taking a royalty rather than a flat fee, but that is arguably even more of a win for musicians as you assume some of risk that the music doesn't sell

i also think some of the tapes look awesome and if i had a way to listen to tape music and/or a fanbase i would be all over it

Thanks a lot! Have you got a link to your music? Would love to check it out.

here is some
counterflirting
in the peregrine nest
going it alone

that's interesting! i guess material culture is alive and well. i haven't bought a ebook in ages despite being an avid reader with a working kindle, and my granny collects paperweights (of all things), so why not tapes

how is this venture going for you, btw, i didn't notice it was a year old already when i initially waded in to the debate!

I can vogue for this guys tapes they're great, my last release he made tapes for and I love how they turned out.

Cheers man! I should have time in the next few weeks to get on top of your last message about a new release, once this current batch of stuff is out of the way

this is really cool, the tapes look really cool, and i also think your business model is cool

i remember a few businesses in the uk that would sell amiga software on disk if one provided both the software and the disk. it was a win-win because most people don't produce enough amiga disks for personal usage for it to be worth buying the kit to make the disks themselves. here the only difference is that you are taking a royalty rather than a flat fee, but that is arguably even more of a win for musicians as you assume some of risk that the music doesn't sell

i also think some of the tapes look awesome and if i had a way to listen to tape music and/or a fanbase i would be all over it

Thanks a lot! Have you got a link to your music? Would love to check it out.

FWIW, I've actually sold a lot more of my releases when I've put them out on tape as opposed to digital only. People like to have something physical for their hard earned cash, especially when it's a limited run. It's really awesome to get orders in from folks in the US and Japan, who wouldn't have bought the download only copy otherwise.

thats nice

i remember a few businesses in the uk that would sell amiga software on disk if one provided both the software and the disk. it was a win-win because most people don't produce enough amiga disks for personal usage for it to be worth buying the kit to make the disks themselves. here the only difference is that you are taking a royalty rather than a flat fee, but that is arguably even more of a win for musicians as you assume some of risk that the music doesn't sell

i also think some of the tapes look awesome and if i had a way to listen to tape music and/or a fanbase i would be all over it

spacetownsavior wrote:

it just seems a little disingenuous when things like this are set up "for the love of it" while asking the musicians themselves to cover costs that pretty much every other label would front on their own, and THEN take commission off sales

it's gets even sketchier when you then go on to construe the costs as "negligible" because like, if they were negligible then it would be even easier for the label to cover them right?

good luck tho

Easy for a commercial label I am sure. Not for some guy making a handful of tapes in his living room.

It seems like you have an issue with getting past a particular idea of what a 'label' is in this context. Maybe I should rename the thread to: "UK Cassette Tape DIY Guy" so it is clearer.

Yeah, I think musicians here have a very hard-coded version of what the word "label" means, which seemingly is a bit different to what you're proposing. Calling it something else will help a lot I think, and take some of the heat off.

it just seems a little disingenuous when things like this are set up "for the love of it" while asking the musicians themselves to cover costs that pretty much every other label would front on their own, and THEN take commission off sales

it's gets even sketchier when you then go on to construe the costs as "negligible" because like, if they were negligible then it would be even easier for the label to cover them right?

good luck tho

Easy for a commercial label I am sure. Not for some guy making a handful of tapes in his living room.

It seems like you have an issue with getting past a particular idea of what a 'label' is in this context. Maybe I should rename the thread to: "UK Cassette Tape DIY Guy" so it is clearer.

it just seems a little disingenuous when things like this are set up "for the love of it" while asking the musicians themselves to cover costs that pretty much every other label would front on their own, and THEN take commission off sales

it's gets even sketchier when you then go on to construe the costs as "negligible" because like, if they were negligible then it would be even easier for the label to cover them right?

good luck tho

any label that asks for more than "your music" in the exchange is a risky label to work with

All of what you are saying makes sense, or at least, it would if we were talking about somebody entering into a contract with a traditional for-profit corporation, rather than some member of the chip community who is DIY releasing 10-20 tapes at a time.

Let me spell it out really clearly:

I make music because I enjoy it, not because I have any lofty career aspirations. My friends and I work on different projects under different names, and release a lot of different material. After doing so for years, working on an album for months and then just sticking it up for download at the end of it felt really anti-climactic and deeply unsatisfying. As a result, I started making a handful of tapes to have some sort of tangible, physical thing to show for it at the end of the process.

It made sense to gather all of these releases under a single 'label' umbrella, and promote them together, rather than from disparate alias Bandcamp accounts. I realised there was a bunch of other folks similar to us who would like to have some kind of different physical component to their album release, and that's who I am on the lookout for. People can of course go and do this for themselves, and I'd encourage them to do so, just like I'd encourage people to modify their Game Boys themselves. Not everybody wants to spend the time or effort to source cassette decks and tapes and cases and labels and do the duplication themselves though, especially not for something they do as a side project in their spare time.

There are plenty of services out there who do tape printing, duplication, and the like - but charge a pretty penny for the pleasure. For the cost of materials, I am doing everything including hosting the tapes and dealing with postage, and then sending the proceeds to the artists once the merchant has taken their processing fees. When I have taken a 'small commission', it has literally just been rounding up the PayPal deduction to the nearest £. That is something like 30p per sale - so £3 on a release of 10 tapes - which goes towards the domain name costs, and buying stickers to include with every tape. Even taking any considerations of the time I've spent on the process out of the equation, the net result is that I actually lose cash on any release I put out, while the artist makes a bit of money back. So why bother? I do it because I want to help folk release their music in a slightly different way from just a digital download.

If it helps you to think of this as a collaboration, or a distribution service, or something else rather than a 'label', then cool. The bottom line is that I am making and selling tapes for a few fellow musicians like myself who won't be able to sell more than a handful of physical releases, and only asking that they cover the negligible initial cost of the materials. Trying to compare this to dealing with an actual commercial record label, or as some sort of money making scheme is laughable.

I'm not going to be responding to any further criticisms from folk who are dropping by to have a pop based on false comparisons. If people want to 'Google for 15 minutes' and do it themselves then awesome. I'm not sure what attacking me as if I am some sort of Richard Branson figure is meant to achieve. As it stands I currently have too many releases on the go to take anything more on anyway.

the whole point of the label system is that the you, the musician, are unable to distribute widely because you don't have the resources to do so; however, you have dope music that, if distributed widely, would make a lot of people happy and willing to buy stuff from you. meanwhile, the label DOES have these resources to distribute but lacks the actual product (i.e. music) to press to CDs/cassettes/whatever.

so the relationship between the musician and the label benefits both because the label gets something to distribute (and take commission off of) and the musician gets distribution

but like, if the label requires the musician to provide additional collateral (meaning money) along with the actual music, what's the point of working with the label in the first place? there's no benefit for the musician other than getting someone who can make cassettes, which they can do on their own if they google for like 15 minutes

it's a big bet on your own popularity for musicians to both give you the money to make the stuff AND for you to take commissions off the material once it's made. like you have to be so popular that you'll make enough sales through your distribution to cover the musician's money AND time + production spent with music

and like, providing art doesn't count you're not putting collateral of your own forth. it's essentially "free"