tempsoundsolutions wrote:
its not advice, and to wit, i disagree with the way you are going about trying to start a label, ahahah
Aye, cool.
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Madriz, Supain
Let the guy try it before bashing him. Maybe he ends up as a "tape artisan" wich is cool too.
Btw my buddy wrote you 
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TSSBAY01
how is it bashing by asking for clarification? he posted an outlay of his plan that didnt address a lot of important things and also had a bit of contradiction to what he presented here. i didnt say anything rude. i only said it seemed like a pretty disjointed plan, and when you say different things in regard to something like this, its probably best to be transparent and forthcoming with answers if you want both sides to be happy. no need for hurt feelings either, the guy was asking for uk based people and while thats not me, that doesnt mean i wouldnt have maybe pointed people in his direction.
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SLC
tempsoundsolutions wrote:
how is it bashing by asking for clarification? he posted an outlay of his plan that didnt address a lot of important things and also had a bit of contradiction to what he presented here. i didnt say anything rude. i only said it seemed like a pretty disjointed plan, and when you say different things in regard to something like this, its probably best to be transparent and forthcoming with answers if you want both sides to be happy. no need for hurt feelings either, the guy was asking for uk based people and while thats not me, that doesnt mean i wouldnt have maybe pointed people in his direction.
Who are you again?
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TSSBAY01
someone who started off doing tapes with distribution almost 25 years ago. vinyl too, but its been more than 10 years since then. and tons and tons of releases both on tape and cdr as well as netlabels, and arranged as well as taken part in more compilations than i can count. but what do i know, right?
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Madriz, Supain
Dude your condescending tone is the problem. I run shit in the shadows and you dont see me hitting the guy with a stick for not being an uberpro pay-the-artists release-thousands-of-tapes type of label YET. Cut him some slack.
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Madriz, Supain
Btw Temps, you still on the vinyl biz? We need more allies
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SLC
tempsoundsolutions wrote:
someone who started off doing tapes with distribution almost 25 years ago. vinyl too, but its been more than 10 years since then. and tons and tons of releases both on tape and cdr as well as netlabels, and arranged as well as taken part in more compilations than i can count. but what do i know, right?
See, nobody cares.
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San Diego, CA
any label that asks for more than "your music" in the exchange is a risky label to work with
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"
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Glasgow, Scotland.
spacetownsavior wrote:
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.
Last edited by unexpectedbowtie (May 15, 2017 1:30 am)
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San Diego, CA
sure, like you can do what you want and if people want to work with you it's fine
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
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Glasgow, Scotland.
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.
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Melbourne, Australia
unexpectedbowtie wrote:
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.
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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
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also, unexpectedbowtie, you absolutely kick ass at staying calm when people are ripping into you on a forum
thats nice