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Business News Labels & Publishers
Three new labels launch
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 26 January 2012
News now of three new independent record labels launching. Well, two launching, and one relaunching, if you want to be pedantic about these things. Bloody pedants.
Anyway, first up, Garbage are launching their own label, to be called STUNVOLUME. The new venture will release the band’s upcoming new album, though with distribution handled by various partners, most of them Universal subsidiaries (Co-operative Music in Europe, Asia and Latin America, Fontana in the US, and Universal direct in Canada), but also Sony in Japan and the distribution division of their original label, Mushroom’s Liberator, in Australia. The new self-released record will be Garbage’s fifth album, and their first since 2005’s ‘Bleed Like Me’, which was released by Warner, it having acquired the UK division of Mushroom a couple of years earlier.
Second up, Matt Sweeney and Michael Mercer, who both previously worked for Domino Records, have teamed up to launch a new dance and electronic music label to be called Glyph. James Cator, a digital marketing exec for Eagle Rock and DJ/club promoter is also involved in the new venture, which is planning a series of singles and EPs in the coming months, starting off with ‘Morning Mountain’ from young German producer Simon Schilling, aka Essáy. The founders say the label will look to discover and champion “the freshest production talent from around the world, taking in everything from blissful ambience to dubstep infused electronica and beyond”. More at www.glyphrec.com.
And finally former singles-only label Cool For Cats has announced a relaunch after a long break as a brand new ‘digital club’, which will make a free track from a new artist available each month via the outfit’s Bandcamp store. The first release is a track by Mercy called ‘Sleepwalker’. The people behind the label say: “After a couple of years spent organising regular parties at the Old Blue Last and DJing at various events across the UK, Cool For Cats regrouped and came up with the solution to all its problems: if free music is what people want free music is what Cool For Cats will give them!” Presumably participating artists benefit from the new venture’s marketing expertise, though what the company’s commercial model is long term isn’t clear.
