Publication:
MaximumRockNRoll

Author:
Felix Von Havoc

MRR #176-record distribution
So you got your records from the pressing plant. You invite the whole mob over to fold lyric sheets and stuff records into covers. Hours later they sit neatly piled on the floor two thousand copies that are gonna take the world by storm. You've put countless hours into writing, rehearsing and recording these tracks, labored over the artwork and sweated to earn the cash to pay for the pressing and record sleeves. It took longer than you thought, and cost more than it should but now your record is out and ready to ship.

Herein lies the clincher, ship to whom? Although your record may or may not be the masterwork you feel it is there is a lot of competition. Hundreds of records are released by bands and small labels every month. All of them vie for the consumers attention. How then do you get your record into stores and how do you get paid for it once it sells. You send out copies to the fanzines you read regularly and it gets good reviews. Your record sells a few hundred copies locally in stores and at shows. You mail out samples to the distributors you see advertizing in your favorite fanzines. Several write back. They'd love to take your record, only they can't but them off you, you gotta put them on consignment. This makes sense, you send them a hundred records and they pay you for them in 60 days (or 30 days, or 90 days) or as they sell. You send the records. They sell well, the distributors ask for more. You ship out the last of your copies. Only a little money trickles in. You run out of records, its time to repress, maybe head back to the studio. You write the distributors, you call, you fax. Money seems to be tight everywhere all the sudden. It takes weeks of cajoling maybe months or years to finally get paid. Some distributors move, or go out of business taking your money and unsold records with them. Disillusioned at the failure of the DIY punk movement to keep its house in order you opt for the easy way out and let a big established label do your next record. No hassles, just royalty checks in the mail and someone else deals with the distribution headaches.

Repeat this scenario but substitute the small label for the band, several releases out but always having trouble getting paid by distributors. Its so hard to come up with the money to do your next release as nice as you'd like to when you can't get paid for your last few releases. Eventually you opt for the easy way out and let a big established distributor exclusively distribute your label. No more headaches collecting from distributors, just checks in the mail.

I run a small label Havoc Records. I've put out 13 7" with several more in the works. The biggest headache for me has always been getting paid for my records. However, I feel that in order to remain a truly independent label I am required to do all my own distribution. Punk record distribution is a very unique and tricky business. The band or small label has to give up their records on the promise of payment when they sell. I can't really think of any other business that works on such a consignment principle. Consignment gives the distributor the opportunity to build up a working inventory with very little cash investment, sell the units to stores, take their mark up and then pay the label. This seems like a reasonable system except that almost every band and label I know has had trouble getting paid for their product. Very few distributors are willing to pay for releases up front, usually only if its a real hot item that they know will sell right away. The irony of this is that the stores and labels/bands have to drop real money as does the consumer. The catch-22 is that if you decide you are only going to distribute your record cash up front you will soon find very few distributors willing to gamble on your record, especially with so many other releases coming out every month to choose from. So you sit with an unsold pile of records in your practice room. Most labels I know only manage to get paid when they have a hot new release coming out that the distributors want. You can try to market it to stores yourself (very time consuming) or you can play the game. I've been playing that game for some years now and I think that a buch of smart kids like us have got to be able to develop a better system of distribution without becoming heels of the running dog corporate system.

A lot of shake ups are going on in distribution right now. If my memory serves me this happened once before when Systematic, Rough Trade, Toxic Shock, Disorder and several other distributors either threw in the towel or re-oriented their business in the mid/late 80's. Could it be that the MTV inspired popularity of punk in the 90's has started to wane enough that the field has grown too crowded and only a few distributors will hang on for the next few years? One big trend lately is for smaller labels to sign exclusive distribution deals with bigger distributors. Likewise a lot of bands as they start to get popular, give up on releasing their own material and sign to a bigger, more established label. I think that this is a bad move as it increases centralization, encourages commercialization and hurts the independent spirit of the punk underground.

As I said before to me part of what keeps a label independent is controlling your own distribution. To me the hard work of releasing and selling a record, printing T-shirts and fixing shitty old vans is what keeps it real. But, with the frustration of working a full time job, playing in a band and trying to run a label and distribution I can see how attractive it must be to get with someone elses program. The current trend of increased centralization hurts small labels and bands in that bigger distributors are looking for marketable labels to sign up as exclusives. This of course leaves out in the cold the less marketable bands and opens the door to commercializaion and trendmongering. Thus a vacuous but cute band with sweet catchy ditties gets picked up along with their label while a bunch of pissed off intellecutuals protesting or drunk guttersnipes mouthing off do not. This helps to depersonalize and depoliticize punk music by reducing it to formulaic interpretations of what is "in" at a certain time. Pop punk (or ska punk, or pogo punk etc) is big so labels and distributors fall over themselves signing up bands that fit a pre-concieved image of what will comprise this trend. Musicians eager for a deal gear their look and sound to fit that ideal. They avoid controversy or anything that might hurt their image. Ideals, anger or a stance take a back seat to a carefully concieved image and sound that unsuprisingly sounds and looks a lot like everything else on the market.

I once thought that having and exclusive distributor was a good idea. As I travelled around the country on tour I stopped at every record store and looked for my releases. Most stores had none. This because they either didn't order from my distributor very often or they never ordered from them. This pushed me to diversify and send records out to lots of distributors. I started getting records out to more and more stores, but keeping up with it and getting paid gets harder all the time. (Right now there are several distributors who owe me money which are long over due. Some are making and honest efffort to pay, and keep in touch, sending money when they can, this I appreciate. Other distributors avoid or ignore numerous letters, calls and faxes. So far I've avoided naming any names in this column. I won't run down a list of who owes what this month. However, if you owe Havoc records money and I havn't talked to you lately PAY UP or get in touch.) Using more distributors gives you a better coverage in stores because many stores only order from one or two distributors regularly, especially if they are a bigger store with a small punk selection. If you choose to sell exclusively to one distributor you will narrow your market coverage and probably also loose control of pricing and perhaps manufacturing your releases. You may also find outside forces influencing what you choose to release. I for one choose to keep a day job that will support my lifestyle rather than be pressured into making a living off of hardcore. I feel this would force me to determine what records I would release based on marketability and the process of commercialization I outlined above.

While we are on the subject of centralization did you ever notice that most of the popular bands of the early 80's started their own labels, mostly from necessity. Once these labels were in place with a popular band to guarantee salesand exposure they branched out and helped younger bands from their own scenes release records and gain exposure. You need some examples? Dead Kennedys-Alternative Tentacles, Black Flag-SST, Seven Seconds-Positive Force, Teen Idles/Minor Threat-Dischord, Subhumans-Bluurg, Crass-Crass, Conflict-Mortarhate, MDC-R Radical etc. It would seem that this was driven primarily by the lack of existing labels willing to give hardcore a chance as well as the political motiviations of many of the bands. Bands like Dead Kennedys and Black Flag got screwed by IRS and MCA and I thing some people took that as a lesson that for hardcore to survive they would have to do it themselves. In our time there is an abundance of labels big and small and it is easy, perhaps too easy, to put out a record. A lot of the bands I mentioned above were playing to large crowds and selling 10,000 or more copies of each record (in the days of one format, the superior format, vinyl)yet were still part of and independent scene. These days it seems like as soon as a band gets a whiff of popularity up their nose its a bee line to a major label and an MTV career path. The economic muscle popular punk bands have today could be used to support their cousins struggling up from underground instead it is going into the bottom rungs of the corporate rock establishment.

I'm being auditted by the IRS right now and I was recently arrested for weapons charges. Next month I will talk all about my struggles against the man.

Publication Date:
January 1, 1988

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