News The Decade Of Custom, Made To Order Products

Me and DIY go way back. Through running Big Scary Monsters Records, a label born, bred and sustained through ‘do-it-yourself’ ethics and ideas, I’ve taught myself the ropes and learnt lessons the hard way over the past 7 or 8 years.

In the early days of the label, doing things things myself was necessity, plain and simple. I couldn’t afford to hire press or radio pluggers so had to handle those roles myself. Distributors and booking agents (rightly) wouldn’t take a clueless 17 year old seriously, so I urged the bands to sell their releases directly to shops in their region, putting extra emphasis on their gig sales, and started gathering promoter contacts so that we could book tours ourselves. I wanted a website but once again the old money factor reared its ugly head and cackled with amusement as I spent many a long night trying to teach myself HTML. And the idea of affording large marketing budgets was as ridiculous as some of the simply ludicrous guerilla campaigns I’ve toyed with along the way. But for every late night, drop of sweat, papercut and overcome hurdle, I feel a certain sense of achievement and most importantly of all, a spark of creative excitement. Having done this job for so long now - boasting a back catalogue of fast-approaching 100 releases - you’d be forgiven for thinking that things would get easier and that some of the previously DIY tasks could be delegated elsewhere. In some ways, perhaps they have, but in the vast majority, it’s exactly the same as ever. And that’s just the way I like it.

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but apparently the recording industry is in decline. It seems people aren’t as willing to spend money on music anymore, and you may have also heard a little whisper about a recession. Every week another company which has outgrown its means has given up the good fight. It’s a difficult and saddening time, and is making the idea of DIY more and more appealing every day. People are quickly coming round to the notion of cutting out the middle men, bringing previously (and often expensive) outsourced roles back under the one roof, encouraging creativity and innovation. And the beauty of this current rise of lo-fi, cut and paste culture is that it’s seemingly bottomless. For all the well publicised damage the internet has caused to music sales, the opportunities it has brought with it are endless, empowering many in ways unheard of just a few years ago.

Made to order

At the end of 2008, Pinnacle, the partner to our distributor, went into administration. I remember the moment only too well. It was early December, I was walking underneath Freddie Mercury on Tottenham Court Road, trying not to let myself get too angry by the constant flow of idiotic Christmas shoppers, when a concerned friend sent a text message alerting me to rumours floating around the internet that morning regarding Pinnacle’s downfall. My blood ran cold as I considered the potentially crippling effect this could have on the label. A week later we put out our first CD-R release.

Until this point it was something I’d always avoided but suddenly, nothing had ever seemed so right. The days of faltering technology and horribly green-tinted discs were gone. This is the naughties; the decade of band-to-fan marketing, personal recommendations and custom, made to order products. The huge overheads of large CD pressings - especially with ever fewer distribution outlets available - no longer needs to be an issue. The sleepless nights worrying about mounting debts have been replaced with sleepless nights painting, cutting, folding and sticking cardboard sleeves. The bags under my eyes are still here but so’s the smile. Sometimes you forget how refreshing it is when you don’t have to concern yourself with such trivial issues as first week sales or what the journalists think about a band. The beauty of creating a wonderful musical package you, as a music fan, would love to own, and then simply putting it out there for those who dare to dig a little deeper to uncover and cherish is a wonderful thing. Selling millions of copies, getting rich and buying a private island, you won’t; but if building a small, niche community of enthusiastic, passionate fans isn’t enough, you’re probably in the wrong game anyway.



Big Scary Monsters Official Site