box. Labels are suffering. Even the majors are scared to spend money on artists as they know they can never recoup it, choosing to find income streams from their artist’s live tours & merchandise instead. As a small label back then, selling those 500 white labels was great revenue. It paid for your remixes, your bits and bobs to push the record forward and helped you be self sufficient as a music releasing entity. Those income streams have gone and these are trying times for labels big & small. Something’s got to give – not sure where, not sure when and not sure how….but something will have to change.
Tell us a little about the vibe at your label Mutate – seems like a genuinely tight crew? Well it’s basically a collection of talented kids (and older gentlemen!) who are putting stuff out. There’s no major hassle with it, no-one’s under the illusion they’re going to get rich out of it and it’s just a very tidy vehicle to make sure that your stuff’s getting out. There are a few people involved, we try to control the quality as best we can and it’s a joy to be involved with. But then it’s another digital label in a long list of digital labels getting fucked up the arse by idiots who gain some kind of kudos from uploading other peoples music, music that the artist is heavily invested