Dear friends,

I am sure most of you have heard, read and seen some of the riots and unrest that has struck London and the UK in the past five days. I have been trying to encourage people I know here in London and in the UK to go out and help their communities if they have been affected, now the time has come to appeal and encourage the worldwide music community to step in and help/support.

On the evening of August 8, 2011, London rioters looted and burned the Sony DADC warehouse in Enfield, North London. This warehouse was also used by PIAS UK (formally Vital), a distribution company established over 15 years ago and housing over 150 independent labels. When it was confirmed that they lost everything in the fire I thought to myself that this was very dark and sad day, not just for the communities here in the UK, but also the global independent music community as a whole.

I am not a music business expert, but I would like to give you a very quick summary of the importance of distribution companies and why this fire can have disastrous consequences and potentially threaten the very existence of some smaller independent labels we love.

To give you a very brief background: A distribution company is in charge of getting record labels releases into record shops and other relevant businesses. The distribution company promotes the labels releases to shops and businesses, obviously trying to get them to buy in as many as possible, and then ships those records to all the shops and businesses, who later sell them to the public. Depending on the size of the distribution company, they can have distribution networks all around the world and they are a vital part of “the music industry structure” because they are the businesses who have the know-how and big network to get the physical products to places around the world where you as a consumer can buy them from.

Now, I want to give you a very basic example of how this fire might affect a small label that had their stock in the warehouse that burnt down, just so you can understand why the independent music community needs your help (please keep in mind that this is an overly simplified example with many other factors excluded):

Imagine you are a small record label who has been around for a couple of years. You might have taken out a loan or forked up money from your own pocket to fund your first release X. You press up 1000 copies of release X and send it off to the distribution company. They might only pay you for the records they are able to sell on to other buyers, so let’s assume you earn £10 per record sold on. They manage to sell 500 copies of X and have 500 copies left in the warehouse.

The initial money you got from the 500 copies sold of release X gives you £5000, that helps you to fund your next release Y (but it might not cover all the costs of release Y). However, you still have £5000 worth of records in the distribution company’s warehouse waiting to be sold on to record stores.

Imagine you keep doing this for a couple of years, but never managing to fully sell-out on all your releases - that means that you might have more than ten thousands of pounds worth of records in the distribution company’s warehouse. Those records that are being stored serve a purpose because record shops restock releases they sell out of, so you as a label might be getting a small, but steady, amount of money every month from your back catalogue (as well as new releases), enabling you to do certain things like paying the business rent, paying your employee/s or artists, expanding your business etc.

Then imagine from one day to another, that investment and money that enabled you to run your business, disappears in flames. How will you be able to pay your rent? How will you pay any loans you might have? How will you pay the employee/s or artists on your label? How will you, a label that makes a living out of selling physical records, survive when those physical products that were bringing in the money that’s enabling you to survive, have gone up in smoke? I could go on…

Toddla T mentioned on twitter yesterday that Ninja Tune, one of the labels affected by the fire, had lost a bit over 123000 records in the fire. I wanted to link to it but he has taken down the tweet. I can’t confirm if this is true, but if it is anywhere close and they only represent one label that was hit, then try to imagine how many records must have gone up in flames if over 150 labels were affected…

Do you like the music from artists signed to labels such as Brownswood Recordings, Soul Jazz, Brainfeeder, Warp, Ninja Tune, Young Turks, Finders Keepers and Big Dada?
Well, they are just 8 labels out of 150+ who’s stock was destroyed.

So instead of going out this weekend and drinking 5 beers, drink 3 and spend the rest of the money buying a digital download of an album from any one of the digital retailers that stock the labels and artists hit by the fire. Or if you prefer physical, go to your local record shop and see what they might be able to offer you from those labels. With your support and help, the labels affected will be able to replace their vinyl and CD’s more quickly, and as a result, resupply record shops, especially any that were hit by the riots, and start earning the money they need in order to operate and release good music again.

For the full list of labels, visit the PIAS website.

So let’s stay positive people and try to help each other out! We have more influence and power than what we sometimes give ourselves credit for.

Thanks,

Orsii

//UPDATE//

PIAS has released a statement on how you can donate money to help the labels affected. You can find the information on PIAS website.