Business News Labels & Publishers Retail

Independent Label Market details announced

By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 19 May 2011

This Saturday, indie labels will be setting up stalls on London’s Berwick Street to sell records direct to music fans. Amongst those involved are Domino, Rough Trade, Bella Union, Merok, Angular Records, Moshi Moshi and XL.

As well as standard stock, there will be numerous exclusive and rare records on sale at the market, and many of the stalls will be manned by label bosses themselves, such as Wall Of Sound’s Mark Jones and XL’s Richard Russell. There will also be appearances from a number of artists. Details of it all can be found here.

Angular Records boss Joe Daniels, who came up with the idea, told The Quietus about his inspiration for the project: “I went to Berlin to see These New Puritans at the end of last year and ended up doing their merch stand. It was such fun selling their records because I’d made them. I knew what was special about that b-side, or the fact that there was only twenty copies of this one left. It was fun meeting the people who liked the band, and having been caught up in distributors and press and marketing for a few years, it was nice to remember that when Angular started we were approaching people in pubs and trying to push CDs on them, saying: ‘Come on mate, it’s only three quid, less than a pint!’ I wanted to do that again”.

He continued: “Originally the plan was to have [the market] as part of Record Store Day, but then we realised it would probably be better to have our own day. There should be lots of days celebrating records … Berwick Street was the first and most obvious choice, since it’s kind of a spiritual home to London’s record shops”.

Read the full interview here.