The Music Biz- it's what we do..

Question: hi there, my names Mark and I\'m studying music at college and I just wanted to ask a few questions about Earache as a record label.
Has Earache always been a completely independent label or have there ever been any occasions where they have helped bands with more than just promotion or distribution. For instance, have you ever organised tours/gigs or cover art for any bands.
How do you usually find your acts and do bands often send their demos to you?
Do you handle the royalties for music you‚ve released if it gets played on the radio or some other form of media?
Thanks.
From: smets.mark@gmail.com

Answer:Earache has always been an 100% Independent label.Meaning its ownership is out of the hands of the big 4 Major music labels which between them control approx 75% of the worlds music output- labels like Universal, SONY-BMG, Warners and EMI.We are not part of them so do not have to pander to shareholders and such like.In this age of myspace and free Mp3s, promotion and distro is often overlooked-- i mean, Earache's Cds are currently available in over 20 countries of the world.This is no mean feat, we oversee the manufacture and distro of Cds into basically 20 warehouses across the globe from which shops obtain the cd.If you visit stores in Melbourne,Manchester, Madrid, Moscow, or Michigan you find Earache CDs in stores.

What we basically bring to the table is knowledge and experience of career development for bands, and the means and finances to carry it out.For touring we usually hook the band up with an agent ho deals with clubs and bookings on behalf of the act, but if they are too new, we do it instead. For artwork bands have creatiuve freedom, so they supply art - or if not, we usually carry out the bands wishes. we help out all our bands especially in the early stages of a career.

We find bands all over- not usually from demos in the mail tho..we scour myspace for great new bands who are original and talented and who wanna work hard to acheive a career.Some bands are signed after we see them perform live, we are always checking out opening bands, the ones on the bottom of the bill are what we like to see..On a typical week I personally can see 5 new bands, between our A&R staff its gotta be 20, in clubs in Nottingham, New York, London and further afield.

For royalties, we collect the money from sales in all formats, CD, Digital downloads and as the song publisher from radio airplay too.This is paid to the artists twice a year according to contract, if the bands recoup the recording costs.

hope that explains how it works.