Emkog Records

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Emkog Records is the brainchild of the Deluge Grander and Birds And Buildings mastermind Dan Britton. Both bands has got a good following. His record label is also starting, as by default or not, to get a pretty good following. The Emkog Records sampler has created some pretty big waves on the seven seas. I think it is fair to say that Emkog Records is one of the most exciting record labels around. I sent Dan Britton a list of questions. This interview is only about Emkog Records. I refer you to Avestin's excellent Dan Britton interview for other issues like his bands.   

Your
background as a musician and the mastermind behind one of my favorite
bands Deluge Grander etc etc is well known so let's very respectfully
stick to the label for this interview.

When and why did you start Emkog Records ? What was your business plan and why did you choose that name ?

The goal wasn’t really to start a label, but rather to just release music.  I
figured I should put a label name on there anyway, since I was pretty
sure I would release more albums over time, and having a label might
become meaningful if I was going to do all the promotion and
distributing by myself, which is basically what’s happened.  There
wasn’t really a business plan other than to record music with whatever
groups I was involved with, manufacture CDs, and send them out to
reviewers, hoping that the albums might get enough attention to
convince some vendors to buy copies too.  The
word “Emkog” doesn’t really mean anything, though there is a sentence
in the booklets of one of the albums that explains what it stands for.

Did you get any financial or any help at all when you set up the label? 

No.  I
remember I had to save up money from my job for a few months so that I
could afford to get 1,000 copies of the first Deluge Grander CD
manufactured.

Is Emkog Records your daytime job or do you have a sane job in addition to the label ? 

Music is a hobby for me.  My
real job is being a data analyst at the federal Department of
Transportation in Washington, DC, where I’m responsible for answering
data requests about  crashes involving large trucks and/or buses.  You’d never have guessed that, I bet!

Running
an underground record label is the art of how to get as many omelets as
possible from one egg. How is your finances and are you breaking even
or even going into profits ?  Without revealing any sensitive information about your business, what is the approx sales figures for your albums ?

So far I’ve made some profit on each release I’ve done so far, but not a lot.  Sales
have hovered around 1,000-1,500 for each of the past three CDs I’ve
made, not including the most recent one, which just came out last week.  However,
there have been a few months where I made enough money from music to
make a living off--if I shared an apartment with five other people in
rural Nebraska, didn’t own a car, and ate nothing but breakfast cereal.

How do you do the distribution, retailing, promotion and marketing of the Emkog Records products ? 

There are about 10 vendors around the world who buy CDs direct from me.  Some of them, such as Greg Walker/Syn-Phonic in the US and Just For Kicks in Germany also re-sell these CDs to other vendors.  I also get a significant amount of revenue from CDBaby, who handle all of the digital sales.  To get reviews, I just send out promo copies of the CD to 50-100 websites and reviewers who tend to like this sort of music.

Manufacturing
is an own form of black art. Where do you do the studio recordings, the
graphics & art work, the mastering and the CD pressings ?

I do all my recordings at my apartment, and sometimes I record other people there too.  The other members of each band do their own recordings.  I often use public domain artwork, but sometimes I’ll hire other artists to add some art for the albums.  I do the mastering with my own limited knowledge and equipment.

LPs
are back in fashion like never before. Several industry analysts
believe LPs will replace CDs as the only physical storage format for
music. This in addition to digital downloads. Have you thought about
branching into LPs or are CDs your only physical products ? 

So
far, I’ve only done CDs and of course digital copies, but Deluge
Grander is actually planning to release a three-tiered series of seven
albums between 2010 and 2020, possibly with handmade artwork for each
copy of four of those seven albums on vinyl, of which only about
100-400 copies would be made.

The
conventional wisdom nowadays seems to be that there will be three types
of releases: expensive deluxe packages for the collectors and dedicated
fans (I’d include most vinyl and some CDs in this category), free or
very inexpensive digital copies/mp3s for the casual listener (though
usually not of the entire album), and CDs for people in between.  As a music consumer, I’d put myself in that third category.  I think CDs are still the ideal storage format for music.  And I don’t think they’ll go the way of the 78 or the 8-track for a while.  Here’s why:

1-Some people like packaging.  I
like collecting CDs, I like staring at the album cover on a printed
piece of paper, and I get a happy feeling when I see my collection of
music, movies, and books at my apartment.  

2- Packaged media will not go away.  I
will go out on a limb and guess that there are about 1 trillion books,
100 billion physical albums (CDs, LPs, etc.), and 100 billion physical
videos (VHS, DVD, etc.) in existence right now, though  I’m probably way off.

Virtually every album, book, and movie ever made is readily available in a hard copy format for a reasonable price (say $5-10).  As
long as all these old copies exist, there will be a wide demand for VCR
players, CD players, and bookshelves (all of which can also be
purchased for relatively small amounts), and as long as there are lots
of VCR players, CD players, and bookshelves, there will be a reason for
people to acquire new releases on those media.
If
packaged media (and CD players, VCRs, etc.) really did go the way of
the dinosaur, we’d see CDs and DVDs being sold for practically nothing.
 But since people will still want to see the movies and hear the music contained on these products, this is unlikely to happen.  Prices
of old physical media may continue to drop, but I don’t think they’ll
end up dropping by much more than they already have.

3- It’s nice to be able to resell old packaged media you’ve already bought.  I often sell CDs I purchased but don’t like on Ebay.  I usually get back about 50 to 80 percent of what I paid for them.  That makes buying packaged media much less risky than buying digital media, which is not resellable.  I admit that not everyone is keen on using Ebay or other methods to sell their old media, but they should be.  It’s nice to know that, if you had to, you could sell all your old movies and albums and get a fair amount of money back.  I have about 3,000 CDs, which I could probably sell for $20,000 to $30,000 or so if I wanted to.  That is a very comforting feeling that you don’t get from a full iPod.
4) An indicator of quality.  In
a world where everyone and their cousin has his or her own independent
band, movie, or poetry review, the Internet is full of product, a lot
of which is being pushed by the creators on unwilling consumers for
free.  When consumers feel so bombarded with digital product, the fact that a work is available on CD or DVD or as a book becomes an important indicator of quality.  It
would be perfectly logical for consumers with time constraints to shy
away from stuff that’s available digitally and only consider purchasing
tangible products.

5) New packaging and extra features.  Expect
titles with lasting impact to be reissued every five years or so,
usually with gimmicky add-ons that are just enough to tempt people who
bought and liked the old version to buy it again.  Albums can be remastered and remixed, bonus tracks can be added, and packaging can become elaborate.  Movies can have added scenes, new commentaries, picture restoration, sound remastering, and all sorts of other possibilities.  Lots of people eat this stuff up.  Some of these features can also be put on a nonphysical download, but many of them can’t.

6) Fear of theft or other loss.  Both
physical and nonphysical media have risks: CDs and DVDs can be
scratched or damaged, storage devices can crash, and anything can be
stolen or lost.  I think the risks of owning nonphysical media are greater.  If your one device gets lost, stolen, or broken, you’ve lost everything.  It’s also much easier and more profitable to steal iPods than bulky CDs.

7) College students may change their preferences as they get older.  A
big reason why nonphysical media are ideal when you’re young is that
you have to move to and from college every year, and you often have to
live in cramped spaces.  This is true in general for a lot of people under 30.  Once
you actually get a job and settle down, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to
suspect that you’ll purchase more physical media to get that “living
room display” effect.

What
do you feel you as an underground label can do better than a band who
want to release an album on their own ? Do you accept tapes/CD-Rs from
bands who want to sign on Emkog Records ?

“Emkog” is really just a name on the back of the CDs, and a website where these bands have individual pages.  It’s not a “record label” in the traditional sense.  No other band has ever asked to be on the label.  I do have some contacts, and I have a general idea of how the world of “CD reviews” works, but that’s about it.  As far as how to organize a tour, or effectively advertise in print publications, I know almost nothing.

Have you had any bad experiences of any kind ? 

I have to be a “salesman,” which isn’t fun.  Doing stuff like sending emails to 100 people about a new release.  Even
though I know only around 20 of them will care at all, I don’t know
which 20 will, so it basically means sending out what’s regarded as
junk e-mail 80 percent of the time.  And I do feel funny concocting sales pitches for music I was so closely involved with.  It’s hard to not sound full of yourself.  That’s one disadvantage of doing all the promotion on my own.  If a label were creating and organizing all the praise, they wouldn’t be as self-conscious about it.

It also really changes the way I receive information about music.  When
I see a “hipster” band get effusively positive reviews, I feel part of
my brain getting resentful, since I suspect that it’s “hype” that
creates all the excitement, not the music.   And then I start wondering “well, should I be trying to generate all this hype for my own releases?  Should I start paying those companies that put phony reviews of your album on Amazon and Progarchives?  Should I try to start a ‘street team’?  Should I start buying banner ads?”  So
far I haven’t done those things because I still think it wouldn’t be
worth all the money, and I think people can see through the deception.  But I’m becoming much less sure about that.

I
base a lot of my own decisions about what albums to buy on sites like
Gnosis or Rateyourmusic, where actual people with their own accounts
give numerical ratings to albums.  I used to believe most other people used these sites too, since it seems to be the most rational way to buy music.  But
it turns out that a lot of people apparently will be swayed by
advertising and reviews and messageboard posts of dubious authenticity.   That’s frustrating to see, and it’s even more frustrating when the audience seems to have no idea they’re being duped.

Just
recently, out of those 10 vendors I mentioned who usually buy the CDs I
put out, only 3 of them requested any copies of the new album I just
finished (All Over Everywhere, Inner Firmaments Decay).  So that’s frustrating, and I’m worrying that I made a dumb decision to print up 2,000 copies of it!  I’m
in the process of trying to get some reviews for this album on
“mainstream” sites, and it’s too early to tell whether it will work at
all.  I know that there’s probably less than a
1-percent chance of getting this album reviewed on the uber-hip sites
like Pitchfork, Slant, or TrouserPress, but I think it’s still worth
the $2 in postage, $2 cost of the CD, and $2 worth of time spent to
send them a promo copy, since the payoff from a positive review in a
publication like that could be enormous.  But I have to wonder- what do these reviewers want to see?  It’s not enough to just make good music- they want an interesting story, too.  And that’s tricky to do.

What is next year's release plan for Emkog Records ?

Probably just the second Birds and Buildings album “Multipurpose Trap.”  Maybe
another Deluge Grander album, and maybe an album by a new project
called Elevator Machine Room, but they probably won’t be finished
before the end of the year.  And of course, I’ll probably still be trying to sell the All Over Everywhere album for several months into 2011.

I
may have touched upon this theme in another question, but I still
wonder what you think is the future of the music industry which many
think is doomed. What is your thoughts about the music industry and
it's future ?

From what I know, it seems like it’s *always* been hard to make and sell original music.  Even in Europe in the 1970’s bands were folding after only 1 or 2 albums.  As
much as we like to idealize those eras, it must have been frustrating
for the people in Fantasy, Museo Rosenbach, Weidorje, Maxophone, Il
Baletto di Bronzo, or Locanda delle Fate to break up after only
releasing one great album.

In some ways, I think it’s actually better now than it’s ever been.  There’s little or no chance of making huge amounts of money, but there’s a decent chance of making a small amount of money.  And that’s probably how it should be, since making music is something you should do mostly for fun.   The
revenues you get should cover your expenses and give you a little
profit, but not more than $100,000 or so for a year’s worth of work.  Since
there’s almost no chance of making it big, record companies aren’t
interested, and that gives me more creative freedom and less
business-related stress.  And it’s nice when the musicians actually own their music.  I still get a few dollars a month from sales of old albums.  

Even
when it was possible to sell millions of copies of albums, sometimes
none of that money would go to the actual creators of the music.  The
group “The Escape Club” (who I liked when I was 8 or 9 years old) had
that big song “Wild Wild West” on their first album, and another song
on their second album that got a lot of radio play, yet I think I heard
in an interview that the bandmembers were all living on fairly small
salaries that entire time, and when the label dropped them, in spite of
having sold millions of albums, they were effectively unemployed, and
maybe even indebted to the record company- I’m not sure.  Or look at what happened to Echolyn.  They
get signed to Sony, release one great album that doesn’t sell, for
whatever reason, and, poof, they’re dropped, and the label says the
band owes them thousands of dollars.  These
situations happened because there were so many bands and so little
space on the music store shelves and radio station playlists.  Now
that the Internet has increased the number of “channels,” so to speak,
it’s easier to find an audience, though the audiences are much smaller.  It makes the music industry less profitable, but ultimately better and more stable for the artists in most ways, in my opinion.  Or at least, that’s what it seems like to me.  I’m sure others have different experiences.

With
the albums I’ve released on “Emkog,” the worst I could do is lose the
$5,000 or so it cost to record the album and manufacture the CDs.  The absolute best I could reasonably hope to do is sell maybe 3,000 copies, which would be a profit of around $15,000.  And the most likely situation is breaking even or making a few thousand dollars.  That’s a much more comfortable range of possibilities than making or losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I should admit, though, that I really don’t know what it was like in the mid-1990’s.  I suspect that progressive bands were making a lot more money then.  And if I had lived through that and seen what I’m sure was a big decline, maybe I wouldn’t be so optimistic.   I
am a bit jealous of people who were able to make progressive albums in
the 1990’s, since that period did seem to allow more financial success.

Of course, I am not sure what the future holds.  I
have some hope that as people in India, China, and elsewhere get
wealthier, some of them might start buying authentic legal copies of
music, whether in CD, LP, or mp3 formats.  And that could be a huge boon to the industry.  But
if the illegal downloading trend grows, there’s a good chance that the
already quite small profits people like me enjoy will vanish altogether.  

Anything you want to add? 

Downloading
music illegally does hurt musicians, and it’s really just rude, since
there’s so much free and legal music available anyway.  Some
people seem to believe that bands get most of their money from touring
and merchandise, and although that may be true for old bands with big
audiences, and for cover bands who play live a lot, it’s not at all
true for bands like ones I’ve been in.  There’s
very little demand for live performances or T-shirts, so basically the
only way to cover the expenses of creating music is to sell CDs, LPs,
and mp3s.  Some people will put these albums up on blogs and torrent sites, and they seem to think they’re doing the band a big favor.  But unless you know the people in the band want you to do this, you’re probably hurting the band much more than helping them.  

Thank you to Dan Britton for this interview

The (dead cheap) Emkog Record sampler can be bought from here

Edited by toroddfuglesteg - August 24 2010 at 11:29