The second reason labels remain important is the one most often called into question. They can still take care of business for bands. They can reach distributors, they can reach the press, and they can speak with the weight of ten or twenty artists rather than just one. They can take care of pressing up copies of a release and promoting it, the can take care of booking tours. They can give a band the leg-up they need to take what they do seriously. Bands can do most of these things themselves, sure, but should they? Maybe the bands should be left to be bands, to just make great music and perform it. Let someone who really believes in your music take care of the rest. If a label can be there to provide this extra help for a band, then there will always be great artists who could use it and blossom as a result of it.
What the closing of Richter means for underground Irish rock music in general will take a while to figure out but, with any luck, the Richter story should show that just about anyone can start a record label if you love the music enough. All it takes to get started is a few bands you really think deserve a release and the money to do that. It doesn’t really matter if it’s on tape, CD or vinyl, or even just digital, if you pick artists that you feel a real connection to then there’s a good chance someone else will feel it too. Email a bunch of journalists/bloggers/etc and tell them how much you love this thing you’re putting out, not how much they’re going to love it. Throw a launch party somewhere small and cheap. Ask your friends to come, get good bands to play, give away whatever you’re releasing on the door. Ireland is very small and it’s very easy to get to know people, use that simple reality to your advantage. Get out and meet people, have a good time above all. There’s a network of great indie record shops in Ireland now and you can very easily get your releases stocked in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Belfast, Limerick, Waterford and Athlone. You can play gigs in all these towns too. Start small and grow if there’s growing to be done. There is almost no middle-ground left for indie labels now, you’re either tiny or you’re quite large. A small few might manage to make some money but you can certainly do it without losing money, if you’re smart about it and a perhaps bit lucky.
Richter showed how things can coalesce when the right kinds of minds see a pattern where others see only disarray. Hopefully a dozen more will spring up now that they are gone. There’s room for everyone.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tt8PIg5yBE?rel=0]
