non-uk grime record pools

believekevin

Well-known member
This idea has been introduced a few times and I don't know what movement has been made so far. I'm located in Boston, USA and can take on some organizing responsibilities. If you're interested, post your location and let's see what we can get started.
 

Melchior

Taking History Too Far
Is this a 'save on postage' idea? Or something more?

Regardless, I'd be into helping on an Australia/New Zealand one.
 

nomos

Administrator
I left a not on Chantelle Fiddy's blog about this too, but if the Riddim.ca site can be of any use for this purpose then people (in Canada or elsewhere) are welcome to use it. I could set up a private forum or whatever else might be useful. Not sure if this would be helpful but send me a note at riddim(at)rhizomatic(dot)org if you like.
 
I'm in Adelaide too, but I've not been unhappy with pricing and delivery times ordering direct from Juno, Uptown etc etc. It might be worth it if you had distribution within a particular city, but shipping between cities in Australia is sometimes slower than getting stuff from the US/UK :mad:
 

Melchior

Taking History Too Far
The real deal would be for someone to hook up minor, punk rock style indie distribution... so we buy them wholesale, ship em out (VAT-free) and sell em mail order.

But i simply don't have the cash so it's gonna have to eb someone else...
 

minikomi

pu1.pu2.wav.noi
how would one go about acquirng wholesale grime though? since (from what i've observed) its mostly white labels... i guess it means contacting people directly.. difficult without a hookup?

im quite interested in this actually.. theres definitely a hunger for this kinda music in aus i think..

pineapple = adelaide eh? cool! what do u do with yourself?
 

DavidD

can't be stopped
This would be a great idea, starting this summer i'd participate out of chicago if thats cool.
 
You don't get charged VAT either when your shipping address is outside the UK. Try this for fun - jump on to juno and order a bunch of tunes. Go to the cart, and select 'Australia' in the ship to: part. Now hit 'total bill' or whatever - bingo, quid or so off on each track. Of course not everyone is that nice....

minikomi said:
pineapple = adelaide eh? cool! what do u do with yourself?
Oh, <A HREF="http://www.streetlevelgeezer.com">this</A> and <A HREF="http://www.soulgood.com">that</A>... :) Nice to see someone else from Adelaide is on here. Drop me a PM.
 

cooper

Well-known member
DeepSix has been running a record pool at http://rinseit.ca for a little more than a year now, though lately shipments have been somewhat infrequent. We got good service from established labels, particularly Social Circles, but as you can imagine most of the grime people aren't interested in offering promos when they don't even have distribution to North America.

I think you'll find that to be largely the case still; you'll particularly find it difficult to contact producers as lots of grime people don't use email and so you'll have to deal with finding the right spot between your two timezones to call them on their mobile and transmit all your information via voice - DeepSix ended up going over to London and setting things up over there. If you have an ally in London this becomes much easier, but it will still be a pain because you'll basically be starting up a full-on distribution company; they'll be trying to meet people from every label (which is pretty much every artist if you're committed to getting the whites.)

But distribution has always seemed like a shitty business to be in to me - I always think back to when DB and Dara tried to found a d'n'b distributor in the mid-90s and failed, then went on to be phenomenally successful with Breakbeatscience.
 

believekevin

Well-known member
possible models..

i'm sure that there aren't going to be promos floating out (yet.) however, depending on interest, there probably a few different models.

1. London Hookup model: If someone is frequently flying back and forth, they could mule vinyl for stateside (or auz) folks.

2. Big order model: Contacting an online retailer and negotiating for a discount on a big combined order that is re-distributed on the receiving end.

3. ... ?

perhaps figuring out our goals is first and foremost:

- reducing the impact of harsh shipping fees
- having a consistent way to get new tracks as they are released
 

minikomi

pu1.pu2.wav.noi
agreed... i cant really see this working without a middleman somehow in london . . a london something.

that said, i just blew this weeks pay on a big juno/independance order. . .ouch!
 

h-crimm

Well-known member
thought i'd add my little three penneth worth...

i was gonna suggest some couriering since i tend to go back and forth fairly often, working on a phd in chicago but with a university in london. alot of people i know have to do the same which means people coming and going every month or so, i'm not sure if veryone would be up for it of course :)
just had the winter conferences so we missed out for there.

another idea for potential couriers would be to enthuse some of the more experimental american punk bands that are very popular in the UK at the moment. a friend of mine in bristol puts on alot of small tours for people like ex-models, deerhoof, numbers or whoever. these people bring in a lot of merch and dont have anything to take back. theres also upset the rythm in london who seem to get people over form the US quite alot.
and people like tigerbeat6 electronic artists seem to get about abit... they might be the easiest to convince...
okay so maybe its not too plausible, but these are the two kinds of music i've been enjoying most for the past three years, it seems to me that they are compatible in the way that dub and punk seemed to work complimentarily in the early days in london. the cross polination produced some of the best stuff as well imo.
 

DeepSix

Member
I can tell you how I ran Rinse It (currently on hiatus, but hoping to make a comeback).

I had an ally in London at the time (Jodie at Diffusion PR) who would get shipments sent to her by the labels and artists. Then, when enough got there to make it financially feasible to ship in bulk, I drop shipped them over to Canada.

The cost to the DJ in the end, after everything was approximatley $4-5 US per plate including all shipping handling packaging, etc.

There were usually 10-20 plates in each sporadic shipment. Plus CDs, Magazines, stickers, etc.

In retrospect, it was a lot of work to create the website and quasi-infrastructure. The DJs needed to be more forthcoming with feedback and charts and the labels were difficult to deal with from a distance. We had online feedback forms built, but even with that ease, it was hard to get the DJs to all submit on time...creating MORE lag between shipments.

That said, mad props to Social Circles, DnD, LD Cats, Ammunition, Hotflush and a few others that were stalwarts. In order for me to get the grime crew involved, I would have had to travel over - something I couldn't do with a child on the way. The majority of my contacts are from the heyday of UK Garage - Sticky, DND, Karl Brown, etc. and I couldn't go back to make friendly with the new school of the scene.

other problems included lag time - in order for it to be cost effective to ship, we'd often have to wait a few weeks to make the order big enough...and by then you could have bought things for about 2-4 x the price, but got it "when it was hot".

And of course, as with any pool, you take what you get. Yes, we got a few great tunes (like Bounce - My Philosophy before release) but a large amount was test material and filler...which is what happens in all pools to be totally candid. We also started working with some of the breaks labels like Rat due to contacts, but the majority of the pool DJs appreciated more of the "pure" garage.

I'd still be willing to work on something, but would definitely need some help. And maybe make it more digitally based with encrypted files? I dunno.

Shipping of vinyl is costly. We figured that if the DJs ate most of the cost that the labels would jump on the chance to get it played in the US and Canada. Some labels/artists supported that and actually got a fair deal of airtime over here if you check some college charts, playlists, etc.

Also, I hear a lot of the labels saying how they can't give out any promos without cutting into their ability to break even/make a next record and are thus unwilling to give out any, especially to the US, Canada etc. where they can't even guarantee they get played to people vs. bedroom.

BTW, for those of you interested in a pool, the purpose of any pool is to get material into the hands of DJs that actually play out, have radio shows, contribute to charts, review for magazines, etc. i.e. you have to do something that could potentially promote the music to be in a pool.
 
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