Catbirdseat pointed out a few new and interesting labels that have joined the RIAA recently, including Absolutely Kosher, Spinart, Lookout!, Hush and New West.
Interesting. Verrrrrrrrrrrry interesting.
UPDATE: This isn’t exactly what it looks like. Read the update here.
most of these “labels” are, and always have been subsidiaries of the big corps… nothing new here duff.
Lookout, Absolutely Kosher, Hush, and Spinart (I think) are pretty small independent labels, Phil.
Uhh…so does this mean that the e-mails I got from Lookout and Absolutely Kosher giving me permission to use their music on my podcast is no longer legit unless The Harry Fox agency says it’s cool?
Well, we’ve been asked about this half a dozen times in the last two weeks since Catbirdseat posted about it. Here’s the deal. We signed a deal with Fontana distribution early this year (February) which, as you may know, is owned by Universal. They have some sort of agreement in place where they report sales and the like to the RIAA. Without an exclusive contract with a distributor, our records (particularly those by our younger “developing” bands) had been brutally under-distributed and we were in need of a change. We tried to have any involvement with the RIAA removed from the contract, but it wasn’t a negotiable point and I wasn’t prepared to throw our whole distribution deal out the window over this. Suffice to say, we’ve had no communication with the RIAA directly, we won’t be showing up at any meetings and they can bite my ass. We’re listed on their site under “Distributed Labels of Reporting Companies” and that’s pretty much what we are – a distributed label of a reporting company.
best,
Cory Brown
Absolutely Kosher Records