The renowned Swedish record company Silence Records, which has been the home of such wonderful bands as Bob Hund, Kebnekaise, Fläsket brinner, Philemon Arthur and the dung, Traste Lindéns kvintett and many many others, does not listen to demos anymore. They write on their home page (I translate as good as I can here):
“Hi all merry musicians who drown us in demos! We do not produce any new records anymore, so there is no use sending any demos to us. We will only do some reissues in the future, it feels a bit meaningless to release new records since people don’t seem to like to pay for music. Sad, but that’s the way it is. But the fun part is that so many plays and creates a lot of good music that finds listeners in new arenas, so continue playing!!”
My emotions are mixed. I understand the arguments and I see where music business is heading. Still I don’t like the loss of talented people who has put their soul into releasing wonderful, innovative music that has inspired so many people. This is not a monstrous giant of a record company that is so popular to blame everything on.
I asked Eva, one of these great people, about their policy. A good idea emerged: She would like to see Pirate Bay put their advertisement revenue on new artists to help them develop. This could be a great way for Pirate Bay to take responsibility for the development they are creating. Silence’s view is that record companies are not much needed by artists today, its mostly about distribution. Also, she reminded me that Silence was the first company to put their catalogue freely available for streaming. I remember from some years ago how I found this and listened through some great artists I hadn’t heard of before. Unfortunately this did not work out since there was no systems for micro payments. “We were not large enough to solve the problem on our own and not small enough to give a damn about the rules. We are just some enthusiasts that has slipped between the chairs”.
I have heard more stories about record companies who don’t care about demos anymore. The most obvious example is the large one that collects a huge box of demos and puts them on fire once a year. By the way… Gramtone still likes to receive demos.
