[00:00:00] Speaker A: Luminate released a study at the end of last year that looked at vinyl consumption amongst different demographics.
Demographics more in the genre sense, I guess. You know, like how many people who listen to hip hop or streaming versus vinyl? There was one statistic that I, I still am thinking about, which is that 50% of people who bought a record in 2022 all own a record player. And I wonder about how relevant that statistic is, essentially because people are buying it either to listen to it or to have it for some other reason. You were talking about records that you cherish. I don't know how often you specifically listen to them, but you have an emotional attachment to it.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Totally, man.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: So maybe actually there's no reason to get cranky old school about know to say, well, the kids these days, they're not listening to records like I listen to. I mean, does it matter? Right? Probably not.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: That was a clip from today's guest, Paul Miller, everyone. Welcome back to the show. I am super stoked to be here. We haven't recorded in a while, since the summer, so it's good to be back, but it was a nice little break. Today's guest is someone that I have known for a long time but have never met in person until today.
Real interesting industry that he's a part of. Really cool background, even if you're not part of the music scene, even if you just have a slight interest in music or really like the production side of music, specifically vinyl, and also the jackets that come with vinyl. This is a really, really cool conversation, but before we get to it, please rate, review and subscribe to the podcast. My name is Aram Arslanian and this is one step beyond Paul, welcome to the show.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Great to be here. Great to meet you in person.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Totally, man. I can't believe it's been, we've known each other for twelve years.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: I'm not good with that arithmetic, but yeah, something like that. Ish. Over ten. Yeah.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: All right, so for the uninitiated, those who don't know, who are you and what do you do?
[00:02:19] Speaker A: My name is Paul Miller, I'm the senior VP of sales at precision Record pressing, which is a vinyl record manufacturing plant. We've got a few locations in southern Ontario, the headquarters being Burlington. So record pressing, all things vinyl printing, yeah, et cetera.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: So anyone who's listening to this, who's part of punk and hardcore, we're going to be like, well, of course, vinyl. Let's talk about it. Anyone who's from the rest of the business world, I don't want to say isn't into vinyl. But, of course, you and I remember at the end of the 80s, kind of the beginning of the 90s, it seemed like vinyl was going away. Huge resurgence. So for you, speaking more to a general audience, why vinyl?
[00:03:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it was nothing that I had any sort of insight into as something that would grow over the years. So that was dumb luck for me. It was like you, it was punk rock. That's what got me into it. Punk and hardcore.
There were bands like the Clash where it would be sort of vinyl became almost like a jump off point or a jump to point from bands like that who would talk about their influences, and you could find those things on vinyl. So it became like part of the discovery process of expanding my music taste. So I always really had a soft spot for it. I loved it for that reason.
And, yeah, as the years went on, it became more of a viable business, which shocked many people who were involved in vinyl in the dark days of the. When it had a slower pulse. But that's what got me into it, just a personal love of collecting music and discovering records.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: There's something about it, and I think even if you're not someone who's super into collecting records, like vinyl records, there's something about flipping through records at a record store and looking at all the vinyl up on the wall that can't be captured with CDs or tape or digital or anything like that. There's just something distinctly different about it.
What do you think? Is that? It's like a psychological difference. There's something about it, yeah, for sure.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: And I think we're getting out of this. Well, I don't know entirely getting out of it, but let's call it the pandemic era, which is a major sort of touch point for vinyl records, because the demand, it had blossomed before that, but it really boomed over the last couple of years. And when people are stuck inside. Right.
I think people wanted to turn to something that had that kind of tangible sense of, I don't know, like, connection with the music that they couldn't get otherwise because we were stuck indoors. And obviously, the pandemic isn't the only thing that sparked further interest in vinyl, because the interest have been growing since, I would say, like, the mid 2000s. Right. But I think it's that same kind of quality. Right. Like you were saying, it's that sort of tangible element to it.
I think CDs just became less interesting for a lot of people. Right. And that's why digital had an easy time sort of sweeping it away, even when things like Napster were new, you could get digital music for free. Right? And suddenly, next to a CD that just seemed a lot more accessible and interesting, we've gone quite far in that direction, which I think is a good thing in terms of the streaming services and the accessibility of music in a way that we didn't have access to before. That's obviously great, but it feels like a bit of a tipping point where you go so far in a direction of sort of, I guess we could say kind of digital excess, that there ends up being a yearning for something more classic and tangible. Right. And I feel like that's where vinyl gets its power.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Also that paradox of choice, right? Where there's like, in many ways you think the more choice you have, the better, but the more choice you have, it's like the less those things matter. In many ways it's like, oh, I have at this point, like hundreds of thousands of records, right? At my, like with Spotify and Apple Music and these things, only the records that I already loved because I had them on vinyl or I was introduced to them as a kid, are the ones that are like, ultra special to me.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: And it doesn't mean new records aren't. So for there's bands know chain whip, which is a great canadian band, or gag from the those, or mind force, another band from the States. These are bands who I would seek out their records now. Yeah, but unless a band has a record that I can hold and go through and look at, and it's got to be vinyl, I just don't make the same kind of connection. It doesn't mean I don't think the record is cool. It just doesn't go into the files of my mind as being like, oh, that really means something to me.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: I like that. Files of my mind because I think about that sorting mechanism based on how much I love a record. Now I'm using record in the loose sense of just a collection of songs because I'll check something out digitally. This is just my habit. I'm sure it doesn't reflect the general populace here, but if I love something, I have to have it on vinyl because it's like the document of the music for me, right. So I can have a more kind of like, ephemeral relationship with music that still has value, right? Like ambient music that maybe I'm just listening to while working. That doesn't really grab me. But there might be a project that I think is so good that if I don't have it on vinyl, I feel like I haven't completed that sorting process in my head, you know what I mean?
[00:08:02] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: Yeah, totally.
So, yeah, I don't know how many people think about records that way, but I think that the tangible element is obviously the thing that propels the most amount of people toward it. I think I read this statistic in, you know, luminate. You ever heard of luminate? I can't say for sure exactly. Well, I'm not sure, you know, define them as a business very well. They're responsible, from what I understand, for reporting music industry statistics to places like billboard, I think so they have something to do with chart positions. But anyway, luminate released a study at the end of last year that looked at vinyl consumption amongst different demographics.
Demographics more in the genre, guess. You know, like, how many people who listen to hip hop or streaming versus vinyl. There was one statistic that I still am thinking about, which is that 50% of people who bought a record in 2022 own a record player. And I wonder about how relevant that statistic is, essentially because people are buying it either to listen to it or to have it for some other reason. You were talking about records that you cherish. I don't know how often you specifically listen to them, but you have an emotional attachment to it.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Totally, man.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: So maybe, actually, there's no reason to get cranky old school about it, to say, well, the kids these days, they're not listening to records like I listen to. I mean, does it matter? Right? Probably not. We don't want to gatekeep and so anyway, I think that statistic is kind of fine.
People collect all kinds of things for all different reasons. It says something about your personality or, I don't know, your identity, your connection to things.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Totally. Because it's gone beyond just being a format of music, because there's so many, like, think how many people who maybe buy a record and do have a record player but listen to it a couple of times on vinyl, but then they just stream it most of the time and it's a record. They really like. When vinyl was a thing before, it's like you could listen to records on vinyl and then on vinyl and tape. So there wasn't streaming, so it was like, that was the way you had to listen to it. But the strength of the format is now so much beyond the sitting down and listening to it. I like what you said. It has so much to do with about your identity, how you connect to things. I'd say music is an art form or a way of expression. That's plagued with challenges. Yes.
If you're like someone, like a singer songwriter or a band or whatever, of any kind of different format, any kind of genre, making a cool song is the easiest part of the process.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Because it's like, first you got to make a cool song, then you have to record it in a way that sounds awesome.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Right?
[00:10:51] Speaker B: That's hard, right? Then you have to get it mastered in a way that serves the music mixed and mastered.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: And first of all, many people are like, what does that even mean?
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Totally, right? You got to get it mixed in a way that works for the recordings, and you got to get mastered in a way that works for it. But then you have to get cool artwork, like awesome artwork that someone knows how to actually make, like the files and everything. Right. But then your vinyl has to be cool vinyl. It's got to feel the right way. It's got to look the right way. Your labels need to be cool. Your insert that goes on the record's got to be awesome. The actual way the COVID feels in someone's hands and how thick it is has to be good. This is like nightmare scenario. And then it's like, you got to get it distributed, you got to get it marketed. I'm sure every art form has something like that. This is one that I just happen to be more related to. It seems like anytime you get a record that hits on all of those levels, it's like a miracle.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, the alignment of stars is pretty interesting to think about.
I don't know if this is corny to make this reference or whatever, but I forget the name of the song. That's a tribe called Quest song that talks about the kind of rules of the music industry. Forget what it's called right now, but there's one line where he says, he sort of lays out all the things you need to do, right? Don't take shorts, don't get underpaid by the promoters and stuff like that. And then there's one line that just says, and you better hope that the product is dope, which is just like, that's something you have less control over. Right.
There are ways to plan for things and ways to sort of not plan for things. And maybe the not plan for things is more of the chemistry of the musicians that are involved. Right.
You can plan for things with vinyl, of course. Right. And there's a lot of planning that goes into it, and I think that's what you're touching on. So, yeah, it is interesting to think about the sort of alignment of factors that all need to come together. Some planned for, some unplanned, for that miracle to happen.
I love showing people around the record plant because it's kind of like unlocking this sort of black magic spell about how records are made and what that looks like. Right. Because no one think, well, relatively few people think about that when they're buying a record. I've been around the process for a very long time, and I'm still charmed by it intensely. Right. So, yeah, I think that there's just a lot of factors that I think are, like, some of them bewildering, some not. Right. And it is a challenge we think about, too, because we're really focused on developing programs for what we call them, developing artists. That's sort of our parlance for it. And that means that typically it's someone making 100 or 200 or 300 records, and they don't know what electroplating means. You show them twelve inch DMM cutting, and it's a mystery. And coming back to the lack of gatekeeping, it really is kind of important to have this elaborate and difficult thing distilled into something relatively straightforward. So, yeah, actually, I would say it's something we're thinking about a lot right now as far as how to make the process accessible and tangible, even though there are quite a few stages of production and complexities involved in making a great record.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: Totally. So let's get into the specifics of what you do.
So let's just assume some band out there writes an amazing record, any genre, amazing record, and they get it mixed beautifully, mastered. Beautifully. The artwork is incredible. And they have either their friend who's like, you know what? I'm going to start a record label. Or they have an established record label.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: They're looking to get that record pressed. What happens when you enter the picture? Right.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: So people will have their digital audio and digital artwork together for the most part. If they don't, we can help them with that. But those are really the two pathways. Right? There's the audio and the artwork. The audio becomes the vinyl, and the artwork becomes all the printed material that accompanies it. So we print and manufacture, but also project manage all of that, because there are complexities as far as making sure the artwork is set up in a way that will print professionally with a vinyl. There's also a lot of factors, too, that we try and distill into something easy, which is, okay, how long is your side? Right. What audio impact does that have? If it's particularly long, what RPM should it be cut at? As I keep saying, these can be distilled into relatively simple conversations, but it's the type of thinking we engage in to try and sort of lock it into a pathway and push that cart on the track. Right. So there's a lot of work in the beginning stages of getting it set up, and then from there, things flow relatively smoothly. I mean, a record manufacturing process is typically six to eight weeks. Right. With a lot of the heavy lifting in the first two.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: Yeah, you say six to eight weeks, but is that true now?
[00:16:08] Speaker A: It's true now, yeah. I mean, eight weeks is something that we do relatively well, very consistently. Six weeks is something we're pushing toward, and it's possible in certain circumstances.
Like I say, we're thinking about the developing artist side of things a lot these days. It's been a big topic of conversation. We do a lot of work for indie labels and major labels that are making tens of thousands or whatever a year.
Hundreds of thousands in the major label case, because our business is split between the indie side and the major side. I'm focused on the indie side. That's my big area of responsibility within the sales side of things. Anyway, on the developing artist side, when you do 100 or 200, removing test pressings from the equation actually is not something that we're used to thinking about, but is proving to be a very interesting strategy to get a six week turnaround. Yeah, I mean, there are new quality control processes that are the result of software innovations and hardware innovations that we've installed at the plant that kind of like, can deal with some of these test pressing questions. And we looked at the approval rating, it was close to 97%. And we thought maybe for the small runs, this is the way to make six week turnarounds happen. So that's what we're developing.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Man, that's interesting. I want to delve into that, but I want to go back to my question because I didn't want to sound like I was, like, poking at you there. When I say, is it true for anyone who is a fan of music or in a band or running a record label? I think a big challenge since I guess maybe around 2016 going on was like increasing wait times to get something pressed. So when I was first introduced to the record pressing industry and how things worked and how the business worked, if you had a completed project that you gave to the plant, it's possible that you'd have records within a month.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: A long time ago, but a time ago, yeah.
And this is something I want to talk about later when majors were not.
When I printed the first record I ever did, major labels were not doing any kind of vinyl and pressing plants were few and far between and they were grateful for your work. So if you were pressing like 1000 pieces of vinyl, they're like, you were a God, we love you.
You're our dude. I remember owners of record plants calling me and I was like just some little kid, well, more to talk to me about the project, right? And being like, oh, blah blah blah. I was like, wow, that's the guy that owns this plant or the person owns this plant. But then around, I think, and you can correct me on the years 2016 ish or when major started pressing vinyl again in kind of like the 2005 ish, is that about right? Or 2010.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I have some kind of hallmarks in that timescale, which are more from a personal perspective. So I think it gets in it like anything.
There are no perfect dividing lines. But I think of 2007, 2008 as being the first big bump.
Obviously the big bump was when it was a mass manufactured product in the 70s, but we're well past that. 2007, 2008. That's, I think when major labels started to take notice. Because then you have things like record store day that popped up, right. That increased the profile. And I remember in 2007 and 2008 thinking, okay, this band has a vinyl audience and this one doesn't. And that's a laughable concept now.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Yeah, dude, totally. Yeah. So very specifically though, as the major labels became interested again in using this format, it became harder to get records printed. And I mean, a thing that was really like a live conversation amongst indie musicians was like, okay, if I finish my record January eigth of the year, it might not come out on vinyl till a year later because wait times or plants are so long. Is it still that case now or is it a place where plants now have enough capacity? Or if you submit something, you could get it within two months.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: Yeah. The last year, I'd say, has been very interesting and things have changed a lot. So maybe to the uninitiated, it might help for me to say that you had a resurgence, as it was called, in every article in 2008. And then things kept getting worse, right, because you couldn't buy a new record press. None existed. So there were these mothballed, broken down presses that were ancient and frustrating to operate and they were just getting traded around for higher and higher resale values, right? So there was only so many presses and the demand just outstripped it. That's obviously why things took a long time. That got worse in 20. 10, 20, 15, 20, 16, like you were saying. And around 2016, there were companies that were manufacturing new equipment. Again, GZ Media, which is our parent company, they were the first, actually, in 35 years to make a new press.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: Whoa.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: And they were only making it for themselves. They wanted to start a plant in North America, and that's how we started. And so we ordered ten off the line. Right? And that was our entrance into the market. So things were calming down in 20, 16, 17, as a couple of other places started who were making record presses that were then available to the general public, unlike what GZ was doing.
So things started to calm down a bit. And then pandemic. Like I said, vinyl exploded all over again, maybe twice as hard. And turnarounds grew to about a year in most places. Totally.
I don't know about unfathomable, but just ridiculous that band members probably hated each other by the time the record came out. I don't know how people were dealing with. It was just like, it's such a long period for things to change.
But the last year has been an interesting kind of correction, because now that people are participating in music in the ways that they were prior to the pandemic, the demand and the supply have sort of caught up with each other. In fact, there's a bit of a tip now, because a lot of record plants. Plants started over the pandemic. Well, they started and now they're actually in this last year, a lot of those factories are opening because it takes some time to get all the equipment installed. So, yeah, now it's actually a competitive industry, which we haven't seen, I don't know since when.
It was competitive when I started in 2002, but the demand was so small that calling it competitive seems quaint.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: So I think the twelve month turnaround is a thing of the past. Now, if plants are batting twelve months, that's pretty crappy, I think. But most plants now have sort of managed to scale that down to about twelve to 16 weeks. We have 35 presses. We're a big ass plant, so we have a lot of capability. And we're making 75,000 disc units a day. So that's a lot different than a regional plant with two presses catering to local bands.
So we have the ability to shorten that lead time quite a bit. But I would say that's the general picture. We're about six to eight, and a lot of plants are kind of between eight to 16.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that's amazing. I know, like record store day majors coming back into the picture, this is all stuff I want to talk about.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: But let's bring it all back to the simple thing that you'd said earlier.
You're still kind of, like, in love with how records get made. So, again, for people who don't know, what's the process? Like, how does a piece of vinyl get made? How do you transition these digital files, or back in the day, like, kind of any audio files onto something like that? How does it get made? How does it get it put together?
[00:24:03] Speaker A: I'll do my best to have a relatively simplified version of that, because I can go on and on.
So, with the digital audio, we're translating the digital waveform.
And you look at that on a computer screen, and it looks like sound, right? It has that kind of waveform. And so we are translating that, essentially into vibrations that are being carved by a stylus as a continuous spiral onto a copper disc that's rotating on a platter. Right. So I don't know if that sounds simple or complicated, but it's as easy as that.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: It sounds like you're talking about a UFO. It sounds insane.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: It does sound insane. Well, it is insane that music can be translated into vibrations, and that's how your ear is picking it up. But if you were to look at a groove under a microscope, it looks like the sort of like furious tunnelings of a beaver.
It moves in all directions, and the left channel is on the sort of inner wall of the groove and the right channel, so it has these tremendous complexities to it.
But that's essentially distilled into what it is, which is like vibrations being etched onto a surface. So now you have your master, and the master, we call it a cu plate, and the cu plate is made of copper. And what we have to do is we have to flip it, right, because we have a positive. And we're not going to be cutting a thousand of these. We want to cut one. Well, it's actually two, because you have one per each side. The record doesn't become double sided until the pressing process at the very end. So you have this, let's say a positive, right? You have a positive the cu plate, and you have to make a negative from it.
This is a process called electroplating, galvanic electroplating. And you need to make a negative cast from that positive, which is chemistry. It's complicated. Essentially, it's combining the copper disc with silver. You introduce electricity and temperature. When you pull that out of a tank that contains this sort of like silver.
Excuse me, this nickel solution, you can crack and peel, essentially, and then you end up with a negative. So you're pulling a negative away from the positive. It separates. And the negative now has your groove, but poking outwards as ridges instead of being in the disc. Right, as a groove. So you have that for top and bottom, your a side, your b side, and that's your music, right. Your music is now reversed and it's going to be pressed. Record pressing. It's going to be pressed into the PVC, the polyvinyl chloride material that we melt down into what we call a puck.
So you have your puck, which could be made up of black polyvinyl chloride, red, green splatter, all that kind of stuff, right?
So you have your color, your effect combination on the puck. You put that in a record press with center labels, which is the artwork found in the middle of the disc. The stampers are affixed to the top and the bottom of the press inside of, like, a cavity. And when the molds close, you introduce steam. Cold water heats it up, expands it, cools it down, makes it into a solid record.
When the molds open, you have a little knife that trims the edge. Voila, one record. And then do that 500 times, thousand times.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Who figured that out?
[00:27:44] Speaker A: I don't know.
Struggle involved in being like, okay, now all I need is electroplating. What is that? And how do I invent it?
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Yeah, people are astounding what they'll figure out.
But going further into this, this process, in some version of it, like, whatever it is, it's been around for a long time. I believe vinyl is the longest running format of something for the general public that they could purchase out of any kind of format of music outside of, I guess, like live music. I think it's the longest running format ever of something that you could take home.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: Yeah, that's.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: And own personally, it went through such a dip and then came back and is so huge now.
How has the industry changed since you first got involved? Like, what's different now than it was in 2000? Was it 2002 you got involved?
[00:28:44] Speaker A: 2002 I started.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: So how has it grown? How has it changed?
[00:28:47] Speaker A: I mean, back when we were making records in the early 2000s, you're absolutely right to say you could find any plant and they'd be grateful for the hungry, for the work, because the demand was very small. I mean, it was more or less made up of a few kind of niche, let's say, not to sort of diminish it, but let's say, like kind of subgenres, right? Like I think of hardcore.
If you're in a band, a hardcore band making a seven inch is almost like a rite of passage. It's what the fans expect. It's part of the culture. So there were other cultures of music that were participating in it. And as you point out, not major labels to any meaningful extent.
And when the major labels became interested in it again, it had a positive and negative kind of bend to it, right? Because I remember one of the printers that we used back in the same old days in the early 2000s made this comment to me, oh, well, you and I know no one's retiring off of vinyl. And I laughed about it. And he was right for that time period.
And that comment stuck with me because it made me wonder how.
Well, what the longevity would be, right? And people over the years have wondered, is this a bubble? And I think the introduction of major labels back into the supply chain have caused people to ask that question again. Yeah, I would say the changes throughout the years are that whole movement, right, where people were trying to figure out how to have the majors and the indies coexist with one another in a way that wouldn't have the indies pushed to the back of the line. And no question that happened.
My small company dealing with indies almost exclusively in the felt very sore about that because I'd be talking to bands and labels who were people in my community who were hurt by it, right? Because they couldn't afford to keep their label running. So that was a big period, a big point of contention for a long time, right? How do the indies and majors coexist? And it was really just an answer of capacity. Capacity became the buzword of the last five years. Who's got capacity? Right? Which really meant who has enough record presses to sustain majors and indies? Or were you only going to have capacity for the indies or just capacity for the majors? Right? There was a long period of wrestling with that. I feel like that's been mostly resolved now, actually, through plants like ours, where we have enough presses, where the two can peacefully coexist and they never intersect with one another, capacity has now become another sort of question mark. In this day and age where things are competitive again, is there too much capacity? Right?
[00:31:29] Speaker B: I really appreciate that you brought up that tension that came up around indies being pushed to the back.
I want to attack this from both, like a culture perspective, but a business perspective. So if I think about plants in, let's say, the think record labels stopped meaningfully, stopped pressing vinyl around, kind of like the early ninety s, I think guns and Roses spaghetti incident was like a big deal that it came out on vinyl because it might have been like one of the last records in North America, because again, for any audience that wouldn't know this, Europe still had like a big vinyl culture maintained that. But North America was like, it was dead for vinyl. So when I first became involved with getting records pressed, like my little record label or my friend's record labels or anything, as I said, plants were psyched and you'd build these relationships with these people and you were doing it for your genre of music. And it was a subgenre, it was a teeny little niche. So it was like your life, it was personal, it was your identity. And you were putting out records that to you were like the most important record that ever existed. Even though it's some record for some teeny little band that's going to exist for three or four years, you're going to sell 1000 copies. But it matters to you, like the great records of the time or the great works of the time because it's so personal. And you're working with these companies that are barely surviving or just kind of getting by, so they're hungry for the work. And there's that bond of like, I'm doing this little thing and it matters to you because you're doing this thing that's barely getting by and you've got that connection, right? And I remember all these little labels when I was younger and really in the mix of music, just like we talk about who was easy to work with, who was cool, who kind of got it, who got the music, the plants would kind of go out of their way to have a good relationship with you. Record major labels come back in and it was if you had never worked with any of these plants before, they didn't know your name anymore. And I don't want to say that for all the plants, but I do remember this great sense of like, oh, shit, we're the ones who kept your lights going on for so long. And now all it is is excuses for not returned phone calls, not returned emails. Like we're getting pushed to the back because suddenly the major labels are like, oh, well, we want to press 50,000 suddenly.
So from a business perspective, I totally get it. It's like you've got these plants who have employees and their families and you want to be able to run a good business.
Of course you want to court major labels. Of course you want the bigger business. And it's not that you're doing it despite other people, but it's like you've got a business to run. On the flip side, there's a whole cultural component and there's like the business component, the relationship component. So what are your thoughts on all that?
[00:34:21] Speaker A: I have so many thoughts on that.
In my earlier days with Samo, the company I ran where we worked together, appealing to hardcore labels like React was of vital importance to us. And I remember we kept trying to break into that community and it proved difficult. And I think it's for some of the things that you touched on where there's a cultural element to it. And there's also a bit of a distrust of, let's say, not outsiders. But if you're going to extend your network from within side a subculture or a culture, right, it almost needs to be vetted and approved in a way, you know what I mean? Because then what you're going to want to do, especially in the hardcore community, is to have that as a resource, like a book, your own fucking life. Sort of compendium of the places that you can trust. So it was hard for us to actually get some attention working with hardcore labels. But we really wanted that because we knew that there was that community element to it and there were only so many record labels who were really interested. So to me, like hardcore and punk labels held a lot of power. Actually we didn't think of it quite in those terms. But I also knew at the time that because the Indies were the ones who kept the lights on at these record pressing plants who were virtually decimated, they had just held onto a couple of presses through either fatigue about having to get rid of everything or because they believed in it. But it was still in a dark corner because the indies kept that going. I always got the impression that if the majors decided to leave, the indies would still be there. So why would you want to turn your back on? That was kind of my question at the time. Things are different now. Not that you would take anyone for granted, but that I think the major labels are here to stay with vinyl. I think it's been long enough that we can all hopefully agree that it's not a fad. That was for one or two years and then they're gone. Dude. Taylor Swift keeps our industry going, I'm sorry to say. For anyone who feels like this should just be know the true believers.
Midnight's her last album. The number of variants that we made for that and that sold, I mean, there is enough for plants that have the motivation to grow beyond a few presses.
You can work with both majors and indies. And that conflict is now evaporated, in my view. Right. I think that for us, working with major labels is a great thing because we want to participate, working with the artists and labels that are allowing us to grow. The more we can grow, the more we can do interesting things. Right. I think there is an argument to be made for that.
If you're a large plant and you're really successful at it, I think that you can do things to progress the service or the available products for indies in a way that you can't do if you're a tiny operation with really cash strapped resources.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: Yeah, and I love what you're saying there. So no shade on Taylor Swift or anyone who likes swift. Awesome. Great.
Because you keep bringing up the idea of gatekeeping, which is such a cool topic to hit on. Now, I want to talk about that in a little bit. But listen, vinyl is cool. Vinyl is cool for everybody.
Why shouldn't everyone get to enjoy vinyl? It's an awesome way of connecting with music. It's all the stuff that we talked about earlier. It's just got that deeper psychological connection. There's just something about it and stuff where there's just something about that's cool, people should enjoy it, enjoy life. But this kind of reckoning that I think the production side of the record industry has gone through where it's like, indies, we love you. You're keeping the lights on to. Sorry, who are you? We've got these major labels to like, oh, shit, we better do that. We better keep our relationships with these people. I've loved seeing that shift. Like, I'm glad to see that it's coming back because it does. Well, it does seem a bit more like that kind of look in the mirror. Like, are we chasing the money or does what we do matter? And if what we do matters, that means relationships matter. It's not just about the money, because it's both. Right? Because it's a cultural thing. Vinyl is like culture. It's like a painting on the wall.
It's like a statue, it's like a sculpture. It's any of these things, a piece of vinyl, especially now with all the different ways it can be printed. It is culture. And I think the people on the production side have to view it as like, yeah, there's an economy, and yes, we're involved in building business, but it is culture. And culture means people matter, relationships matter. Being part of something that is like that new band that no one's ever heard of that's really created something special. We want to be able to be a part of doing that. And it does mean having that reckoning, I think, of how you do the business and why.
So with that, I did want to ask record store day.
[00:39:34] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: So as being like a punk hardcore guy, I have been steadfast. I don't want to say a hater, because do your thing started off as.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: A bit of a hater, I'll admit it.
[00:39:46] Speaker B: I want people to do their thing.
If some dude who'd never bought a piece of vinyl in 20 years, some dad from the suburbs is suddenly super excited that some record from his youth is going to be on vinyl for the first time, he's going to come into a record store that he wouldn't have gone into line up for 2 hours and get it. That's awesome.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: Good. I'm glad. On the flip side is some band who's doing it now, who's going on tour to Europe for the first time, who's just put out a record they really care about, and they can't get vinyl because record store day has clogged up the plants for six months. So I've had kind of like sour thinking about record store day. But I also, in many ways, I'm glad it exists. What are your thoughts?
[00:40:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I have evolved thinking on that because my only problem with it when I was a hater was back in the very early days when vinyl was, well, early days, speaking like a geriatric now, but I mean, 2007, 2008, the period we're talking about where things got very active.
Record store day to me, felt like sort of a bit of a problem to contend with because there was already a supply and demand issue and this seemed to kind of accelerate it in the sense that, okay, well, now everyone has the same deadline. We're adding that into the mix. Cool. But I totally changed my thinking on it, and it is to keep coming back to the theme of the day, which is no gatekeeping. I think we have to understand the broader reaches of record store day. Just like the dad in the suburbs you were talking about.
That's a great thing. Supporting record stores is a great thing. And actually, I was sort of shocked to learn this a couple of days ago that the biggest seller of vinyl records in the US, so I imagine it's similar in Canada, is independent record stores. That's shocking to me. Where in second place it's online sellers, which includes discogs and Amazon and people. So can we give it up for record store mean?
[00:41:53] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[00:41:53] Speaker A: That can't be a completely unrelated statistic can. So, you know, I've gained a lot of appreciation for them over the years, especially as this capacity problem has diminished. Now. It's just a good thing.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: I love what you're saying, because also, it's like we go back to the culture. It's like the culture is also like indie record stores, and having that home away from home that you go to, where you see your friends and you talk about records and you get into arguments and you discover new music.
Record stores are such a cool thing, and anything that drives business to them is cool because they're people who are trying to grow a business and do something that's meaningful to them.
Music is such a complex ecosystem, though. Again, it's like, the easiest thing is to write a cool song and a cool record, because everything else that comes after that is like a goddamn nightmare.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: Right?
[00:42:44] Speaker B: But let's talk about colored vinyl and multiple variants. I remember, and I do want to get into when we talk about, like, react and Samo and all our history, but when I was doing. I used to do a record label for those who don't know, called react. And I actually did three record labels in my life.
[00:43:00] Speaker A: What were the other ones?
[00:43:01] Speaker B: I did one for four releases called Anchor.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: Okay. It was this at the same time as reactor before reactor.
[00:43:10] Speaker B: Okay, I did it. I was in this band where I was doing quite a bit of touring, and it started off I put out a record for a band called Staygold, one for a band called what feeds the Fire, one for a band called the answer, and one for a band called Allegiance. And it was four records. And I had had a lot more planned. And thank God all of those releases got sniped by a bigger record label. At the time, I was pissed, but it's like I was in no position in my life to be doing a record label. I was young. I was touring with my band a lot. I'd started my career at the time, what went on to be my main career for many years. I was ultra busy, and I'd started this record label. So this is when I was working with labels, and they'd call you, the owner would call you, and it was so cool. I started that. Then I did react many years later, which was like a much bigger thing. And then after React, I did two releases. I had a label called UXO, and it was only there to support react because I had transitioned react over to Evan Weibel from mindset.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I know him.
[00:44:11] Speaker B: And he would have some releases that he didn't want to do. And I'd be like, I'll do that record just to support that band. Or I did two releases, one for something that we wanted to have on react or that I had requested. He put on react and he turned down. So I ended up putting out myself and then one for a band that he wanted to put out. But it was a big expense because they were a european band, they weren't going to do a lot. I see they're older people. And so I said, I'll split it because I really like the band. So I did three record labels, but one main record label.
When I think of colored vinyl, the griping that people would have, it's like, what griping? Well, the griping that would get is like, oh, you put out like 1000 pieces of vinyl and there's three colors plus black. It's like you're just trying to get me to buy multiple copies.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: I wondered how you were about to answer that question.
[00:45:05] Speaker B: Yes. Why are you saying it like you just colombod me and you found out something? It's like, that's the point. Because by pressing more copies, I can sell each copy for less. That means there's more potential that if we do this, I can give the band more copies for them to sell on tour. Nobody's making you buy those copies. It also means that if you want to buy one copy, that means there's other color copies for other people to buy. And there's like, people are interested, there's collectors. It's a niche market and it's made for people who are interested in being involved in record collecting or supporting a band to that level.
So react used to do usually just one press of a record and we'd have three colors and then black. And if we did a second press, it would be like one color and then black.
And I've kept that going with bands that I've done just myself, my own bands. I love color vinyl. I always thought it was cool. I grew up collecting revelation records and early victory records, and then all the discord stuff, which is mostly on black vinyl, but collecting different anomalies on a cover and different like, oh, here's this different record label. This was pressed on. Sometimes I'd have like 30 copies of the same record because I thought it was cool.
[00:46:23] Speaker A: You said 30?
[00:46:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Like Bad Brain Records. Like early bad Brains records, you would have just like so many stuff because it would be pressed by multiple different. Before the EU, it'd be pressed by multiple different countries in Europe. And then there'd be the reissues with all the different colors and all of.
I love, I love color.
It's. What's interesting now, though is it seemed to go from like that record label is pressing too much color vinyl to now. That's the expectation. There's like a bazillion different variants.
[00:46:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's funny, again to think about how pumpkin hardcore really sort of set the stage for that kind of thing. I don't know if you can draw a straight line towards that or not, but it doesn't seem to be a coincidence because I think that the existence of variance as, let's say, a record label strategy is now totally entrenched. And I think it's great. Actually, in the last ten years I think it's been more and more commonplace.
And I mean, aside from having multiple copies for collectors to buy, the concept also gives other parts of that ecosystem specific opportunities. So you can have a color for a web store, so then people can go and support that record label directly. There could be a tour variant, there could be a retail variant that you can only get at Newbury comics or something like that. So it's a smart strategy. And at a certain point over the pandemic, we had to limit the number of variants because there's a lot to jog with, right, when you have five different variants, and that means five different stickers. So in packaging and everything else, there's a lot of components to put together.
And we've now gotten rid of that limitation.
And so I saw a project in our system the other day with ten variants and I thought, wow, that's a lot. But it didn't seem to be. It's not something I would ever consider really putting a limit on.
I could eat my words, I guess, for some reason in the next couple of years when someone clips me. But yeah, I think it's something to be encouraged because it does create those opportunities for different parts of.
Different parts of that ecosystem.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
I also love how it can get you to deal with the packaging different. If you get a record on a certain color and it plays off a different element of the packaging, or if they're doing a different press and they do something different with the packaging. I'm a total nerd for that. I love stuff like that. And for me it's never like, oh, this is too much. It's just, well, how deep down the rabbit hole do you want to go? It's up to the consumer. And music is such.
It's the music, it's the sound, it's the recording quality, it's the lyrics, it's the packaging. There's so many dimensions to music. I think it's a cool thing. But I also understand why people might be like, well, they're just doing this to get me to buy something. Well, yeah, because there's a whole economy that goes along with this. It's up to the consumer how far they want to go. But I don't think, like, I'd rather see people thrive in the music community and find out different ways of doing that than limit it. Because it's not like anyone's getting hurt.
[00:49:33] Speaker A: I agree. Yeah. It doesn't have a negative impact on anyone, as you say, because there will be people who want 30 copies of that bad brains LP. Right.
So you are gas in the tank for that argument.
Yeah. And so I think that we have a combination of automatic and manual presses. The manual presses are the ones that enable you to make different types of effects. Right. Because then you can manually manipulate the puck. Right, right. So for us, it sort of plays into a strength. So I want there to be a big proliferation of variants out there because I feel like it really kind of enables us to push on that.
And I think that it can also help on the major label side. I think it can help artist careers by having multiple variants, because it can help with chart position, things like that. Because if you buy two variants, that's two units sold from the same buyer.
[00:50:33] Speaker B: Right.
[00:50:34] Speaker A: So there's just lots of utility for it on the indie side and on the major side.
[00:50:39] Speaker B: Even that stuff that you're talking about, and I've heard it discussed different ways. It's like, oh, it's a way of rigging the system. It's like this kind of like machiavellian evil thing. It's like, well, these are just the way that artists.
[00:50:52] Speaker A: It's also what people want. Right. It's not really manipulating dark desires.
[00:50:56] Speaker B: I think it's totally.
[00:50:59] Speaker A: It's something people want to collect.
[00:51:01] Speaker B: Well, people want to make a living doing their art, and they want their art to be heard and consumed and people engage with it. And I think not by any means, but I like a lot of the creative ways that the music industry has changed so that people stay engaged with records for longer periods of time. I think it's super compelling.
[00:51:23] Speaker A: Yeah. It's up to our industry, the vinyl pressing industry, to push things further into the collectors kind of market. It's not a tool for DJs exclusively, like it might have been in the 90s, in addition to punk and hardcore and indie rock. And stuff like that, it's clearly a collector's market. Like I said, 50% of people who bought a record last year in the broader public own a turntable. So it's an artwork.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: So let's go to you. So first of all, just tell us a little about yourself, just like personally, but also, how did you even get interested? And what was your initial entry into this?
[00:52:05] Speaker A: Well, you know, I wouldn't put myself in the Nepo baby sort of category to any stretch, but it was a cousin of mine who had a small business as a CD broker. So for the uninitiated, broker, meaning, like, you're not the plant yourself, but you represent a bunch of clients and then can go to the plant and say, we have volume, give us a price break. And then to the labels, you're saying we'll beat the plant up for you because they won't listen to a smaller whatever. Right.
[00:52:37] Speaker B: It's almost like a band having a manager, and the manager deals with the record label.
[00:52:40] Speaker A: Yeah. That's good.
So my cousin had a small CD brokerage company, and I started working there, like doing co op in high school, working free shifts to pass a course. And that kind of opened my eyes, right. Because I knew I wanted to get involved with music just like a lot of people. But it's hard to figure out what the application of that is, right. In high school, I was thinking K. Well, I guess I have to mix it with business. Business is not my primary motivator. It's music. Let me take these math prerequisites so that I can find a university class that would accept me or university that would accept me. That didn't go very well for me. Right. In fact, I didn't get very far in post secondary. I did a year and decided it wasn't really for me. So I started leaning more on that brokerage company. I got a part time job, and I was also working at a record store and playing in bands and stuff, trying to fill my life up with music as much as I could. And the part time job turned into a full time job.
That CD brokerage company sort of cratered after a while, and my cousin and I, just the two of us, because there was four or five people who were part of the CD brokerage, started Sameo.
My cousin got tired of being poor. He left. I decided I could be poor for a little longer, so I stayed and I took over lots of debt.
Running out of a kind of garage y sort of.
Yeah, you know, hired some friends. So there was just a small, ragtag group of us that was Sameo media.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: Where'd you come up with the name? Or how did the name where that come from?
[00:54:25] Speaker A: Well, Sameo, at the time, in the early 2000s, my cousin couldn't think of a name, so I volunteered because I really wanted to have some creative impact there or input.
I loved the artist Jean Michel Basquiat, and Sameo was his tag name.
Ironically, I think it has a bit of, like, a negative sort of know, same old shit. But I loved his style. I loved his art. And interviews I saw with him. I don't know. I was just very inspired by him. And I could just picture picking up the phone and going, same old. And it just sounds like I think of the same thing. We got a dog a few years ago, and I was thinking, what is a name? I could scream across the park when this dog is running away from me. That wouldn't send a shadow through my spine. I think of names that way. Right.
[00:55:15] Speaker B: What did you come up with?
[00:55:17] Speaker A: His name is Mac, which is an awesome name.
[00:55:18] Speaker B: That's a great name.
[00:55:19] Speaker A: One syllable. I don't know. It just hits so same. Oh, yeah. It felt like I was inspired by the reference material there and loved the sound of it, and it was as simple as that.
[00:55:30] Speaker B: So how did you find clients? Because what year was this?
[00:55:34] Speaker A: 2002.
[00:55:36] Speaker B: How were you finding clients? Because, okay, the Internet was a thing, but it wasn't a super evolved thing. Obviously not what I wanted to become. How did you find clients?
How did you figure out how to press a record and get all these things done?
[00:55:52] Speaker A: Well, I did it badly at first. In fact, that CD brokerage company, I convinced them to think about vinyl. So technically, I was doing it in the late 90s, too. We worked with this independent. Well, they're all independent, but we worked with this vinyl record plant in Markham, near where I grew up, called Acme vinyl. And they were kind of young, scrappy kids, and I was an even younger scrappier kid, so we made mistakes together, kind of.
[00:56:18] Speaker B: How old were you at the time?
[00:56:23] Speaker A: Let's say maybe we first started doing vinyl in 99 or something. So I would have been 19 when I took over Sameo. I was 25.
[00:56:32] Speaker B: Okay, so you were 19, but what made you at 19 be like, oh, we should do vinyl? Like, what was that instinct?
[00:56:39] Speaker A: It was completely divorced from any business sense. It was just, well, we make CDs, but vinyl is cooler. Can I please talk to these guys? I did some research. There's a plant called Acme down the road or whatever. It was just that.
[00:56:54] Speaker B: And so you call them up.
[00:56:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I can't even remember a lot of the early conversations there.
So I remember actually, when Acme closed, there was a bailiff hearing because all the equipment was locked. Right?
Well, it was seized. And I remember looking at it in the early 2000s being like, should I buy this stuff? I don't understand how it works, but I could figure it out, and I'm glad I didn't do that because I would have been much further.
I would have been deeply submerged in hot water.
But, yeah, it was just like anything. You expose yourself to conversations and eventually the terms start to repeat themselves and they start making a little more sense each time.
[00:57:37] Speaker B: Well, the reason I'm pushing on this is you mentioned coming up in the punk scene and playing a band and all that. And I don't want to relate this only to bands because of course people all the world do this, but that kind of like figuring something out that you have no right to figure it out, where it's like, oh, I'm just going to figure out record pressing, no background in it, no real music background outside of playing a punk bands. And that being like, oh, I'll just pay attention to this. I'll do a little bit of research, I'll make it happen. On one side, you could say, well, yeah, most people do that, but not most people do that and start a business that they grow over years and make it their thing. They might do that about how to replace their kitchen floor and the intricacy, specifically of vinyl. What I find so interesting about your story of that, like, well, this makes no sense, but I'm going to do it anyways.
[00:58:28] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit when I say this, but I feel like I almost sort of fell into it a little bit, and then the rest of it was just sharpening up my survival skills. Because you owned a record label, so you know this, if you don't figure out a system for paying bills, everything is going to collapse. So you just have to figure it out or it's over.
And so I was motivated by that a lot, which really helped me in my personal life, actually, to just gain more confidence in general. Right. Because you learn to depend on yourself, and that's a very motivating feeling.
Such to the extent now that there's a lot of conversations I find myself in that I would have been very afraid of in the early 2000s. Right.
[00:59:13] Speaker B: So you're figuring it out, you're building confidence. You're kind of figuring yourself out, figuring the business out, and you go out basically on your own. You're saying, this is my company now. I'm going to sue them. All the debt, all the risk, all of those things. How did you build a client base based on vinyl and the other parts of the media that would be involved?
[00:59:32] Speaker A: So, again, some of that was luck, because vinyl started to grow. And as it started to grow, we were in a good position. So I contacted a company called Rainbow Records, which isn't around anymore. You know them.
[00:59:45] Speaker B: I'm sure that was my favorite pressing plant of all time.
[00:59:48] Speaker A: Yeah, right? I mean, they were classic, but the.
[00:59:52] Speaker B: Like, just felt right. It just felt right.
[00:59:56] Speaker A: And a funny thing, too, is that the head of quality control at Rainbow, someone named Felipe, he now works at precision. We came across each other years later, like, oh, my God. I remember talking about test pressings with you. You'd be great fit for this role. But we started talking to Rainbow just, I think before the vinyl boom really sort of set in, before the murmurs of it were happening, Acme had gone down, and we needed a new partner. So we reached out to Rainbow in California, and they were just like you were saying, where the owner would pick up the phone and be like, who is this guy? Wow. Let me figure out why someone is giving me this quantity of records on this purchase order. We developed a good relationship with them because we were able to say there was no pressing plant or broker in Canada. It was just us at the time. So we represented an interesting opportunity where we could consolidate independent business for them in Canada. And we became a bit of an access point. We would make records at Rainbow 2006, 2007, bring them in on pallets to Sameo. And by 2010, I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but I found out about an opportunity to purchase another crusty old machine that was designed to manufacture record jackets. And so I actually started a second company with a friend of mine named Alex Derlak, who was a book publisher and bookmaker, and he had manufacturing experience. I had vinyl experience. So now we brought these two things together under one roof, where we were bringing in the vinyl records that we were brokering from Rainbow, making record jackets ourselves, which felt good to be a manufacturer, right?
And we were packaging it with a group of people that we hired locally. Like, we had staff now who were in assembly departments. Department, singular. And I think that actually, that was interesting to local bands and labels. We had a story to tell. There wasn't that many people doing it, and Rainbow were really well priced. Right? And so we were able to offer something that was better than some quotes that people would get otherwise. I mean, it was individual efforts trying to attract record labels. The ones I really keep thinking of are punk and hardcore labels we were contacting.
Grave mistake. Sorry, state, no way records.
I want to actually talk about no way for a minute. Do you know?
[01:02:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[01:02:31] Speaker A: Hardcore label from North Carolina.
And the guy that ran it, he passed away some years ago, but Brendan Farrell. Yeah, that was his name.
I kept trying to reach out to all these hardcore labels and none of them would talk to me except for him. And he basically gave us a chance and that ended up being so meaningful to Samo because he introduced us around to everybody in his scene. So then we started making records for deranged records. I know, you know, gord from, you know, punk label, hardcore label, like storied in Canada for sure, out in the west coast, sorry, state Records. And great mistake, all those labels, they started working with us too. So we really picked up steam with some punk and hardcore labels and started working with react also.
That was kind of part of that. And then some weird pockets like hip hop in, know, Evanston, Chicago. Sorry, Evanston, Illinois. There were some hip hop labels that were starting to work with us. And then we did a little more hip hop. So you know how these things go.
The drips just sort of expanding the puddle and before you know it, you know a lot more people. Right?
[01:03:52] Speaker B: But dude, that's like.
It's not that I think you're not giving yourself enough credit. I think you're speaking about the story in a really reasonable way. But where I get excited about it is like music is such a weird industry, right? Because the least part is writing a cool song. There's all of this other stuff you start, which was at the time the only broker for vinyl in Canada.
[01:04:17] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:04:17] Speaker B: In a time where people are not buying vinyl, you're knowing this is like, as you'd said earlier, someone said, no one's retiring from like, you know, this. This is like punk mentality. Like, I'll start a record store, nobody's buying records. I'm starting one anyways. I'm going to be in a punk band and quit my job. There's no way I'm going to live off it. I'm doing it anyways. And these things that end up leading to these beautiful, important things. You said something though about no way records that I think is super important. And why I was talking about why it was such a piss off when major labels came back in and kind of pushed all the indies aside is that this is a relationship based business. That guy. No way. Records had no reason to do right by you, except for being a decent dude and just trying to help someone and what a game changer that was for you and how meaningful that was for you.
So music being an analogy for this, just this idea of helping people out for no other reason, but just to be a decent person and give someone, like a chance at someone a leg up is such a huge thing, and it can make such a difference. And maybe this is a normal thing for a lot of people, but I'd say it's like being in the role that I'm in, where I counsel a lot of businesses, I work with a lot of businesses as a coach, that idea of giving someone a leg up and just doing something decent for someone, I don't want to say it's like a lost art, but it's like you don't know what you're doing for someone when you do that. Like the change it can make in their business and their life.
[01:05:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say I think about this a fair bit, which is having come from a community of independent music and incorporating major labels into that fold, which, by the way, also for Samo, was a great thing. We started working with someone named Dale Weiser, who is the production manager at Warner Music Canada.
He was great to work with. He started giving us orders probably around 2008 or something like that as well. And this was someone who had worked on vinyl, like, decades ago, right, at Warner. And so he was amazing to work with. He knew all the questions to ask about test pressings and all these things. So that was eye opening, too. It wasn't like, oh, Indy's good, major is bad.
And then that opportunity working with Dale, sort of led into working with Universal Music Canada. Small releases that were happening every once in a while.
But that mix started happening at around that time, 2008, 2009, and we were very indie, right? If you came to our shop, it was very garagey and music blasting, and there might have been more than one or two layers of dust on some of the. You know what I mean? We don't have cleaners, and I don't know, we were just doing our thing in there. And since then, I kind of look back at Sameo, and I think it was cool, but it's so much more interesting to be doing what I'm doing now, which is this bigger playground where you can take some of the lessons you learn from the indie side of things, and you can hold them very close. But I don't want to be in that dusty factory anymore. And it's not because I feel like I have grand visions for myself. But I think that punk and hardcore and indie labels are best served by something that works well so that they can get their records made and go on tour. So actually having some polish and having some, I don't know, I don't want to say professionalism because that's too broad, but I guess it comes back to being larger and allow that, affording more opportunities. I think bands want to work with a place that's going to get their records made well, properly, without a lot of confusion and without delays or mystery.
[01:08:09] Speaker B: Right?
[01:08:10] Speaker A: So how do independents interact with vinyl plants in a vinyl industry that's now much larger?
I don't think it's a bad thing that things have expanded now maybe we can retire off vinyl. Why the hell not? Why not make it an industry that thrives totally full of plants that are actually now properly competing with one another where things can get better, right? So, yeah, I don't know. I wonder how you think about that in terms of the, you have the sort of ethos of independent music and that community, right? But those are not the only people that you work with in your professional life, right? And in fact, if you brought exactly that to your consulting work, is that really the best one to one approach or do you want to evolve it? Right.
[01:09:06] Speaker B: Well, everything you just said is why I started this podcast. I'm super interested in how businesses are built and I'm interested in it because my band put out a seven inch. Well, we put out a demo, actually. We got together and we scheduled practice with like five skateboarders who had a million other things going on.
[01:09:23] Speaker A: I guess everyone had transportation then, right?
[01:09:25] Speaker B: We had skateboard, but we first kind of figured out how to get together. Then we learned how to, figured out how to learn or play our instruments. Then we figured out how to write a song, then we recorded, then we figured out how to get that tape places and then go on tour and da da da.
I've always been really interested in building things. I love building things same. Whether it's a puzzle putting together a puzzle or building something with one of our daughters, I love building things same. So I love the idea of business and doing cool business and interesting things and things that matter or things that are challenging to do well in a healthy way for the environment or for the world. But it is an industry. How do you make that better? How do you make it less caustic? Yeah, so all of that is super interesting to me. And it comes from playing a punk. And I've always felt, and again, why I've started this is like, I'm fascinated with how people build business.
What's their personal component of it, and then how do they build business, but then how do they lead? So, no, I think that the vinyl business should be a proper, well functioning business that's nestled right into the economy. It should grow, it should thrive, because there's a consumer want for it. It's also ultra cool. And why shouldn't that dad from, like, Burnaby be able to get that vinyl from some band he liked 20 years ago? That dude's not lame. He just hasn't had access to it. Or it hasn't put it in front of him in a way that it connects to him, but it matters to him.
[01:10:49] Speaker A: Cool.
[01:10:49] Speaker B: That's great. Why shouldn't it? Again, we kind of keep punting it down, but I want to go to gatekeeping next. Were you ever a fan of the bands born against or sick of it all tangentially? Yeah, I don't know if you.
[01:11:03] Speaker A: Sick of it all was a little. Maybe a little too tough.
[01:11:05] Speaker B: What about born again for me?
[01:11:06] Speaker A: Born against? Yeah, they got some jams. I mean, man, I don't think I've got records, but definitely respect them.
[01:11:13] Speaker B: Two of the sickest bands, like kind of opposite sides of the same coin.
[01:11:16] Speaker A: In a lot of way, right?
[01:11:17] Speaker B: There's this amazing radio interview, college radio interview. We're sick of it all. They'd done their demo, they'd done their seven inch on Rev, and then they put out their LP on in effect, and in effect was marketed by a major label. And I think it was a subsidiary of a major. And so their record was in major record stores in, like, I don't know, wherever.
Ohio or wherever it is, right? Like, someplace where it's like, oh, there's a sick of it all record there. And born against were like ultra punk.
They were like ABC. No, Rio scene, where sick of it all were like CBGBs and the Ritz kind of thing. And these two bands got into beef and they came onto a record or onto a radio show, I guess, in the debate.
[01:12:03] Speaker A: No way. Amazing.
[01:12:04] Speaker B: It turns into this huge argument.
[01:12:06] Speaker A: Is it a disaster?
[01:12:07] Speaker B: But an amazing disaster. Like, amazing.
[01:12:10] Speaker A: Where can you find this?
[01:12:11] Speaker B: You can find this on YouTube. Like, just the audio of it's on YouTube. Born against. Put it on one of their ten inches.
[01:12:16] Speaker A: Oh, that's amazing.
[01:12:17] Speaker B: And they're debating about whether or not there should be barcodes on.
[01:12:22] Speaker A: So granular. But the barcode represents just the end of the world to born against.
[01:12:27] Speaker B: Right, right.
[01:12:28] Speaker A: Like, you might as well tattoo it on my forehead.
[01:12:30] Speaker B: Totally. So for them, there were like, and this is no shade on anyone. I love every single side of this conversation. It's the best. But it's like we got one group who's like, from their perspective, protecting the culture, protecting the art, protecting the scene.
[01:12:45] Speaker A: Which has value, for sure.
[01:12:46] Speaker B: Totally. We've got this other group that's saying, well, we're doing the same thing too, by bringing it out to the kid in Iowa who wouldn't be able to get this record either or to bring it out to. So one thing is the sick Vidal LP, blood, sweat and no tears, didn't have a lyric sheet because there was swearing in the song. They're like, if you want a lyric sheet, mail us for it. Right. And that was like a bone of contention where they're like, how could you censor yourself? Yeah, amazing.
[01:13:15] Speaker A: Anyways, I got to check that out. That's hilarious.
[01:13:17] Speaker B: It is. To me, it's like, that's the essence of punk and hardcore in so many ways, where it's like people were like, protect, preserve. We have this special, unique thing, and we want to keep it special and unique and keep it about art and artists and small venues and zines. I didn't hear from them in any way like gatekeeping or limiting. It's just more like, protect this special thing. And then sick, vital. We're like, yes, protect this special thing by getting into the hands of more people and enabling more people to engage in it. And when we talk about vinyl and the music industry and that indies versus major, it's like that conversation always echoes for me where it's like, what's the right or wrong?
[01:13:55] Speaker A: Well, I think vinyl is not the culture. Vinyl serves the culture. And so I think there's a difference between the gatekeeping that my industry of record pressing might engage in that I would think is pointless or boring. But for born against protecting their community, how do you argue against that? I think that there's a lot of value you could ascribe to that. Right. And so I wouldn't put the conversation that you and I specifically are having about the dad from Ohio in the same register. Right. I think those things actually can be independent from one another.
[01:14:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, let's talk about gatekeeping, because I've kept punting it. Gatekeeping comes up a lot on this podcast.
[01:14:43] Speaker A: Okay, I like that subject.
[01:14:44] Speaker B: Let me start from the first spot. I have been someone who I can say is certainly guilty of gatekeeping. And I didn't realize it at the time. And so what I mean is, I come from a very specific genre of hardcore, right. And like, youth grew straight edge. It's like, if it doesn't sound like this, it's no good.
[01:15:04] Speaker A: There are some rules there I've heard.
[01:15:05] Speaker B: Terrible, terrible, terrible, but wonderful.
I like when a band sounds like youth of the day and does it well. I like that.
[01:15:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:15:14] Speaker B: Anyways, I know that there's for me because I won't say this about anyone else. I'll just try and keep the conversation focused on what I know when I think about gatekeeping is like, I've never intentionally set out to gatekeep anything. But I also know that a very specific style of hardcore is what I like and it's what I engage in. And I love all sorts of different kinds of hardcore, but what I engage in and what I consume and what I can consider, like, my passion is this very small little thing. Doesn't mean I would keep anyone outside of music or keep anyone outside of a scene. Certainly never my intent. But I think that by just being judgmental or snobby that I might have unintentionally made people feel like they don't fit within the scope of what I think is cool.
[01:16:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:16:03] Speaker B: So running a record label, it's like you've got a bigger amount of scope, right, where you can kind of unintentionally be like, that's not for me. At the same time, you're not going to put out every demo that comes to your. That comes.
[01:16:16] Speaker A: You need to be discerning so that your label stands for something.
[01:16:19] Speaker B: So I think for many people I'm being charitable because I'm also putting it on myself first by being a bit embarrassed and vulnerable, being like, hey, there's been times where I've definitely gatekeeped because I loved this thing so much and I felt it had to be this certain way. So I think a lot of gatekeeping initially comes from a place of care and love for something.
[01:16:40] Speaker A: I agree with that.
[01:16:41] Speaker B: But I also think gatekeeping can also come from a place of feeling better than other people, thinking insecurity, all of that. So what are your thoughts? Like, if we're talking about gatekeeping, if we've touched on, where does that play out for you?
[01:16:54] Speaker A: Right. Well, I like what you said about the youth crew stuff. That makes sense to me. I mean, I love youth of today to death and it's also extremely right. And that's its beauty in a way. Give me that formula man, I love you. Want. You want that weird Ray Capo scream on every single song in that breakdown?
Well, we've been talking about entry points, right? Like, how did I get into Sameo? How did you know, working with Acme vinyl and where did I get the confidence and all that kind of stuff? And then same thing with you and the record label. People need entry points, right? And maybe the difficulty is balancing having enough of an entry point that your community can grow, but balanced with that sort of fear that born against have of making sure that the community is protected. And that's complex, right? I don't know if that's a cookie cutter solution for different communities, but you need to have some type of entry point in order for things not to just die out.
[01:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. So I just want to say, shout out to born against.
I talk about this conversation a lot, and one of those people one day is probably going to be like some weirdo on this podcast is totally obsessed with me. I like this conversation.
[01:18:16] Speaker A: To me, you're blocked on all their social media. It's like, maybe they don't have social media.
[01:18:21] Speaker B: It's the perfect thing that matters to people. Literally matters to people. How do you talk about this thing? You know what I mean? It's one of my favorites. Yeah, man. Entry points. Entry points. And I just heard a story this morning from Mike, who's our engineer who plays in this great band called Punitive Damage, a canadian band. How they had a young person at one of their shows be like, hey, I don't have enough to buy an LP. Can I give you x amount for it? And how the singer of the band was like, oh, here's just the LP. And here's like a shirt and a tote bag. And that's like, this is like a young person who's like probably their 1st 30 shows. Like somewhere in that area, you just changed their world. You just changed their life. That's like an entry point, right? Entry points matter. And again, around the idea of gatekeeping, moving the conversation from, well, everyone else gatekeeps but me. Well, it's like, no, there's a certain amount of you care about it, so you're trying to protect it. And how do you keep that from being like a toxic thing that keeps people out, that makes people feel bad and you don't have to play with everyone's band or put out everyone's demo. You don't have to do these things. But the thing that allows you to create easy entry points to people in a graceful way. Why wouldn't you do that?
[01:19:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree.
[01:19:35] Speaker B: So samo into precision.
[01:19:37] Speaker A: So that would have been around 2015 when I first heard that there was going to be a plant opening in Burlington, which I considered to be in my backyard. And it really worried me at first. It was Dale from Warner that told me about it. So I was very grateful to him. And about a month or so after finding that out, I also found out that it was something to do with GZ. And GZ is a very large vinyl manufacturing plant, arguably the biggest in the world. And they're in the Czech Republic, just outside of Prague. I've visited GZ, like, several times over the years now. And it's this amazing place. It feels like a city dedicated to record pressing.
It's just that the scale and scope of it is really impressive. So hearing that there was going to be a GZ plant in Ontario, it was a big gulp.
And what I did was the folks in Burlington who were a part of the joint venture in the plant, they were a music distributor called isotope. Still are. And I found my way to start a conversation with the owner of isotope just to figure out what was going on. I was, like, casing the joint, basically, just to be like, what is, you know. It turned out that one of his partners from Jeezy was going to be in town. So we agreed on a meeting. And that was basically the biggest meeting of my life up until that point. So I was trying to be cool about it. They wanted to come visit Semo. And remember I said we were making record jackets in that kind of garage y facility at that time. So we spiffed the place up. Remember I said there was six levels of dust, man, were we, like, wiping shit down? So it was really trying to make a great impression for these guys. And I didn't know where the conversation was going to go, only that it was an important conversation. So I showed them Sameo. I showed them our record jacket manufacturing machine and they met the people and we sat down to talk. And my first sort of opening gambit was, well, we work with a lot of the indies in Canada. Why don't you just let us do our thing? So don't get all salesy on us. Let us take care of that. We can supply you with record jackets at wholesale works for everyone.
They weren't that intrigued by that, you know, they saw the potential in what we were running and asked if we wanted to join forces. And so I was faced with the question of, do I push forward with Semo or do I join this new record pressing plant that didn't have a name yet, but I knew what the potential of that plant could do to Seymo, so I really kind of grappled with that.
And it's really interesting because Seymo was a firm part of my identity at that point. You probably felt that way about react, right?
[01:22:32] Speaker B: Totally.
[01:22:33] Speaker A: It merges. It's like we were talking about electroplating, how the nickel was merging and it becomes a single unit. I mean, that's how I felt about Samoa. It was indivisible from my personality. So what did that mean, to shed that part? And would I come to regret it or not to get super existential here, but who would I be without? It was a big question.
So I thought about that for a good couple of months before coming up with a decision.
And the decision was to join precision and see what that was going to be like. I'm eternally grateful that I made that choice and that Sean, the CEO, has been great, especially in the sense of allowing so much collaboration to form the direction of the plant from a sales perspective, but also all these other things. He let me kind of run around and figure out what my responsibilities should be in a way. So I ended up being a partial owner of the printing operation. So I'm the president of it, so I kind of oversee it. I work with our general manager, Manny. He does the day to day. So I'm on the print side of things, I'm on the indie sales side of things. He takes care of a lot of the major label stuff, although we're going to be collaborating more on that in the future.
I even am working on the development of our custom software. I don't have any background as a developer designer.
Didn't know the difference between UI and Ux, but I got involved in that too. So we had this kind of very small business kind of mentality, starting the plant. So in fact, it actually kind of like expanded the facets of my personality that I thought would be diminished by it, which is why I feel like I'm having so much more fun now than I would if I still ran Sameo.
[01:24:25] Speaker B: Hell yeah, dude. That's amazing.
All right, so we're heading towards the end of our conversation here.
I'm going to give you some space at the very end to share anything else you want to add, anything else in, but we're going to go into what we call the crucial three. There are three increasingly difficult questions.
[01:24:41] Speaker A: Oh, shit. Okay.
[01:24:42] Speaker B: All right, you ready? You ready for everyone?
[01:24:44] Speaker A: I'm ready.
[01:24:44] Speaker B: Okay. So since joining precision, what's one thing that you've learned about yourself, either as a person or a professional or both, that you don't know if you would have learned if you just stayed at Sameo?
[01:24:56] Speaker A: Earlier in the conversation, we were talking about that sharpening of survival skills.
One of the things that precision allowed me to sharpen was my ability to talk and lead. And it's an imperfect skill that's always kind of evolving. But I've had to become responsible for a lot of different things. And it takes time and experience to understand how to kind of like, set conversations and how to execute things right.
And so whether that's sort of talking with our graphics department or on the software side, it just kind of opened up my mind to a lot more things and pushed me to be involved in more, even things like, I don't know if this sounds a little sort of dry, but on the financial management side, actually, I'm taking a class at George Brown early next year because I'm not really satisfied with my level of sophistication there. I know my way around financial statements, but I just want to push myself more.
I wouldn't have done that at St. Maybe I would have, who knows?
But just based on the present level of my responsibilities and stuff, I got to keep things active and I got to keep growing. So that's the thing.
[01:26:16] Speaker B: Yeah. All right, second question. We've talked a lot about. We've said it a bit explicitly in dance around a little bit. But, like, music and the culture of music and the industry of music, it's both art, it's passion, it's communities, it's all of these things. It's not just, like, simple business. It's a very complex business that has a lot of deep meaning to people. So from someone who's deeply a part of the music industry, what kind of questions do you think people should be asking themselves?
To be able to balance that idea of culture, of being protective and taking care of your culture and also doing good business.
[01:26:57] Speaker A: This is crucial. Number two.
[01:26:58] Speaker B: That's right.
[01:26:59] Speaker A: You want to be able to support the culture enough without, I guess, sacrificing it for the purpose of being like a sort of murder. Right. You really want to sort of keep your eye on things that are going to evolve the culture and to not just make it stuck in quicksand. And so something I mentioned before was thinking about how you can have, like, a record pressing plant where people from different cultures can feel like it's for them, especially on the indie side. That's basically what we're talking about here without actually being so narrow about how you're going to approach it. So I would not want to keep doing same old forever. Right. I love and respect those roots, but I think, again, what really serves the community is having a highly functional apparatus around it.
[01:27:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. I'll just tuck in. Something that I think is so salient is like. And this is specific to punk. Like punk prices, which is prices.
[01:28:07] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:28:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, back when I first started.
Well, when I first started going to shows, seven inches were $3, right?
And at the time you could get a seven inch press for much less. But then as things go on, it stayed $3 while the price was going up. And then shout out to no warning. I think no warning is the first band that I can recall that started selling their seven inches for like $4. And it was like, how dare they?
But like, dude, yes. And actually it should have been like $6. But even for the most basic thing, it's like charging appropriate prices for things doesn't harm the culture.
[01:28:43] Speaker A: I had a debate about that within the band I was in. It was this street punk band called Hostage Life. And we were sort of like kind of adjacent to the hardcore community in Toronto. We played shows with brutal nights and career suicide, but we were never in that crew. When we were making our demo, we were talking about what to sell it for. And I think the conversation was, forget the price. It might have been three or $5 or something and it might have been a cassette or a CD or something. But then we had a separate conversation where we actually broke out what it cost us. And we got into an internal debate about whether we should be paying attention to that or whether we should sell it for the price that we said it should be. Because that's kind of like the cultural expectation. If you go beyond that, it's like an insult.
Sort of a hard thing to figure out what to do. I mean, obviously you want to make sure that you can afford what you're doing so you can keep doing it. Right? That matters.
[01:29:38] Speaker B: Totally.
We could talk about that for a lot, but I loved your answer and that was a great example. All right, final question. Maybe you'll find this easy, right? So Ontario, very storied for terms of just like legendary, unbelievable bands coming out of this area. What about the bands that were so incredible but just died away and faded away and nobody ever remembers them except for you and your friends?
Give me one band from Ontario. One band where you're like, that's a band people need to check out and check out their demo or their seven inch. What is a forgotten band that just never got the love they should have?
[01:30:16] Speaker A: The band that comes to mind is a band from Toronto called Sucker Punch. You ever hear these guys? Sucker punch? I mean, I was 16 or 17 when I first heard them and it has this kind of like really sleazy rockabilly kind of punk sort of feeling to it. And I thought it was the coolest thing I ever heard until I heard the cramps a few years later. And I thought, oh, that's where they're getting their ideas. They even have a song where they like Ratle a chain on the ground like the cramps do.
And there was an album called Carols from the Canyon. You can still find a fuzzy YouTube clip of them performing on much music.
And I was never old enough to go to their shows because they'd always played 19 plus, so I never got to saw them. And I remember rotate this, which is a great record store from Toronto.
The brothers who were in Sucker Punch, I think, just dumped the remaining stock on rotate this a few years ago. So I got to buy it on vinyl and it was like such a prized possession for me because I never got to see them. I had the CD. But coming back to why vinyl is special, it was like, oh, now I have the real document of it. Yeah. So sucker punch carols from the canyon.
[01:31:32] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Great answer. I love that. It's like, now I have the real document because everything else, like the tape, unless there was only tape. But even then, sometimes it's like the tape, the CD, the streaming, the vinyl's the real document in so many cases. So, Paul, this has been an amazing conversation. It's so cool to finally get to meet you after all these years.
[01:31:51] Speaker A: That was great. That was arguably the best part, was actually sitting down and talking to you. Totally after that amount of time.
[01:31:57] Speaker B: So anything you want to add as we're closing off, anything that you want to share with people about the industry you're in, anything. And also how people can work with you as well.
[01:32:06] Speaker A: Right.
Well, we're working on that small run program like I talked about, and it's gotten a lot of energy and traction. And so I just want to mention it one more time that we really want to have the most affordable and fastest 100, 203 hundred run vinyl records comes back to all of our themes about entry points. So that's really important to us right now, trying to push that forward. And we're going to have something to debut in November so that's new and interesting. We also hired a sustainability coordinator for the GZ North America group, which is made up of precision record pressing and two other plants in our group. I'm excited about that. He's an environmental engineer and a process engineer, and we're in the process of measuring our carbon footprint and tracking waste and coming up with progressive initiatives on that front, too. So I'm excited about that. We're going to have more stuff to announce also before the end of the year.
[01:33:09] Speaker B: So how do people work with you?
[01:33:10] Speaker A: They can find
[email protected]. We have a web quota on there where you can bounce from screen to screen as you pick your records, your jackets, all that kind of stuff. So hopefully fun to use. And then at the end of it, it's a big old button to contact us. Otherwise, social media, Instagram, refinable.
[01:33:30] Speaker B: Hell yeah. Awesome. All right, everyone, I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. If you're someone who is like, damn, like, records, should I go check out a record? Yes, go check out a record. Like bust down the door. It's a real cool hobby. It's a great way to enjoy music. And they're just neat. So with that, Paul, thank you so much.
[01:33:48] Speaker A: Awesome.
[01:33:49] Speaker B: Thanks, man. You bet.
[01:33:50] Speaker A: On here. Yeah.
[01:33:51] Speaker B: Amazing having you, man. For sure. Everyone will see you next time on one step beyond, one step.
[01:34:00] Speaker A: One step, one step beyond.
