Hey from the road - the Redeye Label Hang in North Carolina to be exact, our tenth year here (first as a distributed label, now as Infinite Catalog).
Events like these — where catalogs, services, and other music organizations come together to talk shop, learn, connect — are not just productive and fun, they’re also a reminder that independent music is a community, dammit! The more we actively participate, the better we can help each other, the artists we work with, and the indie music ecosystem overall.
With that in mind, keep scrolling to find other great upcoming music industry events from across the globe (including a few more we’ll be at soon), along with our usual mixed bag of royalty stories, company & community updates, and tunes.
— Hunter, Infinite Catalog co-founder and late-to-the-game Wordle devotee
😢 True Royalty Story: New Order’s Blue (and very expensive) Monday
In this month’s Royalties WTF we take a look at a legendary True Royalty Story: the cautionary tale of how the biggest selling 12” single of all time - New Order’s Blue Monday - lost money on every copy sold.
Quick Hits
100,000 tracks are being uploaded to streaming services every day 🤯
Guitarist/composer Yasmin Williams opened an interesting dialogue about what musicians get paid in this twitter thread 🧵
A noted music lawyer says the catalog sales boom is over 📉
📢 ANNOUNCEMENTS
We made the finals of a new global showcase put together by the amazing folks at Music Ally!
Our “Royalty accounting for everyone!” webinar for the Music Biz Association is now available for… everyone… to watch back for free
We’re once again proudly sponsoring the Independent Label Market in the UK, for their two upcoming Winter events in London (12th Nov) and Manchester (19th Nov)
🚀 PRODUCT UPDATES
Did you know that you can use Infinite Catalog to lock splits in place up to a certain point, while changing the split moving forward?
Say you had a 50/50 deal with an artist, and after some pre-agreed trigger point - whether a specific date, recoup balance, quantity sold, or something else - the deal switches to an 85/15 distribution arrangement.
You can now do this in IC by explicitly assigning the 50/50 contract to the transactions that occurred prior to the trigger, and changing the release-level contract to 85/15 for the transactions after. You could even change it back after a certain point, or to a third split arrangement, or a fourth... you get it. For the how-to specifics, check out the article in our ever-growing knowledge base.
📆 IC EVENTS
💿 After an amazing Summer event we’re so stoked to once again be sponsoring the Independent Label Market for their Winter events, taking place in London’s Coal Drops Yard on 12 Nov and a week later in Manchester at New Century ft. some amazing labels, artists and makers. If you want to meet up, drop us an email (team@infinitecatalog.com) and we'll see you on the day!
📆 UPCOMING INDUSTRY EVENTS
Oct 25th - 28th - Redeye Label Hang (NC, USA)*
Oct 31st - 6th Nov ‣ Primavera São Paulo (São Paulo, Brazil)
Nov 3rd - 5th ‣ Iceland Airwaves (Reykjavík, Iceland)
Nov 7th -13th ‣ Primavera Sound Santiago (Santiago, Chile)
Nov 7th - 13th ‣ Primavera Sound Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Nov 8th - 12th ‣ Indie Week Online Music Biz + EDU + Tech
+ International + Community Conference (Virtual)
Nov 10th - 14th ‣ Pitchfork London*
*we’ll be there!
🧐 WHAT YOU'RE UP TO
📖 Velocity Press teamed up with Wowbagger Productions to distribute their new sci-fi, pandemic-inspired comic Planet Divoc-91
🎧 Polyvinyl put out the new Alvvays album Blue Rev
🎧 Sooper released NNAMDÏ's newest LP Please Have A Seat
🎧 Double Double Whammy put out their third release with 2nd Grade, Easy Listening
🎧 Fire Talk band Weeping Icon released a new single Pigs, Shit & Trash off a new EP entitled Ocelli - out November 18th
🎧 Dots Per Inch put out a new EP called Swimmer Brooklyn duo Amiture
🎧Abraxas released their new single Göbekli Tepe on Suicide Squeeze
🎧 Kill Rock Stars put out Mightmare's debut album Cruel Liars and the second album from Shutups I can't eat nearly as much as I want to vomit
🎧 Wild Pink's new album ILYSM came out on Royal Mountain
🎧 Father/Daughter’s A.O. Gerber shared her new album Meet Me at the Gloaming
Elene: Plains - Abilene
Ari: Francis Bebey - Je pars, Maria
Hunter: Weyes Blood - Grapevine
Dev: Keith Jarrett - Concerts (Bregenz)
Christopher: Printesa de Aur si Susanu - Am o mie de motive (Manele vechi)
Austin: aylu - Profondo Rosa
Adam: Asunojokei - Island
You can find a Spotify playlist here ft. these tracks (or tracks from the albums) that we’ll update every time we send the newsletter out.
Till next time, Adam, Hunter & the IC Crew