I’ll be back posting more general music stuff here soon, and there will be a special announcement related to Last.fm in a few days, which will explain why I’m no longer updating so much here. In the meantime…

I conducted an interview with Kevin Ehlers, one half of the duo behind upcoming DIY indie label Lemon Drop records, and will be posting the entire thing in instalments (as it’s quite long…) They’re not fully operational yet, but I think this gives you an insight into what it takes to run your own record label in this snazzy web 2.0 age wot we live in.

1. Where did the idea for LemonDrop come from?

The idea for LemonDrop came a little into Charlie and my friendship as we were both in the same major (entertainment management) and quickly became friends through classes. Charlie was approached by a few of his friends’ bands about him possibly helping them out, and he later approached me since I was about to graduate and had the record label business know-how. One thing led to another and before we knew it, Charlie had our website up and running, we had an opening night show booked, and more and more people became aware of our mission to change music how it is today. As for the Creative Commons License aspect, that was all Charlie, as I was only aware of it because I use it with my blog. We were both frustrated at the direction the music industry was headed, me seeing it first hand interning for Sub Pop Records, and decided to do something about it by giving bands the credit they deserve and letting fans get closer to the bands than ever before.

2. What practical steps did you have to take to set it up - e.g. did you form a company? Do you have contracts drawn up? Etc

That’s a good question, because at this moment that’s what I’m trying to figure out. The business steps are what I’m in charge of. We’re doing our best to be a truly legit label, so getting a business license here in Springfield and a tax I.D. number is going to be our first steps. I’m working right now researching record contracts and attempting to write up a simple contract that our bands can sign. There’s bound to be more I’ll figure out we need as time passes, but other than the business steps, we had to set up our website since we’re technically an online label. Charlie designed our website and got it up and running and now we’re really focusing on getting our bands recorded and booking shows for them. One last exciting thing is that we’ve been in talks with archive.org and they have actually set aside a section for LemonDrop since we’re an online label under the Creative Commons license and they’ll help us with our hosting needs as far as mp3s are concerned.

Share This

Popularity: 34% [?]