Cut Records (From Home)

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Artist DFRNT speaks on the future of music, the market and the internet (also his netlabel, CUT):

Dingus:  Origins?  Manifesto?

DFRNT:  Basically Cut was an idea I had at the start of the year. I wanted to provide free music for people, but instead of the usual expired downloads and producers just tossing up a few un-tagged badly named mp3s on sendspace or whatever, I wanted to present them as proper releases with artwork and everything. I felt there was room for a label to provide this, so I set up Cut.

So it’s just myself (DFRNT / Alex) that runs the label. I do all the site updates, promotion, curating of the EPs, approaching artists, uploading the release, and artwork for each one – of course the label wouldn’t be what it is without the music – so I owe a lot to the artists involved for providing such incredible music for me to release – but I’d like to hope that the increased exposure and association will help them push their career onwards and upwards.

Do you believe that the “netlabel” is the way of the future? Certainly it’s been proven that with enough dedication anyone can distribute as well as any major label.

I think netlabels have been around for a while, so I’m not sure. I’d have expected that by now, considering the volume of netlabels around that people would have embraced them more, but I think it’s taking a while to convince people that free music is “worth it” so to speak. I think people still assume that because it’s free – that it’s cast-offs, or music that didn’t make the cut elsewhere – which I think is true in some cases, but there’s certainly room to convince people otherwise.

I think people can certainly get the music out there – and if you have enough places to hit with promo, and enough of the right people backing a release, then yeah there’s the potential to make it work – but I don’t know if netlabels are the future. I think there’s something bigger needs to happen – a change, or a shift in the way people get or consume music – something that streamlines the ability for people to get music, or something that changes people’s perceptions of how they should get their music. I don’t have the answer, but I’ve always had a few ideas that I might get around to putting in to practice.

I have this romantic dream that the little guys will be able to win this one out because of the endless possibilities involved with the internet.  But you’re right, promotion is obviously the key.  What is your criteria for bringing bands on the label?

I think the little guys might win in the end – but by that time, they could be the big guys – so it’s always hard to tell I guess. It would be nice to see some smaller labels break through and see success – or at least find some way to innovate – but we’ll see I guess.

Criteria for the label – well so far it’s just been a requirement for the music to be “good” – I know that’s very vague and actually entirely subjective, so it doesn’t help much – but I guess it’s got to be my idea of good – music that I can appreciate, but perhaps not something I could make myself. Something that impresses me or catches my ear.

We’ve developed a bit of a sound across the first few EPs and have this sort of deep future-garage, deep techno or whatever you want to call it, thing going on – but I’m open to putting out other styles. I’m most definitely feeling a lot of the deeper electronic genres right now, so that has a big sway on the EPs I select/curate but really I’d like to think it was pretty open, with more of an emphasis on making them solid releases, with more consideration than just a handful of tracks thrown online.

I think it should be interesting to see how the sound progresses actually. Each EP has been pretty easy going in terms of putting it together and how I find the artists. I tend not to take demos – I have an email address and a Soundcloud dropbox for it – but I find that I get most excited when I stumble across an artist on my own – just randomly browsing, or from a link of a link, or just hearing something in a tracklist – then I’ll approach the producer about it, and see if they’re game. It’s a really simple, no-pressure process. I don’t want it to be this sort of high-pressure requirement to have (x) amount of releases per months or any sort of strict timescale – it needs to be easy going for me, since I have a number of other commitments, so Cut slots nicely in between all the other stuff and just works out nicely.

Would you ever consider charging for the music? How does cut ever expand if it doesn’t make money?

Right now, no. I’m not interested in charging for the music. I started Cut with the intention of it being free, and I intend to keep it that way. I even said to myself that if we end up relesing physical products, I’d like to do as much as possible to keep them free, since that was the initial aim for the project. Free music, done right.

I have Echodub as a label which does paid releases, and I work a day job, as well as freelance which covers my ent and bills. I also make a little from the kind people who are generous enough to pay for the releases on Cut, since I provide them through Bandcamp as a “pay what you want, including zero” system. That small monetary supplement goes some way to offsetting promotion, hosting, artwork and other associated costs for Cut.

As for expansion – I have already seen the label expand by a considerable amount – we’ve gone from a handful of people listening, up to thousands. We have a strong email subscriber database of people interested in getting the latest releases, and the amount of people blogging, mentioning, downloading and consuming the music continues to grow with every release. It’s something that has actually amazed me, since I never expected things to take off like this. It’s almost adverse to what I expected, so it’s been very satisfying to see it happen.

I don’t think labels need to make money to be “successful” – but then you have to interpret success in your own way. If you measure it on profit alone, then despite losing sight of the aim of the project, it also says nothing for the music. The key for me is the music – if it’s good, then people will love it. If they love it, the label will expand, grow in popularity and perhaps generate opportunities. What I don’t want to do though, is become reliant on Cut making profit – it taints the motives behind the label, and shrouds the ideals that surround the project.