Brought to my attention by the guys at MagikFeet. This is a real blow to the smaller labels.
DJMag wrote:The loss of Intergroove is a major blow for vinyl lovers
Intergroove go bust
Words: Terry Church
Dance music labels, vinyl lovers, and record shops are today mourning the death of one of the world’s biggest dance music distributors.
Intergroove UK, a distribution company that specialised in dance music vinyl and CD distribution, has gone bust.
The distributor, based in north-west London, supplied record shops around the world with tunes from a massive plethora of dance labels including Finger Lickin’, TCR, Adrift, Baroque, Four Twenty, Cocoon, Get Physical, Sex On Wax and Silver Planet.
Major Cog
It was, by all accounts, a major cog in the dance music distribution wheel, especially for the genres of house, techno and breakbeat.
An industry source said: “This is a major blow for the dance music industry, especially for small independent record labels, which relied on the company to distribute their tunes. Intergroove going bust has left a lot of labels out in the cold.”
Some have suggested that Intergroove going bust is the final nail in the coffin for vinyl, with 12in sales having slumped due to the onset of digital downloading.
With Intergroove gone, the only major dance music distributors left in the UK are Amato and Unique who merged earlier this year.
Knock-on Effect
Abel Reynolds from Finger Lickin’, a major breakbeat label formerly distributed by Intergroove, said the closure of the company would have a knock-on effect.
“Intergroove has been very honourable in upholding their payments to labels,” said Abel.
“But as a result of the company closing, quite a few labels will go bust too, because they won’t receive payment for records distributed by Intergroove in the last couple of months.”
Breaks Labels
For example, Finger Lickin’ won’t receive any money for physical sales of their biggest record of the year – the D Ramirez remix of Plump DJs ‘Electric Disco’ - because Intergroove went bust before they could pay Finger Lickin’.
“The breakbeat scene will especially suffer, because lots of small breaks labels will go bust,” said Abel.
No but if the smaller distributors are getting pushed out of the scene then it's likely to be dominated by the big guys who generally will only pump out the mainstream commercial tings.
the tiny underground distributors are just about surviving and i think they will for a while becuase they've got a small, commmitted fanbase.
it's the commercial end of things that is suffering cos people who play that kind of twiddle in clubs do it off mp3s or cds...
thats why intergroove went down --- that d ramirez plump DJs remix for instance, the kind of folk that want to play that out, aren't the same kind of folk that really want to own to get a copy of it on vinyl.
and they're also not committed enough to the underground to support it so they don't bother
i reckon the market will realign so there is always a small community of people who want a copy of their favourite songs on vinyl - whether or not they can also get a free mp3 of it.
for instance, i've already got the new squarepusher album from soulseek but i'm going to buy a copy on vinyl becuase i like it and i don't think my mp3 collection will last forever.
this sort of market just doesn't exist for the kind of disposable electro-house/breaks that intergroove have been peddling for the last few years.
i really like that bodyrox feat. luciana track that's in the charts (it's a guilty pleasure..) so i've downloaded it.
