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 GEARED talks to BEFORE HOLLYWOOD blogger, MT AUGUSTUS mainman, and INCREMENTAL RECORDS co-founder CAMERON SMITH, on how his new online store and record label helps local Brisbane bands and fans get together for sweet commerce.
GEARED: There are a lot of online music stores out there, what is Incremental Records’ point-of-difference?
CAMERON SMITH: I guess the point of it is to make it much more of a local focus and a little bit of an archive of releases that aren’t really viable in any other ways, or would be so niche in their commercial aspects that it wouldn’t be worthwhile to make them available in your standard stores. It’s not being run for profit so bands can pretty much put it [their releases] on for whatever prices they like – if that’s a couple of dollars, even if it’s for free. I think some bands just want to put up some of their old records and have it freely available.
G: So it offers a point-of-entry for bands that doesn’t cost them any money or sign away their rights to songs?
CS: It acts in the same way as selling records on consignment through your standard record store – just that it doesn’t have the same sort of overheads involved. It’s essentially just the cost of paying for PayPal and the cost of – in the case of actual physical records – sending it out in the post. Digital stuff ... the cost is almost zero.
G: You just take a small percentage off the top to cover those costs?
CS: Yeah, just to cover the cost of the commerce engine and the cost of shipping.
G: So any band with their CD on the Incremental store is going to get more money than your typical iTunes et al deal?
CS: I looked at putting stuff through iTunes and eMusic and while it’s not especially expensive, unless you’re pretty damn sure you’re going to sell stuff, then what’s the point? This way if no one buys anything, it doesn’t cost you a single cent. It only ever costs you anything if you sell something and even then it’s such a tiny percentage. From that perspective, the people who were going to buy it anyway don’t really care, and they’re probably more likely to buy it if they see it’s from some local community-based project instead of something like iTunes where you know when you go to iTunes that half your money is going to Apple – who don’t particularly need the money.
G: It’s hard to think of any reason why a band wouldn’t want their music on there?
CS: The idea of is to get everything centralised, so there’s one spot where you can go in and find everything from the old Ambitious Lovers EPs that used to be available in little hand-sewn covers, all the way through to the latest record from Little Scout, or the comparatively bigger local band.
G: Is it going to be curated at all? Or just open-slather?
CS: I guess that depends how popular it ends up. The focus is more on the indie rock, slightly more underground aspect of things, but I’d have to wait and see who’s interested. It may get to the stage where I have to turn stuff down because it may get too busy to do as essentially something of a free enterprise. But we’ll cross that hurdle when we come to it. I think it’s still a little way off yet.
INCREMENTAL RECORDS’ online store launches with MT AUGUSTUS’ sophomore EP, THE WARMEST WINTER at The Zoo, Thu Jul 9. Check out www.incrementalrecords.com and www.myspace.com/mtaugustus for more information.
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