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Stanley Donwood

Six Inch Records

Stanley Donwood

We encourage you to check out Six Inch Records, a new music label started by Radiohead artist, Stanley Donwood. Yes, that’s right, Stanley is a CEO of his own record label.

What is this all about, you ask? We’ll let Stanley fill you in:

‘SIX INCH RECORDS’ is a project that may take a little explaining.

The story begins around the time of Christmas 2006, when I drunkenly decided to become a record label boss. Every man needs a hobby, or so the cliché has it, and if I was going to make a late-stage attempt at normality then that was one of the things that I should do. So, still reeling from red wine, I typed out a email to three musicians that I knew, suggesting that I release their music on my as-yet-unnamed record label. I have no record of what I wrote in that fateful email, and I had no recollection of it the following morning, when I awoke with a hangover.

Forgive me, for I knew not what I had done. The three musicians replied to my email with alacrity and enthusiasm, promising to send me music, and, perhaps surprisingly, not telling me that setting up a record label at the precise historical point that record labels large and small were going to the wall was probably a really stupid idea.

Never mind, never mind. I started to work out how my ‘hobby’ was going to work. It was true that the musicians I had contacted made music I liked, and I was fairly sure that other people would like it too. I liked music, but during the period that I had been designing record covers I had come to detest the compact disc. The CD, I had decided, was simply too small.

I began to muse on numbers, thinking about the twelve inch record, the speed of thirty-three and a third revolutions, and so on. Eventually I realised that releasing three six-inch records in editions of three hundred and thirty-three and charging six pounds sixty-six pence for each one was the only was to do this.

There would be nine hundred and ninety-nine records in total. Half the profits would go to the musicians and half would go to me. I was going to do this properly. I drew up a contract, which I mailed out to ‘my’ musicians and got them to sign it. SIX INCH RECORDS was born.

Read the rest at the Six Inch Records Blog….
(thanks to Rex)

By Jonathan

New York, NY