www.musicweek.com THE BIG INTERVIEW MARTINGOLDSCHMIDT
COOKING UP A STORM Y
LABELS BY TIM INGHAM
ou’ve got to wonder if the neighbours have complained: the sheer amount of chuckling emanating from Cooking Vinyl’s
swanky new west London office mustn’t half get on their nerves. Perhaps the whisper’s already out. “That’ll be
the last laugh,” Acton’s local residents will knowingly natter to each other, raising their eyebrows skyward. “They have a lot of last laughs in there.” Ever since Cooking Vinyl and sister company
Essential took on distribution duties for The Prodigy’s Invaders Must Die in 2009, the 26-year- old indie label’s ability to resuscitate artist careers has evolved into all-out resurrection. Were you once a giant band? Did your momentum get lost at your previous label home? Then you might want to call Martin Goldschmidt, Cooking Vinyl MD, and fully qualified ‘Fixer’ of indie artist careers. Offering what it says is a deliberately striking
alternative to bigger labels deals, CV promises artists a modest, fiscally viable sales target, alongside a committed campaign that won’t fizzle out when the next big release emerges: just the ticket for once-huge acts now languishing in the commercial doldrums. Take Marilyn Manson. The gender-bending
goth rocker’s previously almighty popularity looked in freefall around the release of his last LP, 2009’s The High End Of Low. Yet this year’s Cooking Vinyl-issued effort Born Villain has shifted more than 100,000 copies in the US, where it went Top 10 on the mainstream Billboard chart. It’s a similar story for other artists who CV has
picked up in 2012 – from The View to The Cult, The Proclaimers to Counting Crows, The Enemy to Reverend & The Makers and Madness; all acts whose creative and commercial prosperity has been given a shot in the arm by CV’s hands-off, year- round approach to album campaigns. It’s no mystery why Amanda Palmer –
previously thought to be crudely anti-label following her raising of $1.2m via Kickstarter – handpicked Cooking to distribute her 2012 album Theatre Is Evil. “My team looked at tonnes of options and the
folks at Cooking Vinyl seemed like the best allies,” says Palmer – who’d been wriggling to weaken her
British indie Cooking Vinyl has much to celebrate from an
‘amazing’ 2012 – not least record US
success and a new understanding of how to best exploit YouTube
‘The best allies’: Amanda Palmer’s view on the folks at Cooking Vinyl
23.11.12 Music Week 11
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