Indies
While attending the University of Madison-Wisconsin as a journalism and marketing major from 2003-2006, Rick Stoner fondly remembers roaming the aisles of Strictly Discs — the Monroe Street record store he acquired from longtime owners Ron and Angie Roloff last fall — just as the world was on the cusp of the digital music explosion.
“Strictly Discs is where I bought CDs before I had an iPod,” Stoner says. “That’s another way of saying that I’m 40 years old.”
Buying the beloved local business, which Ron opened in 1988 as a single-level, 800-square-foot shop (he later expanded it by converting the store’s 1,700-square-foot basement level into a retail space) was a full circle moment for Stoner — albeit not one he actively sought out. “I was not looking for a record store,” he says. “I was looking for a business at a certain price point. And the fact that I saw this listing was a very happy coincidence.”
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The relatively quick five-month acquisition process concluded exactly one year ago, on Halloween 2023. And in January, after serving in advisory roles for three months during the handoff, the Roloffs fully exited the business (which was a subject of Billboard‘s “In a Pandemic” series from 2020 to 2021) to officially embark on their retirement, leaving Stoner to pilot the future of a store that has been a part of Madison’s cultural heart for 36 years. It’s a legacy he doesn’t take lightly, and, to foster a sense of continuity, he felt it was important to keep as many of the store’s existing staffers on board as possible.
Record Store Day 2024 at Strictly Discs in Madison, Wis.
Courtesy of Strictly Discs
“Retaining the team has been really my number one priority,” Stoner says. “Maintaining the business, maintaining the customers — to me, all those things are achievable if you’re retaining the brain trust and knowledge and vibe that comes with the team that has been there for a long time.” The store’s entire staff stayed on after the acquisition, including longtime employees Evan Woodward — who now serves as GM and runs the shop on a day-to-day basis — and Mark Chaney, who fills the role of assistant GM. “Everyone’s worked together really well,” Stoner adds. “I think they appreciate maybe a different approach to things, a little more structure, and I certainly appreciate the knowledge of music that they bring.”
Stoner’s 18-year background as a high-level advertising executive focused on management and new business development at companies including Brado, Derse, BBN and Bader Rutter makes him well-equipped to expand into new areas and supercharge what the store was already doing well. One of the first changes under his purview was instituting a new inventory management system that would be capable of handling the shop’s roughly 500,000 used vinyl records in addition to new product (he chose a system that was originally designed for grocery stores).
Another major item on Stoner’s to-do list was already in motion prior to his acquisition of the business: the conversion of 1,000 square feet of the 5,000 square foot Strictly Discs warehouse in neighboring Cambridge, Wis., into a second retail location, which officially opened Oct. 19 on a Wednesday-Sunday schedule (a grand opening is slated for sometime in November after the store’s permanent exterior sign is installed). “We have plenty of customers that aren’t in downtown Madison, and it takes them a while to drive downtown through traffic, find parking,” he says of opening the new storefront. “Now those people will be able to come here. And I also think we’ll be serving a rural customer that maybe just isn’t exposed to the cultural curiosities that come with a record store.”
Stoner is currently looking at creative strategies to build interest and excitement in the new location, including giving customers access to the music lover’s paradise contained in the back 4,000 square feet of the building, which boasts the majority of the business’ used product. Though Stoner has yet to settle on what that would look like, some ideas include quarterly bin-picking days and a “buy a crate and fill the crate” promotion.
Opening day at Strictly Discs’ new retail location in Cambridge, Wis.
Courtesy of Strictly Discs
Strictly Discs’ mountain of used product is one of the business’ key strengths. Beginning in 2010, Ron Roloff focused his energies on acquiring large private music collections in Wisconsin and beyond, leading the store to become known as the home of a treasure trove of hard-to-find records in all different genres. “I think what sets us apart is the volume and quality of more niche genres: jazz, classical,” says Stoner. “We have an extensive soundtrack collection that, before buying the business, I never could have imagined or guessed how well that does for us.”
Those used records are key to another major initiative Stoner has in mind: creating a subscription model that would allow customers to choose a certain number of new or used records per month — which would require integrating the store’s website with the Shopify platform — and either pick up their chosen product in-store or have it delivered to their homes. The idea was partially inspired by similar plans offered by the likes of Vinyl Moon and Vinyl Me, Please — though, as Stoner points out, those companies don’t allow customers the kind of choice Strictly Discs can offer. “If you’re paying $50 or $100 a month, especially if you live in a rural area, the record store is coming to you,” he says. “And I don’t see a lot of shops doing that.”
With a goal of launching some iteration of the subscription model during this year’s holiday shopping season, Stoner and his employees are currently focused on what he calls “the Herculean effort” of cataloging the store’s warehouse inventory. Stoner aims to initially target customers within Wisconsin but outside of Dane County (where Madison is located), drawing interest through targeted ads online and via the store’s email newsletter. “I think my main concern about it is that it doesn’t cannibalize our store,” he says. “So my hope is someone could subscribe to that, pick up things in store, they would get a discount in store for being a member, and it would allow us some growth and customer loyalty.”
Stacks of used vinyl at the Strictly Discs warehouse in Cambridge, Wis.
Courtesy of Strictly Discs
The focus on getting the subscription plans off the ground ties in with Stoner’s overarching goal of beefing up Strictly Disc’s e-commerce efforts. On that front, the Roloffs were already ahead of the game, with a sales mix of 70% in-store and 30% online (within that, the mix is 90% vinyl and 10% CDs; while 65% of vinyl sales are new product.) “I’ve learned that that’s pretty atypical,” he says. I think [we have] the highest online [sales percentage], at least of record stores in our coalition [the Coalition of Independent Music Stores].” And in the long term, he’s looking to flip those stats on their head: “I want that 70-30 to look like 20-80 without hampering the growth of the store,” adds Stoner, who’s hoping to triple the store’s business through online sales.
The plans don’t end there. In addition to supersizing the store’s Record Store Day activities — this year, the store closed down part of Monroe Street with the city’s permission and threw a block party for the event — he’s looking to launch pop-up record shops at music festivals and other events outside of Madison to extend the physical store’s geographic reach.
For all of his ambitious plans, the store’s longtime customers probably won’t notice much of a difference. Like Ron, Stoner is currently intent on keeping Strictly Discs a pure music shop, steering clear of merch sales and other non-music items — which would be difficult to institute in any event, he says, given the shop’s relatively small footprint — and keeping intact what people loved about it in the first place.
“[In] our main record shop in Madison … almost nothing has changed, and that’s been intentional,” Stoner says. “It’ll be a staple of the community for the next 36 years, just like it has been the last 36 years.”
More in this series:Twist & Shout in Denver, Colo.Grimey’s in Nashville, Tenn.Home Rule in Washington, D.C.Sweat Records in Miami, Fla.
Over the last decade or two, there have been dozens of difficult licensing negotiations between rightsholders and online music platforms — some of which played out in public or even resulted in content being unavailable online.
Just this week, around the time YouTube temporarily took down music by SESAC songwriters, the digital rights licensing collective Merlin informed its member labels that TikTok “walked away” from talks to renew its license agreement and planned to deal with labels individually. This letter Merlin sent to its members says TikTok’s goal is “fragmenting the Merlin membership, in order, we believe, to minimize their pay out.”
In one way, this is an old story. Most online platforms have so much market share that it’s hard for rightsholders to negotiate good deals: There’s just one TikTok, just like there’s just one Facebook and just one YouTube. But there are thousands of labels. Since smaller labels need giant platforms more than those platforms need labels, they need to bulk up, in order to balance market share against market share. For indie labels, that means either making a distribution deal with a major or joining Merlin, which negotiates on behalf of its members. (This same idea has fueled a merger mania throughout the media business, as movie studios and book publishers merge to better deal with Netflix or Amazon.) Sometimes, though, platforms push back.
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In another way, this is an old story with a new twist. TikTok has suggested that part of the reason it wants to change its deal structure is that it’s concerned about fraud, specifically the alleged delivery of recordings and remixes by labels that do not own the rights to them or assert ownership incorrectly — a problem that sources say comes disproportionately from a few companies. This seems like a reasonable concern, and it’s one that’s widely shared, although the problem is hardly unique to Merlin. Plus, it should be possible to exclude a small number of bad actors from a new Merlin deal, and it’s hard to imagine that dealing with indies directly wouldn’t give TikTok a financial advantage.
In yet another way, this is a whole new kind of negotiation, the likes of which the music business hasn’t seen since the early days of YouTube. These days, most online platforms need to play nice, or at least sort of nice, since negotiations that turn ugly in public tend to be distracting from other public policy priorities, and because today’s negotiating counterparty could become tomorrow’s business partner.
TikTok seems less concerned with these issues: It went without a Universal Music deal for about three months early this year and then didn’t renew its NMPA-blessed deal with independent publishers. Partly, that could be because it’s already facing an existential policy issue in the form of a ban in the U.S., or at least a forced sale to prevent that. It also seems to think that music doesn’t drive as much value — which could be why it’s shutting down its nascent TikTok Music subscription service. Whether or not the company is right, its attitude toward rightsholders can be very different.
TikTok is also developing a reputation, fairly or not, for being less sentimental about the culture business than other platforms. For years, most online platforms have made the case that rightsholders are better off with the deals they’re offering, because of the exposure they offer — think YouTube or Spotify. TikTok clearly has significant promotional value, but it tends to act more aggressively. Or maybe its other reputational issues are so significant that pissing off music rightsholders just isn’t as big a deal.
That could change — TikTok’s Merlin strategy has indie labels rattled because it could splinter the rights group. If the platform’s gambit works, other companies could follow and Merlin could end up in a weaker position. The bigger indies would be fine. Others might look for leverage from the major labels’ indie distribution companies, like The Orchard (Sony Music) and Virgin (UMG), which would further undermine Merlin. This would damage the whole indie ecosystem — especially the small labels run by creative founders who don’t have the infrastructure to negotiate as smartly as Merlin.
There’s also a chance that this won’t be as easy as TikTok thinks. Going around Merlin could save it money, but if it’s so simple you wonder why no other platform has tried it. One reason is that Merlin deals cover a wide range of labels and content, some of which could be hard to get otherwise. Another is that it’s easier to do one negotiation than hundreds. Assuming, of course, that TikTok is serious about negotiating, as opposed to simply sending a letter with deal terms that it expects rigthsholders to accept.
Last year, TikTok attempted to answer a seemingly simple question: What would TikTok be without music?
In February 2023, the company ran tests in Australia limiting the amount of licensed music some users encountered on the app. TikTok never revealed the results of those tests to the public, but some Australians who had their music libraries limited took to Twitter (now X) to complain. “wtf is up with tiktok removing like half the sounds??? like i swear ive seen SO many tiktoks where the sound has been removed,” tweeted one user.
The evidence is only anecdotal, but these tweets suggest that having limited access to licensed music did have at least some impact on the user experience in Australia.
Since its inception, the value of music has been an existential question for TikTok. This comes as no surprise; the company started out as the lipsyncing app Musical.ly, and in its current form, it is one of the most effective music discovery tools in the world. But since the modern-day TikTok launched as a general social media app — one that still features lots of music — the company has struggled to figure out how big a role music should play in their business — and how much they should have to pay for it.
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In the last year or so, TikTok has fought a prolonged battle against Universal Music Group over music licensing rates, AI, and safety concerns, leading to UMG’s three-month boycott of the platform; downsized parts of its music team; shut down the development of TikTok Music, its nascent music streaming app; and, last week, “walked away” from Merlin’s attempts to negotiate a renewed collective license for the 30,000 indie labels and distributors it represents. Instead, citing issues around fraudulent content, TikTok is only pursuing direct deals with Merlin’s member labels.
The UMG feud in particular seemed to represent a major turning point in TikTok’s perception of the value of music. The stalemate, which lasted from February to May, essentially took the small experiments done in Australia and brought them to a global stage with the world’s single largest catalog. Everyone from stars like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Drake and the Weeknd, down to small artists signed to labels using UMG distributor Virgin, were removed from the platform overnight. If any event would have proved that music had negotiating power over TikTok, it would’ve been this one — but the impact was much more limited than the music biz would have hoped.
From talking to TikTok users during the UMG feud, many felt that the app experience was largely the same. Rarely, if ever, would anyone find a video on their “For You Page” with muted UMG audio. Whatever unknowable algorithm controls that feed simply adjusted to serve videos with still-available songs instead, seamlessly. The only time a user would notice the difference is if they were making a video themselves and realized they couldn’t find songs from a UMG-affiliated artist.
Plus, UMG artists big and small proved that they still wanted to make content for the app, even though doing so diminished the pressure UMG could put on TikTok to improve their compensation. Some UMG artists played their songs live instead of using the UMG-owned recording. Others would use unauthorized remixes (including sped up, slowed down and mashed up versions) of their UMG-controlled songs. Some ended up striking direct deals with the platform or finding contractual workarounds to skirt the ban, and the final nail in the coffin seemingly came when Taylor Swift’s catalog suddenly came back to TikTok on April 11 —– complete with a special campaign around her then-upcoming album, The Tortured Poets Department.
When the two companies finally reached a deal three weeks later, just before UMG’s next earnings call, UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge spoke triumphantly about the new TikTok deal. “This new chapter in our relationship with TikTok focuses on the value of music, the primacy of human artistry and the welfare of the creative community,” Grainge said. It’s quite possible that, with the new deal, UMG extracted many of the concessions that it wanted from TikTok.
Still, overall, the effects of the three-month standoff were pretty limited: many TikTok users didn’t notice a change, while UMG’s stream count went unaffected. The key takeaway is that artists, desperate for promotion, would still make musical content for the app for free, even if it infringed on their own unlicensed copyrights. It became a race to the bottom, like so many other things in music.
So it comes as little surprise that when Merlin’s TikTok license came up for renegotiation, TikTok played hardball —– or rather, TikTok just refused to play ball with Merlin altogether.
Instead, TikTok wants to license its 30,000 indie record label members individually — a move which Merlin sees as an attempt to “fractionalize” members to “minimize” licensing costs, according to a letter Merlin sent to its labels last week.
The whole idea of Merlin — which says it represents 15% of music repertoire globally — is for these small, individual labels to be able to band together and negotiate deal terms with digital partners that are at least in the same neighborhood as their bigger major label brethren. Antitrust laws prevent Merlin from telling its members what to do, meaning TikTok is technically free to negotiate individually and bypass their coalition. Even if Merlin could pull such a move to band together its membership against TikTok, it’s hard to imagine a boycott of indie music going any better than UMG’s.
Optically, it’s one thing for TikTok to stand up to the biggest music company in the world and argue that UMG had put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters” in an attempt to lower the rates it had to pay the label. It’s another entirely for the app, which has over a billion users, to lowball the little guys.
Overshadowing all of this, of course, is the fact that TikTok’s corporate parent Bytedance is in a court battle with the U.S. government that, if it loses, could mean it would be forced to sell its U.S. business. In preparation, TikTok is likely cutting costs wherever it can. Given how tough it is for the music industry to walk away from TikTok, it’s unfortunately one of the easiest places to start.
So what is the value of music to TikTok? It’s been a moving target throughout the company’s history. In light of recent events, however, I’ll let you be the judge.
This story was published as part of Billboard’s new music technology newsletter ‘Machine Learnings.’ Sign up for ‘Machine Learnings,’ and Billboard’s other newsletters, here.
Merlin, which negotiates digital licenses for a coalition of more than 30,000 independent labels around the world, told its members in a letter on Friday (Sept. 27) that TikTok “walked away” from talks to renew their TikTok license “before negotiations even began.”
“[TikTok] informed us that they do not want to renew our deal,” the letter, obtained by Billboard, states. “They informed us that… they intend to license some of our members directly.” The current Merlin-TikTok license is set to expire on Oct. 31.
“Their approach [to pursue direct deals with Merlin members] suggests that [TikTok] believe[s] their objectives can be better served by fragmenting the Merlin membership, in order, we believe, to minimize their pay out,” states the letter. “As you know, Merlin was founded to stand up for and champion its members. We will not support an approach that devalues our community.”
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A TikTok spokesperson says that “TikTok would like to offer all of the world’s music to our users. We are committed to working with the independent sector as well as the major labels and publishers. We know that our community of over a billion music fans value the diversity and richness that independent music brings to our platform. We are committed to entering into direct deals with Merlin members in order to keep their music on TikTok.”
Founded in 2008, Merlin represents 15% of the global recorded music market, and it uses that collective market power to negotiate with digital partners on behalf of its members on a similar footing as the bigger major labels. The end of its license with TikTok would mean that top songs from artists like Coolio, Diplo, Faye Webster, J Dilla, The Lumineers, Mac Demarco, Madlib, Mitski, Nirvana, Phoebe Bridgers, Thundercat, Wet Leg and more will leave the platform after Halloween, unless their respective labels are able to reach agreements with TikTok. Each label individually would have to agree to terms with the platform, negotiating with a much smaller market footprint than they would have collectively.
Merlin is the third music organization this year, after Universal Music Group and National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), to express challenges in renewing music licenses with TikTok. In February, UMG’s failure to reach a deal with TikTok led to the removal of its entire catalog of hits from TikTok for about three months. In April, after publicly supporting UMG’s position against TikTok, the NMPA allowed its TikTok license, which was used by a number of indie publishers, to lapse as well. It has not been renewed.
“We believe the most likely reason that TikTok did this is that TikTok does not want to pay a fair rate for the music that powers their platform,” Merlin’s letter to members continues. “If this is right, then TikTok does not value independent music, the independent labels and distributors who support that music, nor the diverse artists who create it. They are unlike every other partner that Merlin works with.”
Along with negotiating digital deals for indie labels on TikTok, Merlin also licenses members’ catalogs to 40 services around the world, including platforms like YouTube, Meta, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, SoundCloud, Deezer and more.
Separately, Billboard obtained an email TikTok sent out to some Merlin members, stating that the short-form video app “decided not to renew [its] license agreements with Merlin” and that TikTok “may be able to do direct deals” with the labels, provided that they agree to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). “The purpose of the NDA is to enable us to discuss direct licensing agreements with you.” The deadline to sign and return the NDA is Oct. 4. A source familiar with TikTok said, however, that any Merlin label that wishes to stay on TikTok after Oct. 31 can review and sign the TikTok and CapCut agreements anytime before Oct. 25.
Merlin told its members that it is doing “all [it] can to re-engage with TikTok… we have already made it clear to them that we are ready to hold an actual negotiation and address any concerns they may have.”
While Merlin believes TikTok’s move is an attempt to keep the price tag for indie music lower than it would like, the organization’s letter to members also says that TikTok has “suggested” they are walking away “because of concerns about ‘fraud.’” “As we have told them on numerous occasions, we are incredibly proactive on this issue,” the letter states.
“TikTok’s refusal to negotiate a deal with Merlin isn’t just a setback — it’s a threat to the whole music ecosystem,” Dr. Richard Burgess, president of the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), says of the situation. “This isn’t just about Merlin; it’s about properly recognizing the value of artists and their music.”
Merlin declined Billboard’s request for comment. In an interview with Billboard published last week, Merlin CEO Jeremy Sirota discussed his approach to renewing partnerships with platforms such as Meta and YouTube, with which Merlin has struck new deals of late. “We don’t think of it as, ‘Let’s come back and kick the tires every few years,’” Sirota said. “We want to help shape their thinking about music and their understanding of what independents need at an operational level. We want to do the same thing with our partners to create this continual feedback loop and conversation.”
Merlin’s membership includes, but is not limited to, independent labels like 4AD, Brain Feeder, Captured Tracks, Domino, Dualtone, Empire, Higher Ground, Matador, Ninja Tune, Secretly Group, Stones Throw, Subpop, Tommy Boy, XL and thousands more.
Read Merlin’s letter to members below in full:
Dear Merlin Member,
On August 5th, we informed you that we expected a difficult negotiation with TikTok.
This past Wednesday, with no warning, TikTok walked away before negotiations even began. They informed us that (1) they do not want to renew our deal, which expires on October 31st, and (2) they intend to license some of our members directly. To be even more clear, unfortunately, as of now, there will not be a Merlin-TikTok deal after October 31st.
We believe the most likely reason that TikTok did this is that TikTok does not want to pay a fair rate for the music that powers their platform. If this is right, then TikTok does not value independent music, the independent labels and distributors who support that music, nor the diverse artists who create it. They are unlike every other partner that Merlin works with.
TikTok pays substantially less for your music than other services, apparently relying on the perception that artists cannot afford to have their music unavailable on the platform. We made a good faith proposal to narrow this gap, but rather than negotiate, TikTok chose to simply walk away.
Given that TikTok refused to negotiate with us, our view is that they must see the obligation to pay fair royalties as a nuisance. They must view Merlin – with its mission to protect and maximize the value of our members’ music – as too strong a negotiating partner for their liking. Their approach suggests that they believe their objectives can be better served by fragmenting the Merlin membership, in order, we believe, to minimize their pay out.
TikTok has asked us for an “orderly transition” to do direct deals with those members they deem worthy. As you know, Merlin was founded to stand up for and champion its members. We will not support an approach that devalues our community.
The Merlin team remains dedicated to forging meaningful relationships between our members and partners, as well as driving value into every partnership. This includes dedicated teams to answer member inquiries across every aspect of our partnerships, operational support, best practices guides, partner-led and Merlin-led webinars, consolidated pitch forms, and so much more.
We are doing all we can to re-engage with TikTok to secure a renewal agreement for our members. We have already made it clear to them that we are ready to hold an actual negotiation and address any concerns they may have. TikTok has also suggested that they are walking away because of concerns about “fraud,” but as we have told them on numerous occasions, we are incredibly pro-active on this issue.
We recognized early on, and communicated with TikTok, the concerning growth and impact of stream manipulation and fraudulent content both on TikTok and across the marketplace. We have worked productively and collaboratively with TikTok on this issue, and until now, no concerns have been raised about the approach Merlin is taking. We have implemented measures to address illegitimate activity and content; automated systems to detect suspicious activity; and a dedicated team to address issues and impose sanctions, including ultimately, termination of membership for bad actors.
Members must, as ever, make their own decisions on how to deal with TikTok. For our part, we will never stop fighting for the value that our members bring, regardless of how this situation resolves itself.
We will follow-up by separate email with whatever answers we might have on your operational questions.
When Jeremy Sirota signed on as CEO of indie digital rights nonprofit Merlin in January 2020, he had already spent years championing the independent music community.
After starting his career as a tech lawyer in the mid-2000s, Sirota worked for nine years at the Warner Music Group at WEA and ADA, helping to distribute WMG’s affiliated indie-label partners. He then moved to Facebook Music, where he was independent label lead for its business and partnerships team. That experience gives him the perspective needed to assist Merlin’s 500-plus members representing 30,000-plus label partners in more than 70 countries in navigating an increasingly complex digital world.
Over the past four years, he has worked to set those labels — which collectively represent some 15% of the global recorded-music market — on a course to optimize partnerships that increasingly power the business. They include expanded alliances with Meta and YouTube; deals with SoundCloud, for its fan-powered royalties structure, and Deezer, for its “artist-centric” royalties plan; and a new initiative, Merlin Connect, that grants select tech startups a license for its members’ catalogs to help educate those new companies about music usage on their platforms while getting Merlin’s labels and their artists paid.
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Since Sirota became CEO, Merlin has added more than 100 members and launched a mentorship program, Merlin Engage, which pairs women music executives with the next generation of female industry leaders. He’s also debuted Merlin Insights, launched in April to help parse the avalanche of data that indies must process. And as the sector grows globally, Sirota says he’s focused on how to best superserve Merlin’s labels. “There are a lot of ways we think about growth,” he explains. “The most important are ‘Am I driving more value to my members? Am I helping support their ability to be independent? And am I helping to shape a future where artistry, authenticity and creativity can thrive?’ ”
Have you brought in new members and territories this year?
Our growth is about making sure that our values are held by the members who join. This year, 11 new members have joined Merlin, including Artist Partner Group, UNIFIED and Rostrum Pacific. We’ve grown the team to deliver on white-glove support. That involves three things: automate as much as possible; communicate; and collaborate more efficiently and effectively. Something we think about a lot is “How do we free people up?” We’re now over 50 people and have added people around the world at all levels. One of the most important things we do is report and pay to our members on a timely basis so they can pay their bills, their labels and their artists. And we’re deepening our relationships with some of our partners, like Meta, and doing things with [graphic design platform] Canva — which I’m really excited about. We’re finding new ways to monetize music in a healthy and fair way.
A coffee enthusiast, Sirota calls this “my rocket ship of an espresso maker — a Profitec, gifted by my wife — with which I enjoy my daily ritual of making cortados.” He admits to a “guilty love of New York deli coffee with a generous dose of milk and sugar.”
Nina Westervelt
How does Merlin Insights benefit your members?
Insights is a big initiative. We now have a data operations team to make sure that all trends data is being delivered in the right format. Our market share on some of these platforms is significant — more than just the 15% we talk about. So we have this incredible wealth of data. What could we do with that that members cannot do on their own? If you’re not a global organization with 10,000 employees all around the world, we have the ability to pull out interesting stories that help our members — things they don’t know because they’re not on the ground. We do reports, webinars, feedback loops with members around: What else do they want to see? What do we get right? What do we get wrong? That’s where this membership, this community, really comes into play.
What are some of the biggest challenges facing indies right now?
Their world keeps changing so rapidly, and whatever worked six months ago doesn’t work today. That’s why I talk so much about this one-on-one white-glove approach, which is helping them understand where things are headed so that they can make better decisions. Compared to a major, they have less capital, less resources, smaller teams. They have to be more nimble, and the decisions they make have to be right more often. What kind of guidance are you giving them? What does it mean to break and sustain artists, given the way this world’s operating? And what can we be doing with data, our deal-making and with our partners? And then, what are the next, new opportunities? If music is like water, it’s flowing everywhere, and yet it’s not picking up the monetization it should. So trying to find those next, new opportunities.
Is that one of the ideas behind Merlin Connect?
We’re trying to make the ability for startups — pre-seed companies — to be able to more seamlessly tap into music, from a licensing perspective, from an operational perspective, and get value in return for that. But they may not even realize the value of music. We’re also trying to tackle people who may not have thought about music.
I look at so many different types of companies where music could be so valuable to them if they just understood it. We want to make it more seamless, the operations, the licensing, and then there’s an education piece. But it’s not just a license — we’re investing in you as well. You get access to our team, which [collectively] has hundreds of years of music experience with startups about what works and what doesn’t work. You get access to our independent members who love to be on the cutting edge.
We’ve had some really good conversations with some companies now. This is a long-term project — this is our approach now to how we think about the ecosystem and how we nurture it. I’m not going to change the trajectory of every startup just because they have music now, but I think I can fundamentally change the trajectory of so many startups in a way they don’t realize yet.
This photo of David Bowie, taken by Mick Rock, “is a cherished piece because it captures Bowie’s aura.”
Nina Westervelt
Is this about finding new growth sectors?
One hundred percent. It’s almost endless, the types of platforms and startups that could benefit from music. And it’s going to take experimentation. You can’t help everything grow, but there’s a lot out there that’s not growing the way it could. And it’s going to benefit Merlin and its members and their labels and artists, but it could have beneficial ramifications for the whole industry as well. If we can help be a part of that, that would be really exciting.
How have your experiences at Warner and Facebook served you at Merlin?
It gave me the ability to relate to people at different levels in the business, whether it’s a product manager at a digital platform, or an engineer who’s now a founder of a startup, or it’s a member who runs a metal label, or [is] the head of [European indie trade association] IMPALA. I try to see the business through their eyes. I’ve always been on the service side, and that’s always been the through line. People want to know that you understand them, and that they were heard, and that you’re working to do what you can.
When Merlin renewed its Meta partnership this year, you said it was about more than licensing music. What else do you expect of these alliances?
We don’t think of it as “Let’s come back and kick the tires every few years.” We want to help shape their thinking about music and their understanding of what independents need at an operational level. We want to do the same thing with our partners to create this continual feedback loop and conversation.
“These artifacts represent a different period of my life that keeps me grounded,” he says. They include awards from the Eagle Scouts, WEA and the Young Presidents Organization.
Nina Westervelt
What were your reasons for Merlin’s deals with SoundCloud and Deezer over their proposed changes to the royalty payout model for streaming services?
We want to make sure no one’s gaming the system. We want to make sure that fraudulent content is not an issue. We want to make sure that artificial streaming is not an issue. We’re absolutely willing to experiment and try out different models. But when you say, “Let’s change the system,” we need to be really careful about two things. One is unintended consequences. And No. 2 is, sometimes what I hear is, “Let’s penalize independents.” Let’s prevent abuse, but let’s be careful. Let’s be incremental to avoid unintended consequences. And let’s not do something that will make it more difficult for independents to operate. It’s already expensive enough to operate in this space, and it’s creating more barriers to entry for those who don’t have the same level of capital to arbitrage against.
That raises a question. Over the past 10 to 15 years, many of the traditional barriers to the music business have come down. It seems like some of these proposed changes to the model are a bit like “Let’s rebuild some of those walls.” Do you feel like things are too wide open now? Do we actually need barriers to entry?
When I hear “create more barriers to entry,” I have a little bit of reflex [thinking that means] “Let’s make it more difficult for independents.” At the same time, you want to be supporting quality music. What has happened is technology is outpacing how we operate as humans. I think the biggest challenge music always has is that there is a zero-sum game around some of this. It’s one of the reasons we’re always thinking about creating new incremental revenue sources.
Where did the idea of Merlin Engage come from, and how have things gone so far?
Katie Alberts from Reach Records was the first to propose this, and Marie Clausen from Ninja Tune was the second. This is our second year. We’re conscious of not biting off more than we can chew. But what is really great about it is, we’re matching very senior leaders with up-and-coming, next-generation female leaders. And what I find particularly inspiring is that these people who are incredibly busy are willing to put time toward it. The second is, we’re creating another mini community. And it’s global, we’re connecting people from different countries. There’s so much we want to do at Merlin, but this one was just a no-brainer to help move the music industry in a better direction.
“I keep a curated sample of already-read books nearby as an invitation to be inspired,” he says. Above them: “A graffiti artwork by my talented aunt, Laura Shechter, whose art estate I manage.”
Nina Westervelt
This story appears in the Sept. 28, 2024 issue of Billboard magazine.
When Home Rule Records owner Charvis Campbell got a cold call from the Office of the Vice President of the United States on May 3, 2023, he felt the way most people would have when confronted by the same scenario: perplexed.
“It felt like an interview, like a background check,” Campbell tells Billboard. “When we were done, I was like, ‘Wait, this is kind of weird.’”
But the calls continued. Next, VP Kamala Harris’ representative asked if anyone from the Uptown Washington, D.C., record store would be in the shop that day and mentioned that someone from the office might stop by. Then, Campbell got another call from a different representative who strongly suggested he stick around. The next thing he knew, the Secret Service came to inspect the 2,700 sq. ft. independent record store — and then the vice president followed.
With a swarm of press around Vice President Harris, Campbell tried to help her around the store by asking what she might be interested in. “I’m like, ‘Okay, you want to talk about Coltrane?’ and she was like, ‘No, I want Mingus.’ She was looking for the real jazz,” says Campbell. “She had that keen sense to want some real hardcore music.”
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On May 9, Harris posted a video on Instagram that showed her walking away from HR Records — which specializes in used jazz, soul, R&B, funk and more — with three vinyl records: Charles Mingus’ Let My Children Hear Music (“one of the greatest jazz performers ever”); Roy Ayers’ Everybody Loves the Sunshine (one of her “favorite albums of all time”); and Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald’s “beautiful” collaborative 1959 album, Porgy and Bess.
“It was one of those things that wasn’t planned,” says Campbell, adding that Vice President Harris asked about the challenges of running his small business and engaged with several people who happened to be in the shop. “It was very unexpected, but sincere in the sense of her enjoying the music and wanting to learn more about the shop.
“For me,” Campbell adds, “it was, ‘There’s a lot of other places you can be right now, but the fact that you took the time says you’re supportive of small businesses, but also of our shop.’”
After Harris’ visit and her subsequent clinching of the Democratic nomination for president, Campbell says there has been a notable increase in HR’s social media engagement, and out-of-town visitors will stop by to take a photo where Harris once was. It’s been a boon for one of the rare Black-owned record stores in the country (Campbell estimates there are only about 20 to 30 across the nation), not to mention for such a young establishment.
Campbell and his business partner Michael Bernstein opened HR Records in 2018 with no music business experience between them (though Bernstein had worked as an independent musician many years prior). Campbell had been driving up to Baltimore from D.C. on a regular basis to purchase vinyl from the small independent shop East-West Records until its owner, Bill Coates, informed Campbell the store would be closing for good.
“I would tease the owner and say, ‘Hey, if we bring this to D.C., we’ll make some money,’” says Campbell. “Being the wise sage that he was he said, ‘No, you don’t want to get into the record business.’”
Undaunted, Campbell bought Coates’ entire collection and quickly realized he needed to do something with it. Initially, the collection went into the back of an antique shop for about six months, before Campbell and Bernstein landed on a location for HR Records. In 2018, they opened their doors on 702 Kennedy Street NW and began selling exclusively used vinyl.
Kamala Harris shops at Home Rule Records with ownwer Charvis Campbell in Washington, DC, on May 3, 2023.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
HR Records does not lack for inventory, with thousands of records packed into bins and decorating the walls. (“Too many to count,” says Campbell.)
In addition to vinyl, the store carries CDs and merch that each account for roughly 10% of its inventory. The other 80% is a curated collection of rare and used jazz, soul, reggae and African music records. While the store has participated in Record Store Day, Campbell found it overwhelming for such a small and niche shop. “I would prefer to have that ‘68 Blue Note on the wall as opposed to the reissue of it,” he says. “The reissue sounds great, but I’ll go for the original any day.”
To fill the crates with rare vinyl, Campbell has had to develop relationships with a lot of private collectors, which he considers the hardest and best part of his job. “Once we sell that amazing Sun Ra or Coltrane or Eric Dolphy record, it’s gone,” Campbell says. “That’s what I think [Coates] was getting at. It’s going to take time and effort to build up a place where people feel comfortable giving you their records so that records are coming in the door.”
It has taken years for Campbell to acquire many collections, but he says the effort has been worthwhile. Developing those private collector relationships has led to even greater opportunities, like creating The HR Music and Film Foundation, which was born from COVID-relief work the store did for musicians by hosting gigs at the small stage in the back of the shop, filming them and promoting the videos and artists on their social media. After roughly 15 shows, the HR team realized they could get more support if they formed a not-for-profit organization.
Today, the HR Music and Film Foundation produces live musical performances, concerts, film screenings and festivals. It also educates youth in the community through workshops, classes and hands-on experience, allowing them to develop confidence and skills in music production, audio production, filmmaking, photography and graphic design. The foundation’s first project was a documentary on Black Fire Records, a Black-owned independent jazz label that started in D.C. in the 1970s. In support of the film, the foundation launched a local outdoor festival with live music and an evening screening of the documentary in 2022. The third annual Home Rule Music Festival took place in June and the documentary aired on PBS in 2023.
“When I think of the work we’ve done now with our foundation and the documentaries,” says Campbell, “It’s about using the medium of film combined with music which is so powerful in terms of being able to tell stories and educate people and educate our community.”
More in this series: Grimey’s in Nashville, Tenn.; Twist & Shout in Denver, Colo.
Like a lot of independent record shops, Nashville-based Grimey’s New & Preloved Music and Books sometimes offers giveaways for customers, with prizes such as tickets to local shows and vinyl pressings. But given its location in the creative hub of East Nashville, Grimey’s co-owner Doyle Davis says those giveaways have led to some unusual moments.
“We’ll take a picture of the winner and tag them on social media when they pick up their prize,” Davis tells Billboard. “One time, we posted a photo of a guy showing off his prize — and [rock icon and former Led Zeppelin lead singer] Robert Plant was walking up the aisle right behind him. When we posted that [photo], all the comments were like, ‘Robert Plant photo-bombed your guy.’”
Grimey’s has been a hotspot and refuge for music lovers — celebrity or not — for 25 years. The East Nashville store is Grimey’s third location: it was launched in 1999 in Nashville’s Berry Hill area, before moving to 8th Ave. S. and finally to its current location at 1060 East Trinity Lane in 2018.
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“John Prine used to shop here regularly, especially at our old location. We were right down the street from [meat-and-three restaurant] Arnold’s, where he would get his meatloaf every week,” Davis recalls, also noting artists such as Kacey Musgraves and Emmylou Harris stopping by Grimey’s over the years.
Grimey’s is housed in a former Pentecostal church that offers a homey vibe, with stained glass windows; arched, wooden ceilings; a performance stage (Davis remodeled the area into a space for more intimate musical performances); and two floors filled with vinyl, CDs, books and more. The 4,000-square-foot space continues to be an essential component of Nashville’s music community, with Davis estimating that roughly 70% of the store’s sales come from vinyl, with the other 30% coming from books, CDs, DVDs, etc.
Based in the heart of East Nashville’s creative community, the store counts Americana as its best-selling music genre, with the store’s best-selling artists being Jason Isbell, Musgraves and Sturgill Simpson.
“We recently did a signing with Kacey and her [2024] Deeper Well album and it was the only signing she was doing for the whole album release cycle,” Davis says. “We had over a thousand people and she signed for four hours. That was the most records of a single new title that I’ve sold in one week. Jason Isbell was my previous record at 850.”
Grimey’s
Courtesy Photo
Davis co-owns Grimey’s with the store’s namesake and founder Mike Grimes, who launched the store in a small Berry Hill-area home. In 2002, Davis, who had been an executive at another Nashville record shop, The Great Escape, joined Grimes as a co-owner. At the time, Davis suggested that they focus on selling new vinyl.
“Nashville had great record stores. The Great Escape was a great record store, but it was all used [records],” Davis says. “If people wanted new records, they either mail ordered them or you bought them at Tower Records. Tower had a pretty lame selection, in my opinion, at the time, and it took them forever to restock something if they sold out of it. Being a real record store guy my whole life, I just thought, ‘There’s a niche we can fill here. We’ll carry all the cool indie music the chain stores don’t carry.’ We really centered on new vinyl, and this was when Steve Jobs had just opened the iTunes store, Napster was on the wane, and they were finding new ways of legally selling digital music — everything was gravitating to no physical media.”
In 2004, Grimey’s relocated to the 8th Ave. S. location, where it quickly became an indie music hub. The live music venue The Basement (founded by Grimes) was located downstairs, while the building at the time also served as office space for Thirty Tigers and indie radio station WXNA. As Grimey’s expanded on 8th Avenue, they leased the building next door and opened the bookstore Grimey’s Too.
At the same time, Grimey’s began supporting artists through in-store performances that allowed bands to promote their new records. In 2008, rock band Metallica recorded the album Live at Grimey’s at The Basement before their performance at Bonnaroo Music Festival.
“We carried it for 10 years until it went out of print,” Davis recalls, also noting that Nashville resident and Americana luminary Isbell once played a show in the back parking lot of Grimey’s, with more than 1,000 people in attendance.
“[Jason] did an in-store performance with us for every solo album he ever released until the pandemic hit, and he wasn’t able to do that one,” Davis recalls. “We had The Black Keys early on when they were still playing clubs. Years ago, the band fun. did an in-store, and then Black Pumas did an in-store performance, and six months later they were huge and on the Grammys. I had always hoped we would get Wilco to play here, and they finally did in November 2019, right before the pandemic.”
After the landlord did not offer Grimey’s a long-term lease on the 8th Ave. location and noted the building would be put up for sale, Grimes and Davis knew they needed to scout a new site for Grimey’s, which led to its current location.
“My real estate agent showed me a photo of the building and it was the right size, it was beautiful, and it was affordable,” Davis recalls, noting that he did have some concerns at the time about relocating to East Nashville, where the area was already home to at least two other record shops, The Groove and Vinyl Tap.
“What I hoped might happen seems to be what happened: that the customers coming over to East Nashville to visit our store would also visit the other stores,” Davis says, noting that in the ‘90s, he visited London’s Berwick Street, which was known as “Record Road” for its large number of record shops. “Each store had its specialty and if you’re an omnivorous music fan, you would hit all the shops. I know from talking to folks that on Record Store Day, for example, lots of people will hit Grimey’s, Vinyl Tap and The Groove, because we’re all in the same neighborhood.”
Paramore + Doyle & Grimey
Courtesy Photo
While streaming rules the modern-day music marketplace, vinyl has seen steady growth over the past nearly two decades, something Davis attributes to the popular Record Store Day that started in 2007. Grimey’s focuses on buying from original source distributors but also uses one-stop distributors, with Davis estimating the shop has approximately 12,600 new vinyl records and 3,000 used records.
“By 2010 or 2011, we were seeing 30% and 35% increases year over year — and that’s broadly, not just in my store,” he says. “Vinyl was back, but it wasn’t mainstream at the time.” Since the pandemic began, Davis says vinyl has “reached a whole new tipping point,” nodding to pop artists such as Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo moving large numbers of vinyl units.
“We’re selling tons of Taylor records and Olivia. For a while, we couldn’t keep enough Harry Styles records in stock,” Davis says. “That’s new to me. We’ve got high school kids coming into the store. We’ve always had some percentage of college students, the early adopter kids. Vinyl was seen as a hipster thing for quite a while, but I don’t see anybody looking at it that way. If anything, it’s seen as a pop trend.”
While Davis does acknowledge commerce challenges in pricing and direct-to-consumer sales, he sees indie record shops as an enduring part of the music ecosystem.
“If you can only afford one record a month, just due to prices, then even the used ones are not cheap,” Davis says. “You’ve always had the dollar bins, but records that were straight to the dollar bin previously are sometimes $5 records. I also see the direct-to-consumer initiatives, but we’ve faced that pretty much most of the way. And there’s an experience in a record store you can’t get online — it’s a physical space, with like-minded people; I love watching my employees interact with customers. If you’re really into this culture, there’s nothing like an independent record store, as far as experience goes.
“Vinyl never went away and it’s here to stay. I do believe that,” Davis says of the future of the format. “We’ve seen steady growth now for well over a decade, and it’s already moved into a new generation. Now you have kids [buying vinyl] whose parents did not grow up with vinyl — their parents were CD and digital natives. Vinyl is a way to slow down. You get the lyrics, the inserts, the art — the artist’s whole vision.”
Next Store: Twist & Shout in Denver, Colorado
Sometime in 2000, Patrick Brown nudged Paul Epstein, then-owner of Twist & Shout in Denver. “Hey,” the record store manager told his boss, “I think Eric Clapton‘s out there shopping.”
“What should I do?” Epstein said.
“How about you say, ‘I’m Paul, I own the store, how can I help you?’”
Epstein helped Clapton search for an obscure Bing Crosby soundtrack from the ’40s, and the two bonded over blues and jazz records. Epstein learned Clapton was waiting for his clothes to dry at the laundromat across the street from Twist & Shout’s then-location. And Brown listened quietly. “It’s not my thing so much,” he recalls. “I said hello and that was it.”
Today, Brown is the owner of this music community capital on the west side of Denver, a soothing gallery of colorful rectangles, from the Madonna and Pete Townshend portraits facing off at the top of a west wall to the rows of books, CDs and LPs that seem to go on forever. Epstein and his wife, Jill, who co-founded the store in 1988, retired in 2022 and sold to Brown, one of two remaining employees who has worked at each of the three locations where Twist has existed over the years. “Patrick is a little less likely to fanboy, even over people he is a fan of,” says Alf Kremer, the store’s longtime bookkeeper. “With him, it wouldn’t be Clapton — it’d be, I don’t know, [Robert] Fripp.”
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Brown landed his first job at Twist in 1992, after he’d spent an earlier summer wandering the aisles, blasting indie rock and avant-garde jazz through his headphones. Epstein put Brown to work tearing up cardboard CD longboxes and slipping their liner-note booklets into plastic sheaths; the idea was to store the actual CDs in the back to avoid in-store theft.
He turned out to be not only a loyal employee but an indispensable one. “Six months, this guy’s on the fast track. Whatever I ask him to do, he does it. And then he just stayed,” Epstein says. “He went from the absolute lowest part-time additional help to doing every single job at the store over the years.” Eventually, Brown rose to general manager.
Patrick Brown
Courtesy of Twist & Shout
Today, the 11,000-square-foot Twist & Shout remains Denver’s signature record store, having weathered the Napster-era downturn that felled chains from Tower Records to Virgin Megastore, then leaned into the unexpected vinyl revival that has kept indie retailers afloat for two decades. Twist’s sales mix, according to Brown, is roughly 60%-70% vinyl, 15%-20% CDs, 10% merch and posters, 5% movies and 3% stereo equipment. “There are not a lot of stores like this,” he says. “Waterloo in Austin, the Amoeba stores, Record Archive in Rochester, Music Millennium in Portland. We’ve all had that old-school-record-store depth of catalog. We do all genres. We’ve invested heavily in physical. There just aren’t stores with the big footprint.”
Brown, a soft-spoken 55-year-old who is just as comfortable talking about seeing experimental-jazz composer Anthony Braxton at a festival as the evolution of music-retail inventory, has a more low-key presence among staff and customers than Epstein did. “I want it to still be what it always has been — a comfortable space for anybody to shop,” he says. “Record stores have a reputation for being snotty and disdainful of your tastes, and we try to avoid that as much as possible. We’re here just to help you find what you’re interested in.”
The store’s historical customer roster includes not only Clapton but Morrissey, who once made an impromptu visit with two beefy bodyguards, whom he positioned on each side of the “M” aisle so he could be unbothered while shopping. “I’m charitable — I think he was buying those as gifts for other people,” Brown recalls. “But he was still buying his own music as gifts.”
When the Epsteins opened Twist, they were “selling obscure music to a small but dedicated clientele from an over-cluttered building on a quiet Denver side street,” as Billboard later reported. They upgraded twice over the years, to new locations throughout the city, finally settling on West Colfax Avenue, what Brown calls “The Cultureplex,” a busy corner that includes iconic but struggling bookstore Tattered Cover and indie-movie haven Sie Film Center. During an interview on a weekday afternoon, packs of East High School students roam the stores. (The Epsteins own the building, and Twist & Shout, along with the adjacent Chipotle and a sushi restaurant, pays rent to them.)
“It feels like, ‘This is our world, here,’ all in this space,” says Mollie O’Brien, a veteran Denver folk and R&B singer. “It’s welcoming.” Like the Epsteins, she adds, Brown continues to purchase physical albums by local artists, even if they don’t record for major labels or big-time distributors. Usually, though, Twist & Shout buys wholesale from all the major labels, plus big indies such as Sub Pop and Secretly Group and one-stop distributor Alliance Entertainment. “I wouldn’t change our mix,” Brown says.
Like everybody, the Epsteins spent the early part of the pandemic terrified that consumers would stay out of record stores forever — but business quickly picked up as shelter-in-place customers rediscovered their turntables and records; Epstein told the Denver Post that 2021 sales were 25% higher than 2019 sales. The Epsteins, though, realized they were tired of running the business. After the longtime owners of The Record Exchange in Boise, Idaho, sold to three employees and one of their spouses in fall 2021, Epstein made a similar offer to Brown, who took over the store in March 2022.
When the Epsteins called a staff meeting to announce the new owner, Brown told employees, “I’m sure you’re wondering what I’m going to change. And I’m not going to be changing anything. Otherwise, I wouldn’t want this business.” Kremer, who moonlights as a Denver dance-music DJ in a gorilla suit called There’s An Ape for That, says this prediction came true: “The philosophy is the same. The approach to the business is the same.”
In his 36 years at Twist & Shout, Brown has experienced micro and macro changes in the record business. In the ’90s, dance music and rave parties exploded in the Denver area, and the store emphasized vinyl to accommodate DJ demand, which diminished when dance-music performers went digital in the early 2000s. Then came mp3s, file-sharing, Napster, the iTunes Store, YouTube and Spotify, and demand for physical products briefly dipped. Once the LP revival kicked in, Brown says, “We were ready for that.”
Large record retailers are rare in this era of tiny stores devoted to punk or dance or other niches, according to Andrea Paschal, president of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores, of which Twist & Shout has been a member since the coalition’s 1995 inception. Since Napster and file-sharing disrupted CD sales, she says, “It’s really tough to build a store with the catalog and inventory that Twist & Shout has when you don’t have the decades of doing that.”
Twist & Shout isn’t invulnerable. Brown acknowledges the vinyl boom could dissipate, and while CD and cassette sales are rising again, they’re unlikely to make up the difference. If something happens to neighbor Tattered Cover, which recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, foot traffic could drop at The Cultureplex. And Brown won’t even try to predict record-business trends. He’s a steward of the store, not a visionary. “Nothing drastic,” he says. “Keep it as it is.”
Indie digital rights group Merlin is launching a new initiative today (June 5) called Merlin Connect, aimed at helping up-and-coming social and tech platforms license independent music. The new program, which will work on an application basis, is aimed at helping promising startups utilize music while also helping Merlin’s labels and distributors, and thus indie artists, get paid for their use.
For years, new digital startups have often adopted a policy of “asking for forgiveness not permission” — dating back to the old Facebook motto of “move fast and break things” — which often meant that music and other media would be used without licenses, and recompense, while an app or platform found its footing and users, due to the high expense of licensing media catalogs. That tended to result in contentious licensing negotiations when such apps or platforms became too big to ignore — and, on occasion, lawsuits if such companies continued to utilize music and media without agreeing to deals with rightsholders.
Merlin Connect is trying to smooth that process for both new startups and its members, offering flexible terms and licenses that also get rightsholders paid as a startup develops.
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“Our overarching goal is to discover new opportunities for music monetization,” Merlin CEO Jeremy Sirota told Billboard in an exclusive statement. “Many emerging technology platforms lack access to, or do not even realize, how quality music can help them build and retain new audiences, resonate with cultural movements and drive their growth. Our members are handpicking a curated catalog of music that is perfect for any platform’s evolution… By bringing independent music to new spaces, we’re delivering exclusive opportunities for our members, ensuring they are at the forefront of innovation.”
Merlin says the program will be aimed at creating fair value for music, as well as marketing opportunities and the development of relationships with the next generation of platforms early on in their existence. On the other side of that equation, it will allow the platforms to have access to a simplified process within which they can utilize fully-licensed independent music and explore collaborations with Merlin members, and find ways “to maximize the impact of music on their platform,” according to a press release.
“The industry has been in need of an easier way for new platforms to access high-quality music and, in turn, foster growth for quite some time,” Ninja Turn managing director North America Marie Clausen said in a statement. “I am excited to see the Merlin team taking such a visionary approach to exploring new business opportunities. It’s a crucial step to ensure that new commercial opportunities have the best chance to succeed and diversify and secure new income streams for Merlin’s members. From an independent point of view, this initiative is excellent news — especially given the current market challenges.”
Emerging platforms will be able to apply, after which their application will be reviewed and Merlin will “selectively engage with the most promising platforms,” the organization said. Merlin will prioritize a platform’s potential for innovation and evolution; its leadership and the resilience of its team; with the goal of a more sustainable and ethic industry.
“As one of the founders of Merlin, I’ve had the opportunity to support the incredible growth of our organization from its inception to now,” !K7 founder Horst Weidenmüller said in a statement. “Merlin has always been dedicated to empowering independence, ensuring that its members receive the access and opportunities they deserve. With the launch of Merlin Connect, we are taking a significant step forward in this mission.”
Added Hopeless Records founder Louis Posen, “Hopeless is a passionate and longtime supporter of Merlin and its mission to ensure the fair value of music for the independent music community. With Connect, Merlin can now expand the reach of members’ music into new areas where music fans interact with the music they love. We are excited to see Merlin Connect open new doors for our artists and bring their music to innovative platforms around the world.”
If it’s possible, Record Store Day was even bigger this year than last year, when Taylor Swift caused a traffic jam at record stores across the nation, according to some of the merchants Billboard’s Retail Track columnist visited this past Saturday (April 20).
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Retail Track
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This year, the Olivia Rodrigo “Stick Season”/Noah Kahan “Lacy” seven-inch was cited as the hottest seller by store managers and owners, but overall, a wider breadth of releases drove more traffic into stores, according to Rough Trade store manager George Flanagan.
Other big sellers — or records that the retailers wished they had more copies of — included Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” seven-inch; the Sparks/Noël double LP No. 1 Song in Heaven/Is There More to Life Than Dancing?; Talking Heads‘ Live at WCOZ double LP; Sabrina Carpenter’s “Feather” seven-inch; and a 12-inch featuring David Byrne‘s cover of “Hard Time” and Paramore‘s cover of “Burning Down The House.”
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This year, Swift issued The Tortured Poets Department on Friday, the day before Record Store Day (RSD), and it has so far sold an astounding 1.5 million records in its first three days of availability. But independent record store merchants say that while the album was a solid seller for the weekend, this album didn’t have the impact that Swift’s exclusive for last year’s RSD, Folklore: the Long Pond Studio Sessions. That’s because this year’s album was widely available at mass merchants, Amazon, and on her website, and at sale prices just a little bit above their wholesale cost. Nevertheless, retailers say they will always warmly welcome any new release by Swift.
Retail Track began the day at Darkside Records in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where at 9:15 — 15 minutes after the store opened — there were some 250 people waiting in line for their turn to enter the store. Letting customers in 15 to 20 at a time, the line — which lasted until nearly 6:30 p.m. on Saturday — stretched around the 9,000-square-foot store and deep into the filled-to-capacity parking lot. The first person in line showed up at 8 p.m. Thursday (April 18), according to Darkside co-owner Justin Johnson, who added that when he showed up to open the store on Friday morning (April 19), a full day before Record Store Day kicked off, there were already four people queued up.
“It was absolutely an incredible turnout. Everyone was really cool and we had a great time,” Johnson told Billboard. “It was our best day ever and it blew away last year’s Record Store Day, which up to then had been our best day ever.”
What’s more, one woman drove 11 hours from Michigan to shop at Darkside because of how the store had handled the autographed Taylor Swift CD last year, she told Johnson. “[She] wanted to support us for treating the Swifties so fairly and combating the bots,” Johnson said. And she showed up early enough at the store to be No. 10 in line, he added.
After leaving Darkside, Retail Track drove over the Hudson River to Middletown, N.Y. to visit Rock Fantasy, a record store/pinball machine/video game arcade. Open since 1985, Rock Fantasy leans hard rock/metal, but owner Stephen Keeler said the Rodrigo/Kahan single was the day’s top seller. He added that about 30 customers were in line when he showed up to open the store. Moreover, he says the store celebrated Record Store Day/420 by staging two shows on successive nights at Quinnz Pinz, the local bowling alley where he promotes shows. The weekend kicked off with a Grateful Dead tribute band, Gratefully Yours, on Friday night; while on Saturday night, Kiss tribute band Psycho Circus performed. On the afternoon of Record Store Day, Rock Fantasy held a pinball tournament in the store.
Some of the 250 music fans waiting on line for their turn to shop Darkside Records—a store logo displayed about the tent structures.
Ed Christman
Rock Fantasy’s layout is long and narrow, almost like a railroad apartment with five or six rooms. Besides the records, tchotchkes and other music memorabilia it sells in the front two rooms, the store also houses 53 pinball machines and a few vintage video games. Customers can choose to play on machines featuring Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Kiss, Ted Nugent, AC/DC, the Beatles, Elton John, the Rolling Stones and Guns & Roses, as well as machines licensed from movies like Jaws, Pulp Fiction, Godzilla, OO7 and Jurassic Park.
Heading back to the other side of Hudson, Retail Track tried a little potluck with a store called The Vinyl Room in Beacon, N.Y. While it turned out to be more of a bar and restaurant than a record store, it was nevertheless a fun place to visit. The space had only two racks of vinyl, mainly used records, but the store’s interior design, which used records and other music memorabilia and ornamentation, more than made the trip worth it.
Across the street, at the local VFW Hall, was the Beacon Record & CD Fest, a swap meet with about a dozen vendors where Retail Track lucked out by scoring a copy of the Tommy James & The Shondells single “Gingerbread Man” on Roulette Records.
Staying on the same side of the Hudson, Retail Track next headed to Cold Springs, N.Y. and visited Half Moon Records at The Shoppes, an emporium-style setup with a number of different rooms and stores. Half Moon, which comprised the front two rooms of The Shoppes, was filled with records. One of the co-owners, Peter Hamboussi, said the store had just doubled the space devoted to records about a month ago; while co-owner Nicole Le Blanc said the store hopes to build its country music inventory. Like other merchants, Hamboussi said he wished he had received more copies of the Byrne and Paramore record, as well as the Cranberries. He said he usually does good business on Record Store Day later in the afternoon, as devout music buyers continue on their crawls.
Finally, Retail Track headed back to New York City to visit Rough Trade Records, which had a line of about 100 people when the store opened, including customer George West, who was first in line at about 5 p.m. on the Friday night prior. West is usually first in line every year at the store for the event, reported Rough Trade’s Flanagan, who added that by 8 p.m. on Friday, five people had queued up. The line lasted all day Saturday until about 5:30 p.m., when the store stopped regulating the in-flow. Nevertheless, when Retail Track showed up at around 6 p.m., the store was jam-packed and still doing brisk business.
Rough Trade and Rockefeller Center presented Indie Plaza in conjunction with Record Store Day, where eight bands and DJs entertained music fans, Rough Trade customers, and tourists from 1PM to 9PM. Pictured above is the Rough Trade booth, stocked with records and next to it is the artist merch booth selling wares from the bands. In the background, on the stage, Armand Hammer are working their way through their set.
Ed Christman
Another factor boosting traffic and sales at Rough Trade on Saturday was that it hosted Indie Plaza in Rockefeller Center, in the vast open space above the skating rink. During the day, DJs and bands alternated playing on a stage erected at the end of the plaza abutting 50th Street, keeping the crowd entertained until 9 p.m. Rough Trade set up a booth filled with music, while next to it was another booth with merch from the bands performing that day to sell to the fans enjoying the shows. Dave The Spazz, Sunrisa Disco, and Nancy Whang took turns helming the DJ booth in between sets by Cloud Nothings, Dehd, Armand Hammer, Glitterer, Sunny War, Corridor, Snõõper and Wishy.
“Last year, Record Store Day was our best day ever and it’s worth noting that Taylor Swift was a huge part of our business that day,” Flanagan said. “I was convinced we wouldn’t be able to top that, but we did; we were up by 5% to 10% more. I think one of the reasons why [2024 RSD] became the store’s best day ever is because there was something like 20% more titles out this year.”
For the last store visit of the day, the plan was to head back to home base of Astoria, Queens, to visit the semi-new Pancake Records on Steinway Street. But Retail Track ran out of gas (figuratively) and out of time (literally) — and the local bar with cold Pabst Blue Ribbon cans was beckoning.
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