The story of Cooking Vinyl's boom period, with MD Rob Collins

Releasing two No.1 albums by the same artist in one year is no mean feat, but, according to Rob Collins, Cooking Vinyl’s success with Shed Seven in 2024 is just the tip of the iceberg. Here, Music Week quizzes the label’s MD, plus co-founder Martin Goldschmidt, about the company’s ethos, the highs and lows of its near-four-decade history and its place in the independent sector… WORDS: NIALL DOHERTY PHOTOS: LOUISE HAYWOOD-SCHIEFER It’s an apt indication of the hot streak that Cooking Vinyl currently finds itself in that moments before label MD Rob Collins sits down to talk to Music Week, he has been passed the news that Alison Moyet’s new record, Key, has gone Top 10 in the UK album charts. “I’ve got a happy artist and a happy manager and it’s completely and thoroughly deserved,” says Collins, a breezy and thoughtful presence who has been at the label since 1999. “We’ve been on a bit of a run for quite a long time,” he states, reflecting on a winning 2024 that has seen two No.1 albums for Britpop veterans Shed Seven and a Top 20 for bluesy singer-songwriter Elles Bailey. “I think we’ve been quite consistent, quite solid, just beavering away and doing our thing quietly, doing our thing with the artists, trying to do the best we can. We want more success but it’s tough to get more success for us. We’re not a big player. We’re still 100% independently owned, and everything runs on the money that we generate through our new releases and our catalogue.” It is almost 40 years since the label was co-founded by Martin Goldschmidt and Pete Lawrence, and Collins says their recent achievements are down to an ethos embedded in the culture. “I think a lot of it boils down to passion and personality,” he says, considering why artists are so happy to work with them. “Passion, service, commitment, love of the music, actually going to their gigs, things that a lot of companies have forgotten how to do.” “We love music and working with artists, taking their art into the cruel music industry world and fighting for justice for them,” adds Martin Goldschmidt, who has moved from London to Devon and now serves as the label’s chairman, playing a more strategic role with less day-to-day involvement. “Our skill and focus is on furthering artists’ careers and that is the priority, not on how much money we can make out of them.” They run a carefully handpicked roster, explains Collins. “We don’t have 20 albums a month coming out; it’s quite a bespoke release schedule,” he says. “It’s much more of an independent label that is quite cultured and curated as opposed to, ‘Let’s put loads of stuff in the release schedule like a distributor, throw some services on top and see what happens.’” Goldschmidt attributes their successful 2024 to “good old-fashioned hard and smart work with great records” and salutes the role played by the staff. “They are the brains and brawn of the operation – naturally and completely unfairly, I get a lot of the credit,” he says. “Every member of my team is a key part of Cooking Vinyl, an expert in their area, and knows their job better than I do. Rob has taken a leading strategic role and has done most of the A&R for some time now. His name has become synonymous with Cooking Vinyl.” Collins himself describes a close-knit team with a loyal crew. “A lot of people have been with us for a long time,” he says. “I’ve been here 25 years, Michelle Polley, who runs our international department, started before me. Stuart Giles has been here 15 years, the legal and finance team has been here for about five years.” It’s a finely-honed blend, he says, of experience and young blood. “I think that’s completely necessary, 100%,” Collins says. “It’s not saying we’ve got younger staff because we want to go out and get loads of TikTok artists, it’s more that they have a different enthusiasm and a different skillset to give. Both sides help each other out. The experienced side helps out the young, enthusiastic side, and vice versa.” If there’s a recurring theme in our conversation, it’s the idea of Cooking Vinyl as an industry underdog. But Martin Goldschmidt says anyone who works with the label doesn’t take long to realise its value. “We definitely get the respect we deserve from the artists and managers we work with and from our key partners,” he says. “Most people in the industry are not that aware of our unique approach and the difference we make to the careers of artists we are involved in.” Collins agrees. “We deliver more than people expect,” says the MD, settling in for a long chat with Music Week. “But once they start working with us they realise what a great choice they have made…” Shed Seven is one of your biggest recent success stories, with two No.1 albums this year alone. What does that campaign say about Cooking Vinyl’s approach? “I think it’s that we’re really diligent and we really work hard and we look for every sale. We’re not lazy about our releases. In Shed Seven’s case, they haven’t had a manager for the majority of the campaign. Paul [Banks, guitarist] from the band is the manager, which is amazing. He runs his own business in York, he’s got a video production company, so he’s super organised, and was able to put out a lot of content and pulla lot of the strings that a manager would, but the band are really involved with the whole process. We managed to strike up this amazing relationship of everyone going for the No.1, everyone believing in it. And that’s not just us and the band, it’s the wider team that we employed, plus the distributor. I don’t think we thought we were going to get the first No.1 back in January, but once you see the pre-orders coming in, you get a little bit excited.It happened because of a load of hardwork, because the band leant right into the campaign and they did everything they were asked to do, like signing multiple copies in their thousands, doing all the in-stores, the out-stores, meeting the fans, really grafting. And on top of that, the guys are great on social media. It’s a really authentic voice that they speak in.” Can you put your finger on why Shed Seven is such a good fit? “We’re a bit simpatico. They’re underdogs and I think we’re underdogs in the overall business. We’re not first on everyone’s call list when it comes to a deal for a particular artist, from a manager or lawyer, but when we meet them and get in the room, we put on a really good show and we compete, not necessarily in a financial way but in a passion way – and in a sensible way that we think is sustainable for us and sustainable for the artist.” XL, Partisan and EGA Distro are just a few of the indie labels who have enjoyed chart success this year. How do you think Cooking Vinyl compares to the rest of the market? “I think we’re completely different. I don’t think we’re in that world at all. They’ve all got much stronger brand identities. We’re more of a team member as opposed to an attractive label home. Once people get to meet the team, they realise it’s a good home.” And how healthy do you think the independent sector is at the moment on the whole? “I think it’s a really strong time for music, be it independent or major. The independents have a massive, massive part to play, and always have done since the first time I bought a record from Rough Trade in 1976, when I bought the first Damned single, which was on an independent.” Let’s roll back a few years to signing The Prodigy for 2009’s Invaders Must Die. Did that put the label on the map as a landmark signing? “It was probably the single most important thing that changed the course of the label. Martin and I are eternally grateful to Liam Howlett and Keith Flint and Maxim and Mike Champion, who was the manager at the time, and Paul Spraggon, the lawyer, for entrusting us with The Prodigy jewels. Going back to what I said about the underdog, one of the reasons Liam decided to go with us, because he had multiple offers on the table and he could have gone pretty much anywhere, was that he loved our pitch. He loved the fact that we were underdogs and we were hungry.” The label also teamed up with Roger Waters for The Dark Side Of The Moon Redux last year. Was there any consternation about that? He can be a divisive figure… “It’s not really my signing, it’s actually Martin’s so he’d be far better to talk about that. Martin did it because of the music. We got the call from Roger’s manager because Roger had supported a Palestinian music festival that Martin was involved in. I think Martin thought it was the record he wanted to do, it was Pink Floyd. He did talk to Roger and the manager in depth before doing it, and he was more than happy to put the Cooking Vinyl name to it. We spoke to the staff about it and no one really objected. It was pretty unanimous that we should just do it.” Long before that, Cooking Vinyl had set out its stall as trailblazers for artist-friendly deals like the one you did with Billy Bragg in the 1990s… “It was the first artist services deal, we believe, and it wasn’t us that came up with the concept. It was Peter Jenner, who was Billy’s manager, who came up with the idea of having a distribution deal with some services thrown in, and the artist getting the lion’s share of the income once the costs have been recouped. It’s the type of deal that we do most often. There’s also your regular JV 50/50 deal and a more traditional artist royalty deal.” What’s your personal favourite way to do it? “I prefer the artist services deal because it’s completely transparent and if a record is successful, the band gets the big back end. The other plus point is it means the manager and the artist can have full visibility of everything that’s being spent and sign off on it. They see where the money can be wasted or should be spent. They get to realise what it costs to put a set of billboards up around London or actually do a TV show and they get to see what difference those marketing activities and promo activities actually make, whereas previously they may have been on a major label and it just kind of happened. There are far more artists that are clued up now, probably still at majors and in artist services deals with all the various companies out there that do them.” How does the company’s revenue break down between catalogue and frontline? “It’s a bit of a skewed question, because only in the last two years have we really focused on pushing the catalogue a lot further. The label was very new release-driven, and catalogue just churned. Now we have a full-time catalogue manager and one of the product managers works with him 50% of the time, so we’re really ramping that side of the business up in terms of the catalogue that we own and in terms of bringing catalogues in.” What prompted that? “A reset of the business model, to be frank. We felt we were missing out on things and we’d played the game too much, competing for new signings, and hadn’t always had the success that we were hoping for. We have a more risk-free approach to working with artists now, and we’re putting more emphasis on working our catalogueand bringing catalogue in.” What is a typical artist contract like at the label? Are there many long-term deals, or is it record by record? “The contracts are sensible, relatively short, one option, and the retention is whatever we can get.” And in terms of Cooking Vinyl’s international partnerships, how is that side of the business at the moment? “Really strong. We work with the majority of the key independentsaround the world and The Orchard are our global digital distributor. We run our US business out of the UK now. It was a money pit, to be frank, and we weren’t feeding enough releases into the mouth. During Covid, it became apparent that it was a drain on the company’s resources. It wasn’t delivering what it needed to do to warrant having a standalone business in America. We sign acts globally, we’ve just done The Jesus And Mary Chain and Babymetal globally, as well as The Psychedelic Furs, who are a US-based band. I don’t think being based in the UK stops us signing US-based artists.” What can you tell us about the company’s distribution arm, Essential Music & Marketing, being sold to Sony Red back in 2016 and the reasons behind that? “Martin set up the distribution company Essential with Mike Chadwick, who was one of the directors at Vital. It got to a stage where, as far as I know, it couldn’t grow any more, and Sony Red needed to grow their business very quickly, so they identified Essential as a target to increase their turnover and their market share. It was a win-win for both sides, and that’s where our relationship with The Orchard stems from, because Essential became Red Essential, and then that very quickly rolled out into The Orchard.” In terms of physical, what state is the market in right now? “I think it’s really healthy. If you look at Coldplay’s physical sales [for Moon Music], the share of CDs is off the scale. I couldn’t believe it. But I don’t think the CD has ever died, it’s always been there. We’ve always sold truckloads of CDs, be it Will Young or the Psychedelic Furs, and I think now it’s a cheaper physical format. A lot of kids that I hear from aren’t collecting vinyl because it’s too expensive, so they buy a CD instead.” Does all that tie in with the success of your D2C business? “We’ve put a lot of effort into the D2C side of the company for 15-plus years and it really pays off. We really identified it as a core area for growth and for sales and for margin and for recoupability on projects. There’s nothing better than an artist selling directly to a fan with great exclusive products.” On the promo side of things, how much does TikTok come up in artist meetings at Cooking Vinyl? “It comes up, but just as part of the mix, it’s never top of the pile. We definitely encourage artists to use TikTok in whatever way they are comfortable using it and we have good relations with TikTok. Our biggest success on TikTok was with Nina Nesbitt [who is now signed to her own Apple Tree Records imprint] during lockdown, when she was playing her tunes and writing some new ones using cutlery and pots and pans and it became a little bit of a viral hit on TikTok. Those things are so random you can’t control or plan them. You just do stuff and sometimes it connects, and sometimes it doesn’t.” Looking back, what has been the toughest time for you so far at Cooking Vinyl? “Probably the time before we signed The Prodigy. It was hard selling enough records for the label to survive. I came in and inherited quite a lot of artists and releases on the label. I signed Echo And The Bunnymen quite early on, which was also another pivotal moment. At the same time, we had the last XTC albums, which are fantastic records, we also licensed Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker record, so they were quite pivotal moments as well in progressing the label along. But some things needed cleaning up when I came in, so it was just a bit of time to get everything cleaned up.” And what has been your happiest time? “Probably working with The Prodigy and having two No.1 albums, the Milton Keynes Bowl show [in 2010], the live film, being hands-on with that project from the first meeting to the last meal with Liam to celebrate everything. It was a really, really good time.” Right now must be up there, too. How are things shaping up for the future? Will we see more chart success? “Nothing different to what we normally do, but hopefully of a higher level of success and a higher return coming back to us and the artists. In terms of releases, there’s The Darkness, James Morrison, Del Amitri, Deacon Blue, some more Orb records. There’ll be some Shed Seven bits and pieces coming out next year, they’re having a bit of a fallow period while they write a record.” Finally, what about your long-term ambitions? “Being in business! Our plan is to keep going and keep building, slowly but steadily. As long as we’re working with great artists and putting great music out, it ticks the box for us.”

Heat seeking: Beggars Music to build on 'A&R discovery' results

Beggars Music’s leadership executives have spoken about their long-term support for artists and songwriters as an independent publisher. The company, which is marking its 15th anniversary, has made a series of new signings including King Krule, Bar Italia and Mica Levi. Other recent additions include songwriting and production duo Georgie & Joe, Warpaint’s Emily Kokal as she embarks on a new solo career, and LA-based singer-songwriter Kacy Hill. Beggars Music also represents one of the biggest global hits of recent years, Heat Waves by Glass Animals (3.18 billion Spotify streams). “Our ethos is quite similar to what Beggars Group [recordings] is widely known for, which is working with the highest calibre of artists, where there is also potential for commercial success and which has some ambition about it,” said Molly O’Brien, head of creative, Beggars Music. “When it comes to publishing, we’re always looking for the singular talents and the people who are the best at what they do, and the plan is definitely to keep it very diverse,” she added Beggars Music director Andy Heath contrasted the role of the independent publisher with some rights companies driven by acquisitions. “We’ve never bought anything, we’ve just signed [songwriters] as an A&R discovery,” he said. “If you’re a proper music publisher, then you need to be helping in the creative process, the development of the art, and the care and attention you pay to the human being that is the writer.” King Krule (real name Archy Marshall), who is signed to Beggars Group label XL Recordings outside of the US, is now part of the Beggars Music publishing roster. He joins fellow Crossfield Management client Obongjayar (Steven Umoh), whose Top 5 Fred Again.. collaboration, Adore U, has sales of 708,357 (Official Charts Company). “I think Archy looked at the fact that we were working hard for a writer [Obongjayar], delivering opportunities and creating revenue,” said Heath. Theo Lalic, who owns Crossfield Management, said: “The important thing for Archy and myself is working with a dedicated team who will really go to bat for him. Having worked with Beggars Music with Obongjayar, I know exactly how hard they work to bring syncs in, as well as opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t be there – they’re a small team that really understands how to make a difference to the artists’ careers.” The Bar Italia signing was made via Mattitude Music, the publishing JV with Matador Records. “They have so much personality, and they have this three-way writing dynamic, which is just incredibly unique,” said O’Brien. “There’s not really another band that sounds like them. We do have very high hopes for them.” Heath described Mica Levi, who returns to the Beggars fold, as an “enormous talent”. Alongside the signings of established names such as King Krule and Mica Levi, Heath stressed that the company’s focus has been on long-term development of talent such as Sampha, Obongjayar and Glass Animals, whose first three albums are represented by Beggars. “The Glass Animals story is an exemplar of how I think music publishing should be conducted,” he said. “You get in on the ground floor, you work very closely with the creators, you give them space, you help them grow and make some of the right decisions. And you show a lot of patience, and you take a lot of time.” Glass Animals’ songwriter Dave Bayley has since moved to UMPG, which Heath said “made sense” financially. “I think we were five to seven years in before it really started going berserk [with Heat Waves] and we’ve probably got two or three other artists at the moment who are showing signs of doing similar things,” he added. Predicting continued success for Obongjayar, Heath said: “We’re probably five years in, he’s making a very good living out of the music. I think he probably is on the edge of taking on the world. They’re the kind of stories that modern music publishing is all about, frankly.” Earlier this year, the company partnered with electronic label Hyperdub’s publishing operation, the roster of which includes Burial. Beggars Music is active in the composition space, with support from Beggars Group’s in-house music supervision firm, Colourbox, who paired Burial with director Andrea Arnold to score the film Bird. Harmony Korine’s next film, Baby Invasion, also has a Burial score. “His music is so atmospheric and filmic, and we were surprised he hadn’t done anything of that nature,” said O’Brien. “But now he’s got two projects under his belt in the last year.” Lankum’s Ian Lynch scored Irish horror All You Need Is Death, while Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa works on The Buccaneers (Apple TV+). “[With our writers], a lot of it is a vibe that’s interesting and weird,” said O’Brien. “So there’s a lot of crossover with what directors want when they’re building the world for their films.” Looking ahead, O’Brien said the company is in a “really good place” in terms of label partners, the roster and their team. “There’s a lot of creativity coming from all directions, there’s a lot to be working on,” she told Music Week.

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