Shelflife Records

Fifty records after, Shelflife is still young: the celebratory compilation out now on Shelflife records (reviewed here) is a great memento to one of the greatest indiepop labels ever and the artists who have helped made it what it is today. We took the chance to talk a while with Ed Shelflife (he may have an actual name, but it seems that everybody calls him that), fresh from a minitour of the USA with Radio Dept and Pipas.

Shelflife is about to celebrate its 50th album. Can you take stock of the label's life and activity from the beginning to now?

shelflife started it's life with a compilation called "whirl-wheels", released in august 1996. now in august 2003, we're releasing another compilation called "you're still young at heart." we could probably write a book's worth of material depicting everything that happened over those seven years. it was a glorious time to run the label and we hope to see more good times to come.

How did Shelflife started? How many people were there in the beginning and how many are working for the label now?

shelflife started out of my bedroom with my two best friends, yuri and laura (well they didn't live in my bedroom mind you). we started as a mailorder/label/distribution service. maybe a bit ambitious at the time, but we were young, so we all worked hard to keep it going. i'd say our main goal was to help expose many of the great foreign indiepop groups/labels to US audiences. after a few years of running all three companies, we decided it was best to concentrate on the label part for a while, since it was the most rewarding (and fun) for us.

shelflife now has a number of people associated with it, but still no "real" employes other than myself. everyone involved dedicates their time and energy purely because they like to be part of shelflife. jon handles all of the mastering and sound production, jill helps with art here and there, tony does a lot of the writing, and laura helps with editing and other office tasks. and we have interns from time to time that come in and help out with different tasks. In the end, all of the label's operations are handled by myself (on top of working my full time day job).

I imagine a label like yours starts probably from a deep love of the english 80s indiepop. Is that true? How did you discover that scene and which bands/label did you like the most?

yeah, i'm quite a collector of obscure guitar pop -- 80s liverpool being my favorite. the first label i fell in love with was "factory records" (after hearing "joy division" and "new order"). i always loved the esthetic of all the sleeve designs and overall production of the music. from there i discovered other labels like "zoo," "creation," "sarah," "subway," "pink," etc and bought everything i could get my hands on from each label (ah, the collector in me!). and in some cases, i bought things based on if i liked the cover art or not. that's how i discovered "ride" for instance. i really liked the art of their first three 12" eps.

What are the difficulties of managing a small indie label nowadays?

i guess one of the struggles for me is money. it's hard to have a large enough budget to do what i want with the label. i wish i could release lp editions of every cd and have money to send bands on tour all of the time, but as record sales have been suffering over the last few years, i find it impossible to make enough money to allow for such things. but on the bright side, having limitations allows for creative thinking and coming up with new ways to do things. this is how our cd-r series came about: we figured out a very easy and inexpensive way to release stuff by bands we admire and i must say it's been quite a
success.

How do you choose the bands and records to publish? Do you rely entirely on your taste?

i pretty much rely entirely on my taste. since the label is still a large "labour of love," i tend to only focus on things i feel are important and deserve to be released. another important part of my decision making process is to only work with like-minded individuals, who share the same love for indiepop as i do. no matter how great the music is -- i've learned working with rockstar types is disastrous for shelflife and the band in question.

What are your means of promoting your music? And how much is important the internet for your business?

we promote music through the same channels as all other labels (radio, magazines, retail, etc). i do take full advantage of the internet. the shelflife website is quite large and has a lot of information. we sell all of our releases directly from the site -- most times before anyone else carries them. we also use mailing lists quite a lot, such as the shelflife list and indiepop list. i think people find them useful in keeping up with what we have going on.

Can you tell us what's the typical pressing quantity for a Shelflife release?

these days typically 1000 copies of each release, but sometimes 2000.

Do you believe that file-sharing is affecting sales of small indie-labels also?

yeah, i would say it's a part of what's affecting sales these days. don't get me wrong, i'm not against file-sharing. i think it's a great way for a band's music to be heard. but i hope after fans hear the songs that they go out and purchase their records.

Probably the best thing about indiepop is the international network that revolves around it: lots of people sharing their love for quality music and exchanging advices. How much do you feel the support of that network?

i love that "pop" network. it's the best when you're traveling to different countries: you instantly have friends.

You have recently published the Radio Dept CD in the USA. May this mean that Shelflife is going to publish more Labrador releases in the USA or was it an isolated case?

well, we have always been really good friends with labrador and we've wanted to work with them. as soon as i heard the radio dept, i knew it was the project for us. as for licensing in general, we have worked with jabalina and apriciot on a few projects, but overall we're trying to concentrate on exclusive releases these days.

What's your opinion on the current indiepop scene? Many great bands seems to come from Sweden/Finland right now.

i think the indiepop scene is blossoming again. there are so many fine bands coming out of sweden these days and not to mention the philippines.

What's in store for Shelflife from August on? There were rumours about a Free Loan Investments singles collection...

that's been a rumor forever. it's still on our "in the future" release list and we hope that someday it will actually come to life. we'll see... we just had the pleasure to see the free loan investments live at the SF Pop Holiday and they really are one of the most wonderful bands around. if you have a chance to see them play, don't hesitate!

Salvatore

Links:

Shelflife Records: www.shelflife.com