NYC Indie Labels: Kanine Records
It’s been ten years since Lio and Kay Kanine put out their first release: a compilation of 20 undiscovered bands, most of them from Brooklyn, titled NY: The Next Wave.
Lio Kanine (then known by his real name, Lio Cerezo) had landed a job with the indie distributor Alternative Distribution Alliance not long after moving to New York City. He spent his evenings putting on club shows around the city, DJing and booking bands up to five nights a week. His girlfriend, Kay, found work as a paralegal.
“We mostly gave them away,” Lio Kanine says of that first release. “But we sold enough to break even. And from there it just grew.”
In the very same timeframe that U.S. album sales shrunk by more than 60%, Kanine Records grew from a hobby into a bonafide and sustainable record label. Some of that took a bit of re-imaging what a label can and should do.
“At the end of the day, there’s nothing you can do about that other stuff, and you’ve just got to adjust with the times,” Kanine says. That first release “Showed us that there was an interest in what was going on at the time in New York. That it was a good time to start a label.” The rest they had to figure out for themselves.
Music First
No one gets into the music business to get rich. No one with any sense, anyway. And for all of his interest in quirky and unusual music, Lio Kanine comes across as a remarkably sensible guy.
Kanine band Beach Day with Lio Kanine at far right. Photo by Andrew St. Clair via Flickr.
“We have this kind of logic where if we don’t have the money, we’re not going to spend it,” he says over the phone before a flight out to LA for the 2013 F Yeah Fest with a couple of the bands on his roster. “If we don’t have the money to sign a band it’s not going to happen; we’re not going to take on something that we can’t afford.”
“It’s the same way we live our personal lives. We’re not the kinds of people who take on debt. And I think that’s part of the reason we’ve lasted so long. I’ve watched so many labels go under trying to take on projects that are so ambitious they just can’t afford it. They’re like ‘well it’s a gamble, you’ve just got to go for it.’ And I’m like yeah – ‘Well, a lot of people buy houses they can’t afford and they’re out in three years.
“Part of being a successful business, a record label, anything, is lasting. It’s like survival of the fittest,” he says. “If you’re out there the longest time, you’re going to eventually get bigger bands. They’re going to come to you because they’re going to respect you more for it.”
As much as anything, it’s this incremental attitude to growing a label that has kept Kanine moving forward steadily. After figuring out how to make their first compilation work, the Kanines tried their hand at solo releases, beginning with Oxford Collapse, a band that combined sheer noise with a dance sensibility and the aesthetics of Mike Watt-flavored American indie rock. They were eventually picked up by Sub Pop.
Not long after, Kanine began looking for a record he could sell at Other Music – at the time, arguably NYC’s most dominant independent music store. “My records weren’t weird enough for them!” he laughs. “They used to have this ‘In and Out’ section and I’d think to myself, ‘I thought I knew a lot about music and I hardly know anything on these walls.”
Through a friend, he heard about “this mysterious guy” who had “recorded a whole album’s worth of music in his Grandmother’s house out in the woods in Massachusetts” using instruments that were supposedly “made out of kitchen utensils.”
The mystery man turned out to be Ed Droste of nearby Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The project was called Grizzly Bear. Their first release, Horn of Plenty, put the band, and Lio Kanine’s label on the map.
“They fell in love with it instantly. It sold 500 copies in Other Music alone and went everywhere from there. To the UK, through Rough Trade. It was all very organic. People would just write posts. I remember the first show. It was a rainy, snowy Monday night, and it was sold out. People were just so excited.”
Kanine’s next big milestone came in 2008, when he was able to place the band Chairlift‘s song “Bruises” in a commercial for the 4th-gen iPod Nano, before their album had even come out. It was a significant cash windfall for the band and the label and it kept them both moving forward.
Nuts and Bolts
“I don’t think any artist or label nowadays can make money just selling records,” Kanine says. “I mean, it’s just not possible. Most of our bands right now recoup through syncs. And T-shirts. We sell a lot of T-shirts.”
It’s not that album sales are a non-factor. They’ve just become one piece of a larger puzzle; And a less dominant one than in years past.
“It’s just all about price points,” says Kanine. “If you’re smart about your price points, you can get people to buy. CDs should have never been more than $10 in the first place. You had stores selling CDs for $18.99, that was part of the problem. If you give people a good price, they’re going to go for it as long as it’s easy. And you know, a $9.99 CD is fine. People don’t mind paying that. Especially when T-shirts are like $30 now,” he says with a bemused laugh.
Grizzly Bear’s Horn of Plenty came out on Kanine in 2004.
“We have a deal with our bands where we get one unique design per record that only the label can sell. The band can do as many other designs as they want, but we get one unique one so we can sell it on our site and other stores. That’s helped a lot.”
For Kanine, as with the rest of the industry, digital sales are growing, while physical albums remain a significant, though dwindling, force:
“It really depends on the band. Different bands have different fan bases. Fans of our more shoegaze bands tend to buy into the physical. Those fans are kind of collectors and they like to have stuff in hand. Our more electronic bands tend to be people who want stuff instantly and aren’t really collectors that way.”
For the more shoegazy and indie rock-focused bands, Kanine says the breakdown is about 60/40 in favor of physical. For the more electronic-tinged artists, fans favor digital sales by about 70/30. In both cases, vinyl is a minor player:
“CD outsells vinyl massively. When you hear otherwise, that’s just the press talking. The reality is, vinyl is only 1/10th of the whole sale. Vinyl is mostly done for cool points because that’s what people hang up in the record store or in pictures. The hipsters may buy the vinyl. Most normal people still buy CDs, because most normal people still have CD players in their cars.”
Digital though, is evolving. “The digital download stuff is going down compared to streaming. And the streaming stuff is really ramping up compared to the way digital downloads used to.” And the results so far have been a mixed bag:
“When Spotify started, they were saying it’s great because we’re eliminating stealing. And yeah, they eliminated stealing because now it’s free on the net. But it’s free on the net for everyone. That also taught people not buy anymore, which is bad. It doesn’t really pay either, which is hurting things a lot. So you have to go back to the artist and say ‘You’re only getting this tiny advance because we’ve got to be realistic and those are the numbers, you know?’ Which makes it harder for labels to sign bigger bands.”
Despite the challenges, Kanine keeps on growing because of hard work, an expanding network of allies, and an insistence on only taking on risks they can afford. Of course even at their modest scale, not every album is going to recoup its costs. But when the costs are low enough, a handful of strong releases can subsidize some of the natural losses that just come with the territory of being in a creative business.
When Lio talks about the realities of the businesses, his tone isn’t cutthroat. It might be best described as gentle, a little nerdy, but unflaggingly practical: “Every band on an indie has really got to pull their own weight and at least break even or make a little bit of money, because otherwise they’re not going to see any royalties. And the reality is that if the records aren’t selling I can’t afford to keep on putting out their band, and I’m going to have to let them go.
“The saddest part is that it’s happened before. And it has nothing to do with good music or bad. Sometimes a record just doesn’t stick. Or this one guy at the blog doesn’t like it and reams it to the world and all of a sudden everyone is like ‘oh this is a terrible band,’ even though their shows are packed. After a while, as much as you love the band, if you can’t afford to keep putting them out you just can’t keep doing it.”
Reality has a way of intruding on dreams. But at least the dream is there: “We’re doing it for love first,” Lio Kanine says. “Because someone’s gotta take a chance on these artists.” And sometimes those dreams last.
Living The Dream
So what makes a Kanine band?
“We mostly look for bands that are trying to do something unique and different, and who are also willing to be hardworking,” says Kanine. “When I first sit down with a new band I ask ‘Is this an art school project or is this a career move?’ Because I want to make career moves.
“I figure if you want to make an art school project, you can get your dad to fund it. I’ve even had bands call me a careerist: ‘You’re lame, you’re just a careerist.’ And I’m like ‘yes I am.’” His voice lilts upwards as he says this, chuckling yet again. “I want to make a future out of this. This is what I want to do. I don’t want to go work for someone else again. I’ve done that most of my whole life. This is a dream and I want to make it happen. But in order for me to do that, I need my bands to want that same dream.”
More than anything, Lio Kanine’s long-term success in music is tied to the success of his bands. “It’s like, Grizzly Bear is probably going to be around forever. Because this is what they want to do. And that just makes my catalog more valuable, because people are going to keep on buying their records for years to come. But if a band just makes one record and quits, it’s just not that viable.”
Kanine recently signed The Blow, and will release their new album on October 1. Stream the single here.
There’s been a lot of nasty talk about record labels, “middlemen” and “gatekeepers” in recent years from cynical fans and advocates for the tech sector. They can say what they will about record labels, but when they work right, there can be a real symbiosis between labels and musicians. Labels like Kanine Records are never going to do well unless their bands do. And most bands are never going to do well unless someone like Lio Kanine can afford to take a chance on them, and to pay them well enough for them to keep on doing what they do.
It’s true that these days, bands technically can self-release more easily than in the past. But perhaps it’s telling that so few new bands do on a sustainable level.
“The first benefit of having a label is that most artists don’t even know what to do with their record once they make it,” says Kanine. “If you have the knowledge and you have the money, then sure, you can do it. But 90% of them don’t.
“You’re also getting a team behind you, which is big. When I call a booking agent or a blog or a distributor they’re going to answer. After we signed Surfer Blood they told me ‘We emailed a ton of people and no one responded. How did you get them to respond?’ Well, that’s the difference. I’ve developed relationships with these people. They know me, they trust my taste. It’s like when Pitchfork gets a record from Sub Pop. They’re probably going to listen to it. Where if it just comes from some band, it might just get put in the pile somewhere.”
Whether it’s ideal or not, the distribution, promotion and acceptance of music has always been, and most likely, always will be based, around trusting relationships, and real-life social networks.
That’s not a function of capitalism or of corruption, of old models or new ones. It’s not a symbol of an archaic world or of a new internet age. This is simply how humanity works. Music has travled this way since its very beginning, and there’s no reason we should expect that to stop anytime soon.
If you’re cynical, you can call them middlemen or gatekeepers or beancounters. But we need passionate and practical curators like Lio and Kay Kanine. They’ve done the bands on their roster a lot of good, and it’s allowed them to keep growing steadily year after year. And if Lio has his way, Kanine Records will still be there, putting out records worth getting excited about in 2023.