· 1 min read
Against the repress
Every sold-out record is a standing offer of easy money. Here is why we keep saying no.
Hollow Press
About once a month somebody asks us to repress HP013. It sold five hundred copies in a fortnight and it now changes hands for four times what we charged. Repressing it would be the easiest money this label has ever made.
What the edition is for
An edition of five hundred is a promise to the artist and to the four hundred and ninety-nine other people who bought one. If we break it the first time it becomes lucrative, the promise was never worth anything.
The warehouse problem
There is also a practical version of the argument. Every repress is capital sitting in a cupboard in Glasgow. Labels that die mostly die of stock, not of bad records.
What we do instead
The record goes up on Bandcamp at pay-what-you-like, permanently, on the day the physical edition sells out. The music stays available. The object does not.