Style: Interview Portrait
The Future of Music Distribution
Interview with Broque Netlabel | The German label Broque follows a mixed strategy. Under the clever management of Christian Kausch and Heiko Schwanz Broque distributes music in several formats and ways. While DJs can buy vinyl-records worldwide at their record dealer of choice, the netizens get free mp3 music released under a creative commons licence on their website. To complete the cycle of music distribution musiclovers can purchase MP3s of the vinyl releases on Beatport. We talked to Christian Kausch to figure out, what’s important for a professional netlabel today, how you push your music into webshops and if you can make some profit out of it.
While Broque recently pushed out a fantastic release called Pseudónimo “terra firme e.p.” we thought, we might talk to the grown up (not only) techno netlabel from Germany. And, yes, we squeezed out some interesting questions for you. Keep on reading!
Whose scepter is swinging behind the Broque-curtain?
We’ve got two main characters behind our curtain: Tend (Christian Kausch) is the man for promotion, A&R, webdesign, licensing, booking, accounting, shipping, scheduling and all things like these. Granlab (Heiko Schwanz) is the technical director with the key for our servers, the connection to our digital ditributors and also the mastering head. We’ve got a new art director, named Thomas Gumprecht, and many other helpers, we can’t exist without.
Music connects! Friends for lifetime, partners on Broque Netlabel: Christian and Heiko
Most netlabels publish their music only as digital downloads. You follow a mixed up strategy and distribute your music as mp3 and vinyl. Why do you do so?
We were never friends of seperating drawers or formats. I think, so we’ve got the chance to get attention by all music-fans without any restrictions.
When you publish a new vinyl, how do you choose the tracks? Are there any guidelines you follow?
We’ve got a very nice artist pool and get many demos every week. Our only guideline is, that the music must have soul and groove. It’s very important for us to get to know the artists. We want to work together to get new inspirations and hope they get also new experiences by working together with us and our other artists. It’s so nice to see, if new people come together making new projects or just have a good time by exchange or something like that.
It’s terrible, because there are so many people who can’t talk a normal sentence with you, or they have ideas from another world – so we must say “No way!”.
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About the Author
This article was written on Thursday, June 5, 2008 by mo..
mo. is a music-lover. The journalist and author from Cologne/Germany enjoys supporting the global netlabel-phenomena. Since years he explores the netlabel underground and wrote already numerous articles about free music culture. He is the main-editor behind Phlow. Read more articles written by mo..
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8 responses so far ↓
1 Bettina Rhymes // Jun 5, 2008 at 1:23 pm
as these guys seem to know what they are doing- why is their website so ugly? it looks like just-another-netlabel and hasn’t been pimped for years. people will probably refer to the design as “minimal”, but that’s not it. even the structure is weird. don’t wanna piss you off too much but i think broque would gain more interest if you commit some basic changes in design and user guidance. disagree, anyone?
2 PeaceWarrior // Jun 5, 2008 at 6:31 pm
I fully agree. But content rules and Broque offers some really nice music. There are some nice functionalities like the mp3-player but i would also perfer a more consistent navigation - but nevertheless great work, and thanks for the insights.
3 Tend // Jun 6, 2008 at 10:15 am
Really Thank you for your feedback. That’s what we need. Ok, designs are a questions of taste. But if you have some ideas for basic changes - just tell us some more words, please.
It’s important to know, that we try to make a website without any technical restrictions for our visitors. We don’t like too many colors or other gimmicks. We think, the most important thing is the quality of music, but we respect every feedback. So it isn’t correct, that we haven’t pimped our site for years. We do it in little steps, partly in the behind for your pleasure. The projects of the last months: for example we invested in an own server for the best download speed, we are using now a higher mp3 bitrate, we’ve got a new mp3 player and also a new rss.feed. Our team has a new art manager for our covers to get no more bad taste medal by phlow.net ;-) We made a new board for our links and special announcements, also a new podcast and so on. At this time we work out our booking section. Ok, at first we move our office this month…
4 mo. // Jun 6, 2008 at 12:57 pm
one big step ahead would be a bigger font-size. for new visitors it’s hard to figure our where to download mp3s. you only link the numbers it would be much easier if you make a link with “MP3 Download” - also the ZIP is hidden. think of the small font-size…
additionally i would advice to integrate a preview-mp3-player - very easy to use it the playtagger by delicious (http://del.icio.us/help/playtagger). it’s a javascript that transforms a pure link to a mp3 directly into a mp3 player. if visitors don’t have javascript enabled they see only the pure link.
you can change the coloured buttons to make them back and white… :)
5 applejux // Jun 6, 2008 at 11:50 pm
really enjoyed this interview. bettina sharp as usual made me smile. looks like tend and granlab should hire you the phlow mag staff to get the big money. ;)
6 applejux // Jun 6, 2008 at 11:52 pm
“Our team has a new art manager for our covers to get no more bad taste medal by phlow.net”
yeah, that’s being diplomathic.
7 mo. // Jun 7, 2008 at 12:06 am
“Our team has a new art manager for our covers to get no more bad taste medal by phlow.net”
*hehehe* that’s a citation of an article I wrote about Broque in german on phlow.net a while ago. I know Christian Kausch aka Tend for a while now, and I am sure his comment wasn’t meant bitchy. it was more some kind of a warm and smiling hug between friends ;)
8 Tend // Jun 8, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Yes, you’re right, Mo.
We are very glad about your hints. We’ll chat about it - and after our summer break some things are optimized.
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