The Future of Suburban Home, Vinyl Collective, and Dead Format

Suburban Home is Heading Back to the Suburbs / Dead Format Will Soon be Dead

Suburban Home Records has been my life for the past 11 years. Through my experiences with the label, I have had some of the most incredible times of my life, met some of my best friends, and even found the love of my life. Although some of my greatest moments have occurred because of Suburban Home, I have also experienced some of my lowest lows. Running a record label in 2007 has become much more difficult considering the music retail landscape. Due to declining sales/revenue, I have been forced to make a very difficult decision. On May 1st, 2007, Suburban Home will have to cut back on staff and move the company into the residence I share with my wife and son, my Suburban Home.

We had a meeting a couple weeks ago addressing all of the issues going on at Suburban Home. I explained to our staff that I had some difficult things to say. I mentioned the fact that it has become more difficult than ever to sell music, even though most of our acts are doing incredible tours and seem to be slowly taking off. I spoke about the fact that Dead Format, our online store that sells CDs, DVDs, and clothing, was doing the worst it had ever done. I talked about the fact that currently, I am paying a mortgage and a rent, 2 utilities, 2 phone bills, 2 internets, and that combined with everyone’s salaries, it was necessary to make some drastic changes in order to survive in the post file-sharing age. I asked for my staff’s support through the next couple of months. I was on the verge of tears during our meeting, and a couple of our employees cried towards the end of our discussion.

A couple Saturday’s ago while at the Love Me Destroyer CD release show, someone came up to me and had asked me if Suburban Home was going under. As word spreads about things phasing down at Suburban Home, I figured that there might be people who would think that Suburban Home was about to close shop. One reason I wanted to write this rather lengthy explanation of the circumstances around Suburban Home was to clarify what is going on. Suburban Home has no plans to close up shop. We plan to continue to release records by bands we love, and we actually have a few new artists working on releases for us right now that we will soon announce. The move from our office to my house, and the unfortunate decision to cut staff, will help Suburban Home to survive financial disaster. We will be phasing out Dead Format all together as we are having the hardest time trying to sell CDs. Selling CDs have been difficult for the reasons everyone knows but in many situations we can’t offer competitive prices on key titles. The fact that we have to charge $13.99 for the new Shins album when most big box retailers have it for $9.99 is a big problem. On the flip side, Vinyl Collective is doing better and better every month and much of my focus will be on the Vinyl Collective store and vinyl imprint. To give you an example; we have not sold a single copy of the new Shins album, “Wincing the Night Away”, on CD, where as it sold over 100,000 copies in its first week and over 200,000 in 3 weeks. However, we have sold almost 50 copies of the LP version through Vinyl Collective. That, combined with our own vinyl releases has been the single most successful thing going on at the Suburban Home headquarters.

These decisions were really tough for me to make, but the results will ensure that Suburban Home will be here a year from now and with hope 10 years from now. The thought of not seeing the people I work with on a daily basis is something that makes me very sad, but by working out of my house with my wife and child, I will get to see my family all day long. I get excited about the fact that I will be at home to see my son walk his first steps and someday in the future say his first words. Due to all of my expenses, I feel as though I need to work 10 to 12 hour days. With scaling down the operations, I will still have to work very hard, but I plan to have a lot more time for me personally. I started my own business so that I didn’t have to work for anyone else, but there are times where I feel like my business is running my life.

Over the next couple of months, we will be making the transition for yet another move. That will mean a lot of crazy sales, giveaways, a garage sale, and eventually packing. If there is anything you can do to help us throughout all of this, please consider picking up one of our many lot sales. If we can sell enough of them, that will make our move that much easier. And if there is anything I hope that people take away from all of this, if there is a band or a label that you love, please consider purchasing a CD or digital album and consider doing so through independent channels. The price of free music (file-sharing and copying) has a much bigger cost than you might think. I am sure we are not the only label struggling in an industry attempting to sell products people actively get for free.

For those of you who have supported our small label and/or our bands, we sincerely appreciate all of the support. I hope to be able to continue running Suburban Home for a long time to come. Even with the problems facing the music industry, I cannot see myself being a part of anything else.

A great letter from a Suburban Home fan, Chris Barmonde

The other day I received a really great letter from a Suburban Home supporter. I asked if I could post the letter on the Suburban Home site and luckily the answer was yes. Running a record label in 2007 can sometimes be a thankless job, but when I receive letters like this one, it really reminds me of why I do all of this stuff. Chris was kind enough to order our 50 for 50 sale and his letter mentions how awesome the deal was; he also gave me the highest compliment by mentioning us in the same sentence as Jade Tree, a label we have serious respect for. Since the letter and our responses are a bit long, you can click the below link to read the letters in their entirety(note that my response is in Italics). Thanks Chris for the kind words and for the support. You are why we do Suburban Home:

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