Link: XL Recordings, the record label that’s tearing up the rule book

XL Recordings, the record label that’s tearing up the rule book

With music booming out of speakers, posters splashed everywhere and offshoot indie label Young Turks beavering away on laptops, the XL office is a place that serves to remind you how dull your own place of work can be. How can people be having this much fun and make a success of it? No wonder they all seem so devoted to the XL cause. This, after all, is a label that is thriving in an industry that is supposed to be dying.

“It’s not dying … it’s changing,” says Russell. “But then it always has been, as is the whole world. I just don’t think about the future at all. It’s not my responsibility.”

Really? He doesn’t have a strategy?

“Yeah—put good records out. That’s it. I’m sure there are people thinking about stuff like copyright and downloading, but…you don’t want an author to be thinking about Kindles and shit like that, do you? I mean, we do our best, but we definitely don’t offer any solutions for the music industry.”

Now there’s a man I can respect: put out obscenely great music and let people buy it. Sounds like the perfect strategy for a record company to me.