Music

Here's the harsh reality of being a Canadian independent label

by Mark Teo

As Canadian independent labels go, there are few we admire as much as Mammoth Cave. Indeed, the Ontario-Alberta label, run by Fist City’s Evan Van Reekum and Ketamines / Century Palm / Tough Age bassist Paul Lawton, was founded in 2009 and has released some of our fave Canadian records since: Myelin Sheaths, Teledrome, Strange Attractor, and B.A. Johnston all released LPs and 7-inches via Mammoth Cave, and they’ve also handled re-issues for Hamilton psych legends Simply Saucer and beloved Toronto instrumental act Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet. If you’re interested in Canada’s D.I.Y. music scene, chances are, you’ve encountered Mammoth Cave.

Which is why we’re bummed—really bummed—to hear that the label’s shutting down. They were one of our favourites. Mammoth Cave announced the news today via an incredibly depressing Facebook note, in which the label announced that they’re “bankrupt—financially and spiritually.”

The label, in all, put out 44 releases over 7 years, and if you’re like me, you own many of them. But before departing, the label also posted the reasons why they’re folding, and in the process, outlined the difficulties of operating as a truly independent record label in Canada.

Here’s what they posted on Facebook.

The reality of being a truly independent Canadian label in 2015:

1) Pressing records: records take 120% longer to press than when we started. The “vinyl comeback” and “record store day” disproportionately favour Beatles reissues. SAMO Media were a life saver for us (if you are pressing records in Canada, it’s SAMO or nothing), but vinyl production industry can be almost impossible for labels of our size.

2) Weak dollar: the weak Canadian dollar adds even more strain we have to import our records into Canada, and it costs Mammoth Cave 26% more to press a run of records due to the exchange rate, and we were already selling records at close to cost due to extra importing and shipping fees.

3) Canada Post: It now costs more to ship a record than it does to buy a record. And since we started charging the actual amount to ship an LP, we saw customers flat rejecting the REAL price. Postage rates gone up 44% in Canada since 2010. Also, Canada Post fails to deliver records sometimes, so we get to send things twice for twice the cost, but that’s a whole other mess.

4) Music consumption patterns have changed: Since we started, music fans went from “collecting” to “downloading” to “streaming.” We are a record company, not a digital music servicing company. We love records, we don’t love playlists. And the nonsense about the “return of vinyl” has come at the cost of the people who have been keeping it alive all these years.

5) Granting: This whole letter could (and maybe should?) be about the uncompetitive nature of the Canadian music industry. The impenetrability of the Canadian grant system that should be primed to help Canadian music is in fact inhibiting competition. When some labels that sell just as many records as we do are able to subsidize all the issues above with millions of dollars in grant money, something is not right.

It’s pretty grim, but that’s the reality for plenty of independent labels. Still, we’d like to congratulate Mammoth Cave for investing their time, and their money, into a Canadian music scene: They’ve introduced us to countless bands, documented an era in Canadian music with a sharp curatorial eye, and given musicians a chance to release music in a physical format.

Canada, in short, is better off for them. We give them a stern, yet sombre, salute.

On the plus side, if you have gaps in your Mammoth Cave collection—or are just getting acquainted with the label—there’s some good news. They’re having a massive sale on everything but B.A. Johnston’s forthcoming Shit Sucks LP, and 12-inches are going for $5, with 7-inches going as low as $2. Here’s your chance to get to know Mammoth Cave. So, if you’re looking for recommends, we recommend starting with the Teledrome LP, Start Something’s Hard Times 7-inch, Strange Attractor’s Back to the Cruel World, the Ketamines’ You Can’t Serve Two Masters, and Myelin Sheaths’ classic Get on Your Nerves LP (you’ll have the lines “sick, sick, you make me sick” stuck in your head for days).

R.I.P., Mammoth Cave.