Music

Any band can be signed to this record label for $250

by Mark Teo

If you’re a fan of punk, garage, or anything in between, chances are you’re familiar with Burger Records, the California-based label that’s equal parts prolific and critic-celebrated. Genre heavyweights such as Ty Segall, Nobunny, and Black Lips—as well as Canadians such as Dead Ghosts, Yacht Club, and Michael Rault, whose full-length drops in May—have cut releases on the label, and now, the Burger braintrust is offering a new service: The chance to get signed to its subsidiary, Wiener Records, for a mere $250.

This doesn’t appear to be a pay-to-play scam: The $250 will get a band signed, press a run of cassettes, ensure distribution and pay for artwork. That money will get you 100 tapes, entry into the Burger-Wiener collective, and, in certain cases, mastering and marketing. And it’ll ensure a piece of key merch for your band. Wiener also offers larger packages—500 tapes, for example, will set you back $650.

Most importantly, though, it’ll get a band some merch.

“Part of that fee we charge for the tape pressing covers shipping, [it] covers maintaining the website,” Wiener / Burger head Danny Gonzalez told Consequence of Sound. “And we do save part of it for everything else. We do a lot of distribution through [L.A.-based distro] Cobraside, and we take 10 per cent of each pressing, so if you have a 100-[tape] pressing, we’ll take 10 tapes.”

Bands such as Wax Witches and Gym Shorts, too, have started out on Wiener and ended up on Burger, so it’s also conceivable that the cassette label’s an incubator. Check out a full interview with Gonzalez below.