IndieHQ / Article Detail

April 2nd, 2007

Intervew with Ray Harkins of Abacus Recordings

It is an honor for me to bring you this interview with Ray Harkins of Abacus Recordings. I have known Ray for quite some time as his band, Taken, were at one time distributed by Suburban Home. Ray and I have always seen eye to eye on a number of the goings-on in the music industry so I thought it was rather cool when he started running Abacus. This is a really interesting interview that I recommend reading as Ray not only runs a label, but he does so with the perspective of being in bands himself (formerly Taken, but currently Mikoto). Not only that, but if you haven’t noticed, Abacus has become a powerhouse indie label these days with the high profile signings of acts like Sick of It all, Turbonegro, Juliana Theory, Ignite, Planes Mistaken for Stars, and have had a number of newer acts getting notice like the Cancer Bats and Glass Casket. Please read this interview as Ray gives great perspective on what he looks for in a band, distribution, the future of music sales, and even tells us what one Abacus release he would have every music fan check out.

Thanks Ray for taking the time to answer my questions. I truly appreciate it. And Ray, I did not get a photo from you so I posted the one you have on Myspace. Hope that is cool.

Everybody, please check out Abacus as I am sure you will find a ton of great new acts worth checking out.

This interview marks a consistent feature we hope to bring you twice a week where we interview labels of all sizes. If you know a label that we need to interview, please post it in the comments. Thanks.

INDIEHQ: When did your label start? What inspired you to start the label? Where is your label based? Do you do the label full time? What don’t most people know about you/your label?
Ray Harkins: The idea of the label originated around 1998 or 1999 when the folks over at Century Media began really toying around with the idea of creating an imprint that would focus more on the independent metal and hardcore side of the industry rather than the “traditional” metal that they had been known for in the past. The man that spearheaded the project was Steve Joh, who currently is doing A&R for Century Media. The inspiration behind Abacus was pure necessity. Century dabbled in working with bands of this ilk previously (ie: Turmoil, Only Living Witness), and had even launched a European hardcore label called King Fisher that focused on bands like Rykers, Sick Of It All and Brightside. However, most of the Century Media staff was entrenched within the metal community and didn’t have a knowledge of the DIY hardcore community that these bands grew up in, hence the genesis of Abacus. The label became an official imprint in 2000 with the hiring of staff, which included me and one other employee handling the publicity. Our offices are located in Hawthorne, California, about 20 minutes south of Los Angeles. The label is a full time job for me and has been for the past 5 years. The common misconception these days for the label is the connection with Century Media. For the past two years, we have officially been separate from that company. It was an amicable split, initiated by our owner and co-owner of Century Media, Robert Kampf.

INDIEHQ: What active bands are on your label? (please include myspace urls or website urls)
Planes Mistaken For Stars
Cancer Bats
Sick of It All
Ignite
Ion Dissonance
Caliban
Faulter
Sworn Enemy
Embrace the End
Clifton
DeSole
Glass Casket

INDIEHQ: What do you look for in a band? Have you ever signed a band from a demo? What advice do you have for bands trying to get your attention? What band or bands would you kill to work with?
RAY HARKINS: The most important thing for me when looking into a band is their work ethic. Many bands today carry with them the sense of entitlement that comes with watching peers becomes successful with little to no work. Bands these days feel like a magic wave washes over them after they execute the contract with the label, and everything is easy street after that. As most of us know, signing is merely the beginning. I have never signed a band off an unsolicited demo, but my method of checking demos out goes like this: If I haven’t heard of your band’s name, then you haven’t done enough work to warrant the attention of a label. Although this isn’t always the case, most labels rely on recommendations from friends and their own research. The advice I would give a band looking to get the attention of a label is to showcase what you can do on your own. Show that you are tour ready and have played several shows in your local area. Record a decent sounding demo, and get a package together that pulls all the elements of your efforts together. It will work wonders. If I were to assemble a “dream team” of sorts in regards to bands I admire/adore, it would look something like this: Isis, Interpol, Minus The Bear, Envy, Go It Alone, Thrice, Explosions In The Sky, Sun Kill Moon, Misery Signals. I could go on for hours, but I think this would be a really diverse start.

INDIEHQ: What one marketing/promotions tool do you find is your greatest asset? What vendor/manufacturer that you work with do you recommend the most?
RAY HARKINS: As with every label right now, our main vehicle of promotion is the internet. Our MySpace and website get a lot of traffic. Your label’s presentation to the online community is the most crucial thing any label can put their efforts into these days. We are in the process of giving our own website a much needed facelift to incorporate RSS feeds, a comprehensive listening post for our releases, and many other great features that will lead to longer time spent on our site. Above all, I find the streaming of entire records to be extremely valuable, as a majority of kids spend more time in front of their computers now than TV. For manufacturing we exclusively use SONY DADC in Terra Haute, Indiana for all of our goods, from samplers to full retail copies. While they are a gigantic corporate entity, they give us an amazing rate (the best out there, I am almost positive) and create our product without errors, which is a lot to say for manufacturing companies. I don’t think they are available for public solicitation, or I would give out their information. For our posters nothing beats the price or efficiency of America’s Printer in California (www.americasprinter.com). Their turnaround is astounding and they deliver exactly what you need for pennies on the dollar.

INDIEHQ: What release is your best selling title? How many has it sold?
Ray Harkins: To date, the Juliana Theory record we released is our best seller clocking in at around 35,000 copies sold in the US. We are fortunate in that we are able to have a global perspective with most of our bands, and get licensing opportunities around the world. Most of our other marquee acts like Sworn Enemy, Caliban, Sick Of It All, Planes Mistaken For Stars and Ignite click away at a few hundred copies a week for us. The Turbonegro record is always a perennial seller for us as well. Some of our younger acts sell anywhere between 7000-13000 copies on average. We feel like even though our acts may not crack the Billboard Top 200, we sell a respectable amount, all things considered.

INDIEHQ: Can you give me a brief explanation how how you get hooked up with Abacus, have you been there from the beginning? and if you can explain, tell me about the signings. I know that Abacus started by signing smaller bands, but lately it seems as though Abacus has received funding to sign bigger acts like Sick of It all and Planes and so on. And so far, have you found that the advances/signings have paid off? Is it still too early to tell?
RAY HARKINS: I got brought into Abacus around 2000. I was working at a local record store called Bionic Records, singing for my band Taken, and attending a local community college. Steve Joh, who I spoke of earlier, was responsible for finding some of the flagship bands of the unnamed label/hardcore imprint of Century Media. He began sniffing around my band, Taken, came to a few of our shows, and even took us out to dinner one evening. During this time, Steve and I developed a rapport, as he saw I was genuinely interested in the industry. A few months later, he contacted me to see if I would be interested in taking a job at Century helping him start up this new venture. I was hesitant, as my schooling was in the way of me working full time, so we began this as a part time endeavor. I realized that the job was, unfortunately, too much for me to handle part time, and had to politely bow out. Fast forward a few months, I was at a Shadows Fall show at The Whiskey, and I saw the president of Century Media, Marco Barbieri and we began chatting. He told me that my replacement wasn’t working out, and they were looking to get someone new into the fold. He casually mentioned the idea of me coming back, but didn’t want to press too much per the situation before. Oddly enough, I was coming to the point in my life where I was going to drop out of school to pursue Taken as a full time endeavor, and I wanted a job with the flexibility a touring musician needed. Needless to say, it was perfect timing and I jumped back in. The goal behind Abacus from day one was to be a diverse label, even though the first acts signed definitely fell into the metal/hardcore world, it was never our intention to solely release that particular genre. After we separated from Century Media, we had the ability to take some risks and sign larger acts as a result of funding we received from our distributor, and our relationships with these acts. It is a difficult question to answer if they have paid off or not for a couple of reasons. One, the amount of notoriety that was given to us based on the signing of these larger acts is something that you can’t put a dollar value on. After we had begun working with these acts, it definitely established us as a legitimate label rather than a baby imprint. Two, most of these bands have an international presence, so while it may seem that they are losing fans here in the US, they are gigantic in other areas of the world. Since we license these titles out to other labels, it is difficult to see how their sales are going. Overall, the signings have really helped the perception of the label as most of these bands are long standing acts like Sick Of It All or Ignite, and they are putting out the best records of their careers. To be a part of that process is worth every penny spent on these bands.

INDIEHQ: Music retail is tough these days, what steps, if any, have you taken to adapt in the post-file-sharing/post-Tower Records music retail landscape?
RAY HARKINS: We are becoming more frugal in signing bands as well as with the new talent we bring into the label as well. It’s not like it was 5 years ago where a brand new band can walk away with a $20,000 record deal (it still happens, just not as often). We pride ourselves on setting and achieving realistic sales goals. The last thing we want to do to our label, bands and our reputation, is pollute the retail stores with an obscene amount of product. Not every band we sign is the “next biggest thing of all time forever and ever” and we don’t need to ship out 20,000 copies in order to make sure people know we mean business. The demand will create the necessity to stock our records. While we are ambitious in our desire to create a healthy ship number, we try not to over saturate the market, as it devalues the band and us as a label. We are also making sure that our bases are covered with what retail is left out there and taking care of the indie stores where our core fan base (at least in my mind) pick up the latest Abacus release.

INDIEHQ: Who handles your distribution?
RAY HARKINS: We are distributed through EMI/Caroline which suits us very well as they know how to get our records out to the proper stores. It’s difficult these days to get a distributor to handle each and every label with the same quality of service, but we do everything within our power to make sure we deliver them a killer marketing plan, a reasonable co-op budget, and tour dates that can benefit their sales pitch.

INDIEHQ: What do you see as the future of music sales?
RAY HARKINS: First and foremost, I don’t think that we will see the death of the compact disc as we know it. Even though it’s collectibility is in question, with the amount of product that is churned out on a daily basis, people still want tangible products in their hands. There are still large contingents of audiophiles out there who aren’t content with the compressed and diluted format a 128k MP3 holds. No one can deny, however, that you are seeing music sales shift and online presence being more sought after than an article in Spin or Rolling Stone; therefore, one has to alter their focus. It’s nothing new, but people need to be aware of the fact that this is happening; it’s time to change and make sure your label is ready for what is to come.

INDIEHQ: Are your releases available on Emusic? Why or Why not? Are your releases available for streaming on sites like Rhapsody, Napster, and Urge? Why or Why not?
RAY HARKINS: Unfortunately, at this point our releases aren’t available on EMusic, but we are in the process of setting that up. As far as I know, our releases are up on all of the digital service providers, but I am not 100% sure as I don’t personally use Rhapsody(some Abacus titles are on Rhapsody, not all though - Virgil) and the others listed. The music is the medium, and getting it out there to the most people possible is our goal. If we prevent and lock people into a format where they cannot pass their music from computer to computer, we are doing the consumer a disservice. If you legally purchased the music, why should you be penalized for that? Piracy is out there and hurts artists, labels, and everything in between, but we don’t need to harm your average music aficionado because they bought a piece of music on iTunes. DRM needs to end now, and while iTunes is an amazing purveyor of music, more providers need to step it up to loosen the stranglehold.

INDIEHQ: If you could tell the world to buy one release on your label, which one would you tell people to purchase? Why?
RAY HARKINS: That’s like asking which is your favorite child, but maybe because this release took so much hard work on my part, or maybe because it is our next new release, but people need to check out the Sick Of It All Tribute Record called “Our Impact Will Be Felt”. The lineup is honestly a who’s who of independent music from Rise Against, Bleeding Through, Unearth, The Bouncing Souls, Ignite, Sepultura, Comeback Kid, Pennywise and Napalm Death to name a few. Where else could you possibly find a compilation with both The Bouncing Souls and Napalm Death on it? This was an extremely special project for me to work on; I was just glad to work alongside one of the most revered and respected bands in the hardcore/punk/metal community.

Written by Virgil Dickerson