Peppermill Records has been around since 2006, and takes a unique approach to the netlabel model, stressing collaboration among artists. I recently talked with Peter, owner of Peppermill. He has some wonderful ideas, and really elaborated on some of my questions. Check out the interview, then go download some free music from the Peppermill site, you will not be disappointed!

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SFM: What is your definition of a netlabel?

Peppermill: Hmm good question. There’s a few different definitions… one would be that of a non-profit mp3 label without geographical barriers, often consisting of experimental genres that aren’t often sold, such as noise and ambient music. Another is that of any digital label that forgoes physical releases. Then again there’s combinations of these, along with others that also put out cd’s and vinyl. I like many others tend to consider netlabels those that put out the majority of their works under Creative Commons licenses and promote the idea of free music. But that’s just because it’s what I’m used to, I don’t know if any one group of people can lay official claim to such a broad term.

SFM: What is the primary motivation for starting/running a netlabel?

Peppermill: For me I got into it via Soulseek Records, with their One Minute Massacre projects which were organized in their chat rooms and had some tremendously talented individuals involved, such as Kilowatts and DoF and ToyzRme and many others. It was all very democratic which appealed to me. I don’t know who originally came up with the idea for these timed Massacres, but they were a lot of fun. However with such a society it was sometimes difficult to make decisions, and things could drag on, and I was interested in hearing some of my favorite artists take on these kinds of
concepts.

So when many of the SLSK regulars started moving on I decided to register my own netlabel, I had no specific plans just an amateur website and time on my hands. I live in a tent and plant trees in the summer but was starting to take my winters off, and therefore had some months to kill. My first project started forming as… what was it again… something to do with the Juan De Fuca straight? Some complicated theme to do with living on a faultline. Not sure what spawned that. Now it seems a bit ridiculous and although there were some interested participants, I realized that I needed something more straight forward. So I did a twist on the SLSK massacre theme and did 30 artists in 30 days, and it was probably the most complex thing I’ve ever had to organize, with all the various time zones and being awake for all the transitions and finding new recruits at the last second when someone’s computer explodes, but it all came together nicely.

From there it slowly developed as I released a lot of great stuff from my planting friend Santosh, and soon we did some more large-scale projects when I wasn’t out in the bush. However now I’m starting to take it more seriously, with a music festival and all, so I’m attempting to keep releasing stuff year round. 2010 will definitely be the biggest year yet.

SFM: What is the primary motivation for an artist to release their own music on a netlabel?

Peppermill: The most popular reason seems to be to get heard. Usually from talented young non-professionals, who make music in their bedroom and aren’t concerned about making it a career. With Peppermill though I don’t consider it such a classic netlabel as our participants are more often than not working musicians, who are invited to contribute one song and so if they have time and are into the concept, they’ll occasionally participate in something non-commercial.

Also as with Montag recently, instead of clearing these cover songs, which would be quite the chore, he was more interested in just doing it for fun and then concentrating on his upcoming LP. So a netlabel such as this is a perfect home, as we’re not so concerned with copyrights, as we’re not selling anything and we’re not exactly mainstream. He would have been happy just giving it away to friends but it’s just such a great EP I felt it should be presented to a wider audience.

SFM: There has been an influx of new netlabels over the past couple years. Has this had a positive or negative impact on the netaudio scene?

Peppermill: Positive, in my opinion, for sure. Although I’m speaking of the new influx of netlabels off all shapes and sizes, not so much the more formless experimental music that has been abundant over the past decade. Netlabels featuring folk and pop and rock and punk and dub and metal and others are becoming much more common, in fact I think the quality of craftsmanship in CC releases has gone up substantially.

Not that I don’t still enjoy classics from Thinner and others. But I felt that scene was pretty closed off to new blood, they laid the foundations and those labels had a loyal following and they were happy with keeping it fairly tight. You know what I mean? They weren’t totally against new netlabels but weren’t that interested in opening things up to every style imaginable.

Now that music is so simple to create at home for anybody with a bit of creativity, and there’s an almost infinite supply of great new music looking for a home, the scene has exploded. Almost every city on earth seems to have at least one quality netlabel. Some countries are stronger than others for sure. Canada surprisingly is quite lacking, in fact the entire Pacific Northwest is, there’s a couple of others but overall the idea of Creative Commons as applied to music hasn’t quite caught on here yet. So… maybe in a hotbed like Germany it feels like an overabundance, but from my perspective, there could be more.

SFM: How important is licensing to the netaudio community? Is Creative Commons a good fit, or is there a need for new licensing models?

Peppermill: I like Creative Commons. I would make the licenses a bit more specific though, a bit less generic. For instance projects such as 30 Days and 52 Weeks were quite collaborative, samples from one artist were re-used and
mutated in later tracks, I think these songs should be presented in context, at least with a brief description and a link to the rest, if played apart from the others. There’s no licensing options that detailed though, however for the most part it works well and the artists have a bit of reassurance that people won’t abuse their work.

There’s some great great labels such as Cock Rock Disco which put out lots of top-notch free music, but don’t use CC and don’t subscribe to the “netlabel” title. But they have the same spirit, and I can see why some don’t bother with the netlabel framework, they just want to share with the world. And obviously some amazing people are happy to release their stuff without any formal licenses. But they’re easy to implement so I’ll continue using them, I like the confidence of knowing for sure that these songs won’t end up selling life insurance or supporting political campaigns.

SFM: What makes a “good” netlabel website? What functionality is expected?

Peppermill: In my opinion… easy previewing of individual tracks, NO pop-up players, zips of albums, beautiful artwork. Those are the things I look for. And of course great music, if the quality isn’t consistent I’ll lose interest in a hurry, as I rely on a label to help filter the masses, like everyone I have my tastes and am looking for the ones that can fill my needs. But without an attractive, easy to use site, I probably won’t bother going past the first page. Or I’ll just look for their myspace page so I can quickly listen.

Also I recommend netlabels don’t rely on archive.org, it used to be a great resource, and if you can’t afford anything else I can understand, however their zip files are often not easy to open on mac computers and if you’re trying to attract new listeners, you get one corrupted download and they may never bother again. I know I’m constantly frustrated with Archive releases. It’s not that expensive per year to get some dedicated hosting, it’s more reliable and faster to download. The main attraction for using Archive.org at first was the idea that it would remain there for a long time, no matter what happened to my own site. Which I’m not sure will be the case but it’s not a bad idea to put your releases up there anyhow. But not as your primary download. It’s an awesome place but their dedication to the netlabel scene is quite lacking these days.

Some great examples of netlabel websites in my opinion (despite occasional use of archive.org)… Upitup, Resting Bell, 8 Bit Peoples, Laridae, A Quiet Bump, Proot, La P’tite Maison, Headphonica… and then there’s Thinner, which is sort of in a class of its own except that it’s in disrepair and many links are down. Oh wait! Almost forgot about Shsk’h (shskh.com) that’s a work of art. Great music too, just not very prolific. Definitely a top netlabel in every way, and in it’s own universe it seems.

SFM: What defines a “successful” netlabel release?

Peppermill: That’s a tough one. I really don’t know what others are getting in terms of downloads. I suspect it’s not even close to what some of the original netlabels were getting years ago, when it wasn’t so common to get music for free, I really doubt anybody’s getting a million downloads per album, except maybe if you’re someone like Mad Decent giving away the occasional collection. Which I totally approve of, but as they’re mostly commercial I wouldn’t consider it the same thing. Peppermill’s most popular album to date has turned out to be Hi and Ho, We Plant Trees, with over 80 thousand downloads last time I checked, which I find pretty fascinating considering this album was put out for a very niche audience, that being other treeplanters, many of who are friends. However the songs are great and the lifestyle seemingly romantic, so I can see why it caught on.

I consider a release a success if it’s something I can listen to over and over and over, even if it’s something very mood-specific like Sounds of the Universe. In fact I haven’t put out anything so far I haven’t been happy with, sometimes I have to delay an album in order to insure this though, rethink and recast certain elements. The only thing so far I might change is one album’s cover/title, that being Santosh’s ‘The Book Of Moron’, which is our least downloaded album despite being absolutely brilliant. I don’t like censoring or imposing my will on artists however that particular cover art doesn’t really do justice to the music within, and therefore people don’t check it out as often. Since then though I’ve taken a more serious approach to visuals and we have some amazing stuff underway in that regard. I really enjoy finding illustrators to work with us, in fact I usually have the cover ready before I invite musicians to take part in a project.

Seriously though, with the amount of stuff out there, I could put out a great new album every other day probably, if I wasn’t worried at all about promotion and wanted to spend all my free time entering songs into the website. So I guess success also depends on making sure these artists get heard.

SFM: What do you see for the future of netlabels and the netaudio community? Will netlabels become more visible to the public? Or are netlabels destined to be “underground”?

Peppermill: I really don’t know. I believe we’re still in a transitional period, once people are more comfortable buying everything on line, no matter how small, then I think more artists will be able to make a living with the music instead of having to tour and sell merchandise. But the amount of music will also keep increasing. Hopefully the next myspace/mp3.com will be superior to this one and usher in a new age, who knows how long that will take though, I don’t at the moment see any candidates for this. Myspace is the ugliest site out there but a necessary meeting spot for all bands, big or small. Free music will get more and more popular but I don’t know how netlabels and CC will fair. It may very well always remain underground. Which is where many prefer it, and I do as well to a degree. I just want us to develop, as a community, better filters so that finding what you like in this huge glut of online audio won’t be a chore for the busy music lover. Which is most listeners. I do think though that netlabels will find much larger audiences, some of them at least.

SFM: What is more important, for music to be “free” as in non-restrictive, or “free” as in money? Or is it both? Do hybrid models of some-pay/some-free fit into your netlabel definition? Or are they something else all together?

Peppermill: There’s some great labels such as Egotwister that are hybrids. It’s sort of the grown-up thing to do, the attempt to create a recognized, legit label that promotes and puts out product that the artists can sell at shows that you plan for them, and many of the other things labels do, except for the contracts, nobody signs contracts with netlabels.

I for one don’t enjoy dealing with the financial side of art, so that’s why Peppermill will never sell music, I don’t think. It gets too complicated, plus for all the work I doubt any hybrid label can make a living with it at the moment. I would rather work in the real world for stretches of time, and take those funds and use them to finance my little netlabel. Keep art and money separate.

Not that I have anything against artists making a career out of their talents, of course not, but that’s not my world. And that seems to be a defining characteristic of netlabel owners. None of us exactly have business degrees, that I know of, we’re mostly inventing this as we go, with some help from others we admire.

So… free as in money is important, and non-restrictive… that’s an ideal however that Peppermill is currently entangled in, with the lawyers of the late great Shel Silverstein’s family, who don’t agree with these ideals at all. They live by old standards and refuse to compromise. It’s the harsh reality, just because we think it’s fine to do something like take the poems we grew up with as children and turn them to song, doesn’t mean we’re allowed to. Unless you plan to only share it with a few friends and keep quiet about it.

However it IS a new age with some new rules and just because the old generation sticks to its guns doesn’t mean their guns are applicable, in a manner of speaking. Freedom I think will win out eventually, as long as we persevere.

SFM: Feel free to share any other views that you might have regarding netlabels and/or independent music distribution on the web.

Peppermill: Well, one thing I’d like to add, is MORE DUBSTEP LABELS! Planet Terror is great, and there’s some others forming, and I don’t mean just specifically Dubstep but more frequency-rich, bass-heavy productions. It seems like a major difference between the best netlabel guys and their successful commercial electronic musician counterparts is that the ones that can sell their music and attract big crowds at parties and tour the world are the ones that mix their music using subwoofers, so it’s not just for us headphone junkies. Honestly, I think it’s a huge component, as people love dancing, and they love bass, when they can feel the music it takes on another dimension. I think sound systems will improve dramatically over the next decade and lossless audio will be the standard. Many of the “pros” don’t have nearly the skill of many in the netlabel scene but this is the difference. If we can combine those production values with the creativity of our scene, I think we’ll take it to the next level. Just a thought.

Wonderful insights… Thank you so much for talking with me Peter!

Interview by Adam Porter, 2010.