We all found out this week that one of the bastions of independent music, Touch and Go Records, is changing drastically. While it’s not closing shop entirely, it is reorganizing and cutting jobs. Thanks to the murderous economy, the historic and important indie label will no longer distribute and manufacture releases for other, as-important labels like Merge, Drag City and Jade Tree. (Stereogum has a list of other labels affected plus the official press release from TAG owner Corey Rusk.) And that sucks.
Touch and Go will, however, continue to act as a record label.
Most everything’s been said about how the album is dead or dying and what putting out “records” will look like in the future, so rather than wax on all that, we’ll just say this: we like the trend of releasing records only in vinyl and digital formats. Buy the vinyl and get a free download, or skip the vinyl and simply download the album. Pleases the snobs like us who want the vinyl sound quality, the pretty, tangible album art, but also portability, and it also satisfies little Jimmy Next Generation who only needs mp3s, singles and Adderall.
Rusk summed it up sadly but sweetly: “It is the end of a grand chapter in Touch and Go’s history, but we also know that good things can come from new beginnings.”
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