Interview With a BitTorrent Embracing Record Label

Beep! Beep! Back up the Truck is a Dutch record label that offers torrent downloads of their entire catalog of music for free under a Creative Commons license. Freakbits had a chance to talk to the label’s co-founder to find out why.

The label is comprised of several bands that tour internationally and draw comparisons to bands like Cursive, Explosions in the Sky and At the Drive-In. The guys at the label pride themselves on Beep! Beep!’s united brand and quality of music, as well as the elaborate album artwork that is part of the physical releases – two characteristics that they believe separate Beep! Beep! from the net labels.

FreakBits guest reporter Chris Castiglione spoke with co-founder Nicolai Adolfs about Beep! Beep! and their motivation to share their music.

FreakBits: What are the benefits of being a label that gives away your MP3s online?

Nicolai: The way we work right now is it gets global, because of course the Internet is global. If it is really easy for people to know your music then more people will pick it up and say to their friends, “Hey! I downloaded this record – go to this website” which is what we notice, we get attention from everywhere.

People need to put it on their iPod. MySpace is nice in a way, but it is more for promoters if they want to give a quick impression. But MySpace is this huge thing, so people generally think MySpace is good enough and they won’t also put it on their own site.

FreakBits: Do you imagine Beep! Beep! growing much larger in the future?

Nicolai: We don’t want to keep it small. Eventually we want to make it an international thing.

FreakBits: Are there any other labels doing what Beep! Beep! is doing?

Nicolai: Bright Eyes’ label Team Love was – I think it stopped – but even if they do give their music away now it is probably only in the U.S. because they had the same licensing problem we did.

FreakBits: Why do you have a licensing problem if you give away your music for free?

Nicolai: If we look for a partner in the U.S. for example – to have better promotion over there – they have to have the same ideas as we do. But generally they say “Well, you give away your music for free, so what’s the purpose of selling your hardcopies over here? People can just get it for free!”

We don’t agree with that, but a lot of old fashion labels think that way. So Team Love is the only record label I know that releases free music and hard copies.

FreakBits: Can you tell me about your relationship with Mininova?

Nicolai: Mininova has been great. Normally you have to pay for the bandwidth that is used, but they store it for us, and when there is not enough seeders then they kick in as a backup so the music is always available.

But now they have this new thing, where they are taking off all the illegal content on Mininova. For example if Universal comes in and says, “You have to take off this show” they do it immediately. And that is different between what the Pirate Bay does. It’s a shame because I’m afraid it might be the end of Mininova.

Pirate Bay provides everything, so why go to Mininova when you can already get everything from the Pirate Bay. Even if the Pirate Bay will be shut down then there will always be another torrent site, someone will come along and fill the gap.

FreakBits: Both Beep! Beep! and Mininova live in Utrecht, The Netherlands, are you friends with them?

Nicolai: We don’t know them on a personal level. I think they just like other music. Our stuff isn’t really their thing – torrents are their thing.

FreakBits: And you have shopping links on Mininova so that people can also purchase the physical album?

Nicolai: Yes, and we think that this is a logical thing as well. If we are benefiting from people that come to the Mininova website, then why not sell it. I guess it makes the whole thing seem less illegal in some way.

At the same time, we worked with Mininova to try this new thing, but we don’t want people to get the idea that we only want to benefit from a huge website like Mininova. We have our own music and our own quality. We like innovation, so we hope it says, “We use torrents, we embrace them and it is best to promote your music on torrent sites”, but it stops there. We don’t want to do anything else with torrents, what we do is music.

If we get big it has to be from the music. Not because “Oh, now they did this on that website, oh and then they did this….”.

FreakBits: Sounds like the same thing that has happened to Trent Reznor: people seem to be more interested in what he is doing then with his music.

Nicolai: Yes, this is what we are a bit afraid of. But so far it has worked out fine.

FreakBits: Why do you think there so many BitTorrent sites in The Netherlands?

Nicolai: I think it is because The Netherlands is a liberal country. In addition to Mininova we had Oink and Kazaa. I think Kazaa was a Swedish guy living in Holland.

FreakBits: The Swedish and the Dutch – starting up all the trouble?

Nicolai: [laughs] Yeah, but that is fine with me. There has been a really negative approach towards MP3s the last 15 years. I do understand it in a way, but on the other hand if people had embraced it and tried to approach things from a positive side then they would have been way further – instead of all this negative stuff that they came up with.

That was the same problem with cassettes. There was a huge problem in the 70s, it was “the end of music” because you could make copies. Then they finally embraced it and it was a really good product for about 20 years. The whole industry benefited from it! So this is the same thing, but at a different time.

We step in and we embrace it instead of complaining.

Same problem with copyright. There are these huge trials where loads of money is put into lawyers and everything. And that is money that should go to the band, but it goes to the lawyers and trust me these people don’t care about the band, they just want to win the case and win money.

FreakBits: Does the label get any criticism?

Nicolai: Distribution companies don’t really like us, they say, “Well you are already giving your music away for free, so why would we sell it”. Other record labels have approached us and say (scolding), “What are you doing!?” And I don’t see the threat. The threat is when you start selling vinyl for 25 € ($35). I don’t know if you know what it costs, but a vinyl record costs like 4 € ($5.50) to make.

FreakBits: What about the bands you meet and play with, what do they think of Beep! Beep!?

Nicolai: The bands that we book over here, most of the bands love what we do. They feel that is has this really romantic side and maybe in a way it does. In the 90s we all used to be these small punks, and we had these ideas of how things should work and now we’ve grown up and kept certain principles. But the difficultly for these types of bands that already have a label behind them is that the label has sunk in all this money and have a huge promotion thing they’ve built up.

FreakBits: Do you think every band should be under Creative Commons right now?

Nicolai: No, because Creative Commons is not ready right now. One example is with airplay. In Holland we can be played on radio, but we don’t benefit from it financially. The Dutch collection agency won’t help us get money from airplay.

Beep! Beep! has a donation button on the site, how have donations played a part in making money? That doesn’t work at all. I think we got 5€ twice. One of the reasons might be because [on the site] you donate to Beep! Beep!, but not to the specific band, although I don’t think it would have really made a difference.

FreakBits: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us!

Nicolai: Yeah of course, no problem.