Warning to bands about shady record label

[LisaOrestea]

As such, we generally only offer "DIY Deals" to bands that we really like and would love to see go big, but we don't see enough sales potential in to spend our own money on.

Anyway... if you still want to do a DIY and buy a record deal, just remember:

The term DIY Record Deal completely contradicts itself though! The whole point of a band "going DIY" is that they do it all themselves! That is like hiring a plumber to sit and hold your hand whilst you fix the taps!

So you honestly believe that it is fair to take money from a band who you honestly do not think will sell records, AFTER they have already fronted up the costs of making the album themselves, just for a bit of advertising?

We have already discovered that Mark Daghorn seems to rob bands to the tune of about £15,000 each. Say my band spent £10,000 recording our album at an exceptionally good studio of our choice - for £15,000 total that means that there would be five grand left to hire a decent PR company to advertise the hell out of it. We are still being "DIY" because no "label" (I use this term very loosely in the case of Rising Records") has stuck their nose in and told us where we should be spending our money. I can guarantee that that extra five thousand pounds would get us far more in the way of results than signing a ridiculous "DIY contract" and then having to give some scumbag a cut of something they have had barely any positive input in.

Of course there is a way a label can take less risk. It is called licencing! The album is already there and finished and if the label believes it will sell then they offer the band money (yes, the band who have done all of the hard work actually get paid for it! SHOCK HORROR) in order to buy the right to sell that album.

 

[FukkMarkDaghorn]

TC.. you're still not getting it.

This is not a debate or argument about how cruel the music industry can be or about the big corporate company crushing the little man.

It is about Mark Daghorn / Rising Records being a complete sham.

He is just taking money from anywhere he can and not providing the service the money is apparently going towards. It is total exploitation.

He never pays up when it comes to owing money to engineers, merch companies etc I had someone contact me to see if I had Wankhorn's contact details because he still owed them money for Mendeed merch and this was years after the band had split up - he is a total crook!

He's already been investigated by the tax man for dodgy shit.

I've heard stories of one italian band he signed, the band borrowed from family etc, spent a fortune just getting over to the UK to record with him, they turn up and start recording and he turns round and says na, you're shit - go home.

He has a home in barbados also and it appears he is heading out the country shortly to no doubt get away from all this heat.

Sends them packing and keeps all the money.

This is the kind of shit we are talking about and then some.

 

[Joe Spinebuster]

I'm not really sure how this happened, guys, but just as the Captain of the Costa Concordia claims he "tripped and fell into a lifeboat", a copy of this thread seems to have tripped and fallen into another part of the internet?: http://www.SenzafineUK.com/UltimateMetal_Rising_Records_page1.html Weird!

 

[Misantropisk]

A friend directed me to this forum as my old band were briefly signed to this "Label".

My old band was a Death Metal style band, we were all either college students or doleys at the time. We played a fair amount of local gigs and some out of town ones, the only thing holding us back not having a CD. We eventually recorded a three track EP at my college and got to work spamming the tracks. We ended up getting a lot of interest on Myspace and sometimes getting 150 plays a day. All in the grand scheme of things its nothing but we were chuffed and when we got a belting review in Terrorizer mag, we decided to start looking for a label. In all honesty we were not ready for a label, but because we had the review, a lot of blogspot downloads and the internet plays we thought it would be the next step.

I sent off a few "Press packs" to some labels, some independent, some a bit bigger and some down right ridiculous. Anyway after a few weeks, our Myspace had a message from "Rising Records". I had heard about this label through a local promoter who was putting on a gig referred to as "The Rising Records gig". The message said that they had listened to the EP and that they were prepared to offer the DIY deal (this was 2008, his methods seem to have a bit more choice now). We called him later that night and arranged to go down to meet him at his home/studio. The deal was a simplified record contract where the band paid for recording/mixing/duplication.

We went down to visit him and a few seeds of doubt were sewn in my mind as soon as we got started. First of all we asked him what he thought of our music, he gave a very open answer too which I could tell he couldn't remember listening to it. His main response was "I like your logo, I saw it and thought it could sell things". Still each of us had started planning how to acquire our £2000 per head share of the deal as we ummed and ahhed basically working out that it would be an opportunity wasted otherwise.
He gave us a dummy contract to mull over and it was very simple for the DIY deal. I rang him later in the week and said we were going to sign with him. The second bit of doubt came with the contract, now affixed with "The Artist shall pay £1000 deposit before being announced as a RR artist". This was not mentioned as a condition in our meeting.

Anyway we paid it and we were announced as a Rising Records band. A few days later I checked the website's news page and it stated that they were "Stoked" to sign us. I took a breath back and thought "who would be stoked to sign us nobodies?". Around this time I read the No Quarter Given blog on dealing with Rising and got my band mates to read this. Some of them were shocked, others just gave a "how do you know this band isn't talking shit?" attitude. I knew though now. The nail in the coffin came when they signed another local band who I had always seen as a bit naff and a bit try hard. I got my point across at next rehearsal with the support of my guitarist and we rang up Rising and cancelled our contract.

Now I don't expect any sympathy as we knew what we were getting into, we got the exact same speech of "If you put the effort in, you may have a huge record, only you guys can fuck it up" and we all sat there nodding thinking we were "different". I do however feel sorry for the bands it has fucked up royally, who have split up, who are financially ruined and have had their dreams ruined. In the end it didn't work out too bad for us, We lost £1000 which was £250 each, we swallowed our pride on the local scene and had to say our "deal" had fallen through but we played some awesome gigs in our final year after that. We ended up splitting because we had different influences and the writing had got stale, so in the end going any further with Rising would have been a huge mistake that only would have ended in tears.


Last minute edit: I remembered just now that we used to get a lot of messages from the "Street Team" asking us for designs and money for flyers. Of course with the seeds of doubt firmly sewn, we ignored these messages haha.



Sorry if thats a bit epic and drawn out for a first post!

 

[Tetsuo unit]

TL;DR VERSION:
I had an offer from RR that was politely declined.
Education is the key to helping folks avoid making mistakes.
The more experienced should share that experience.

One of my projects/bands was offered the standard RR DIY deal a few years ago in the format discussed here. I had sent them an EP after reading a profile on them in a well known magazine and it seemed they would be able to provide what we thought we where looking for at the time.

The offer came through myspace and was three quarters and advert for Trigger The Bloodshed (no dig at them intended) and then explained why monies would be required upfront: primarily because the distributor would not release anything that was not recorded/produced ect by him in his studio as they saw it as a seal of quality.

I explained that as our EP illustrated we where able to do everything from recording to the art ourselves to a fairly high standard and that based on his work with Trigger... etal I did not think his style would be appropriate for us. I also queried a few other points in the offer that where at best, quite vague, and politely asked him to clarify what exactly we would be paying for that we could not do ourselves aside from access to his contacts/mailing list. We never did get a reply.

A few weeks later it came up randomly in the pub when chatting with other local band folks who had all been offered similar things. I would now go so far as to say that I don’t know many bands, local or otherwise who have not had one from RR and as some one pointed out earlier its very similar to 'vanity publishing' in the literary world. Not illegal per se but certainly on somewhat shniedy ground.

For our own part we had a sit down and chat about what we really wanted from the project and realised that we where already achieving everything we wanted and needed from our music already. That we where chasing a deal because 'thats what bands do' and never actually wanted a career in music (my first love being and always will be Geology). Promptly gave up on courting labels and doing the traditional band thing and have never been happier or more fulfilled as musicians.

My heart goes out to those people who have fallen afoul of this chap and to say that any one stupid enough to sign up to his offer deserves everything they get is quite callous. We have all been young/uninformed/desperate (delete as applicable) at one point as musicians and this could easily have happened to any of us so a little empathy is not too much to ask.

I count myself fairly lucky in that early on I got to know quite well some folks in well known, mid level bands who quickly disabused me of any fanciful notions regarding the industry but not every one is as fortunate.

As bobslayer and t-c point out, the way to help people make informed choices about this sort of thing is through education. Perhaps if the info t-c has provided where reformatted in a more transparent and empirical way it would be helpful to more people (though I understood his point and reasoning for the tone of it). While there are plenty of books and websites with this information if one is willing to do the research you have to know where to look and what for. Its not something that can be repeated enough and I honestly feel its up to more experienced members of the community to help educate those less well versed.

Perhaps a sticky, locked thread somewhere on UM regarding the mechanics of labels ect?
(edited for spelling)

 

[Lasse Lammert]

Enough!
There are plenty of people signing up to this forum just to post in a thread that they haven't understood or even read.
I'll close this thread for now and clean it tomorrow.
This thread is about Rising Records (I'm not gonna abbreviate it with "RR" cause that might cause confusion) and Mr. M. Daghorn.
I'm gonna skim this thread and reduce it to the posts which are directly related to the topic.
I'm not gonna take sides, every single post that is about M.Daghorn or an experience dealing with him or his label will stay...be it positive or negative.
Some of the insights given in this thread ARE interesting and people should know about that stuff ( stuff that T-C posted etc), but I have to start somewhere and treat the posts equally...so it's not up to me to take sides and decide which off topic posts remain and which don't.....Every OT post will be gone tomorrow.
All the stories about dealing with Rising Records and Mr. Daghorn will remain (until someone else deletes it)....be those stories positive or negative....if everyone who ever dealt with that label had a positive story to share it'll stay as well as the negative ones.

I'm fucking sick of people signing up to this great forum just to spread their bullshit opinion about the music biz etc without even having read the thread or having understood what it was about.
if you have an experience/story to share after this thread has been cleaned and closed feel free to PM me, if it is really 100% related to the topic I might open the thread for you to post.

I repeat:
IF you have an experience/story to share after this thread has been cleaned and closed feel free to PM me, if it is really 100% related to the topic I might open the thread for you to post.
If you decide to PM me and waste my time by complaining about a closed thread/deleted posts etc I won't be pleased, cause I think I explained myself....and I don't like when people are wasting my time.

you can scream censorship and dictator all you want, just don't annoy me with PMs doing so


t-c: I appreciate your contribution, if you wanna put your posts into one educating and neutral text I'll gladly stick it somewhere on this forum for people to read!