9 more things you might not know about Spirit Level
We are still here 👋
This article was written by Spirit Level founder and artist Tim Shiel.
Two and a half years ago, I posted our first and only post here on Medium. It was a response to the fact that we’d just been, rather unexpectedly, nominated in Australia as one of the five “best” independent record labels in the country.
It is January 2022 as I now write this, and obviously the past couple of years have been a strange and challenging time for reasons that have been well-documented, and well-lived by us all in different ways.
As I look ahead to another year of pulling the (not-so)-secret levers behind Spirit Level — this will be our ninth year — I thought I’d write an update.
So, in the tradition of cute internet content, here are nine more things you probably don’t know about Spirit Level.
1. We’re not really a record label now? Or are we?
I mean, what even is a record label anyway yadda yadda yadda. Yawn.
It is 100% true that Spirit Level continues to help artists develop their music for release, and then helps to distribute that music into digital stores (and onto physical formats where appropriate, though admittedly that’s pretty rare).
We try to connect that music with people who might help spread the word, though it doesn’t always work how we might hope. We do our best and try and work with transparency and integrity.
That release pipeline is a pretty straightforward process for us now, and although we’d love to release 1,000 albums a year, we are actually still incredibly careful about who we work with. It feels important that we maintain a tight-knit family feeling in our artist roster, and we maintain a unified (though hopefully still diverse) sense of aesthetic and taste throughout the things that have our logo attached to it.
Increasingly however, Spirit Level has been organically mutating into a more community-focused mess. Some of the things we are now doing aren’t even necessarily about releasing music at all.
Let’s talk about some of them.
2. We hosted a series of thoughtful conversations about the future of music during the COVID era
We sure did. We did that.
It was actually meant to be an in-person series of events, and the first one was. It featured an amazing French audio-visual duo called NONOTAK, and was hosted by our friends at ACMI X who kindly lent support to our whole project, even when we went online. (We didn’t film that one, sorry.) We also had generous support from the City of Melbourne to make sure our guests were paid for their time.
We talked to a lot of great people about interesting things.
We talked to Genesis Owusu and his manager about the nuts and bolts of how his management and label team formed. We talked to Jen Pelly about the state of play in music streaming, where it’s at now and where it’s heading.
We talked to Charles Damga from NFT platform Foundation, trying to find out way through the weeds there. We talked to Cassie Tarakajian about creative coding, we talked to Strangeloop about avatar artists and augmented reality, we talked to Tim Exile about his cloud jamming platform Endlesss.
We talked and talked and talked. And it’s all on YouTube. Go.
3. We started a Discord server. It’s a beautiful place.
We know Discord is weird. We know a lot of people don’t understand it or don’t want to spend their time there. It’s fine. We get it.
You know what, even I might come back to this article myself two years from now and be, like, ughh, yikes, Discord, ouch, I can’t believe I was doing that. Wow we were so lame etc omg embarrassing etc. Related: do you remember in that last article I wrote two years ago, I excitedly declared at the end “we are on Patreon now!” Haha. Um. Yeah. So anyway, things change.
Discord.
I mean, just look at it. It’s intimidating and geeky and kind of ugly.
But no. No. Don’t say that. It’s beautiful. How dare you.
I don’t ever want to hear you say that again, because our server is a delicate, vulnerable, gentle place. Taken as a gestalt of it’s 300 (ish) inhabitants, our server has feelings, and those feelings are precious and complicated.
So yes, our server is beautiful, because the humans there are beautiful.
We talk about music, the music industry, video games and podcasts, our lives and emotions, we post dumb links, we debate the merits of web3, we laugh and cry at the weird future we live in. We have actual conversations? We make actual connections? And friendships? Like, really.
The point is to be connected, and find some solace and support in each other, and it’s actually happening. I don’t have any expectations for what comes next with our Discord server, but we are all enjoying finding our way together.
4. We created a mystical island.
Oh yeah, speaking of Discord… we built an island inside our server.
We call it WAV Island.
It was River Boy’s idea. He’s got some good ideas, that one.
WAV Island is a magical island designed to foster creativity and community by setting its temporary inhabitants a challenge. Come to WAV Island for eight weeks. Each week, you must make a new piece of music and share it with the rest of the island before midnight on Sunday. It can be literally anything, as long as you made it that week, and it has to be at least thirty seconds long.
Even if all you do is point your phone at a magpie and save it as a voice memo, that counts. It’s the act of doing it — of doing anything, each week — that’s what counts. (No-one actually did this which was a little disappointing.)
The kicker, though, is: if you miss a week, you get kicked off the island. Bam.
It was an experiment but a very successful one, if the metric of success is to be measured in terms of the joy and warmth and growth of the humans involved (guess what: it is!).
40 people joined the island. 27 made it to the end.
200+ pieces of music were made over October and November 2021. Woah.
As January 2022 started, we released a compilation of highlights from the project. It features 28 amazing human beings (see below) and a diverse set of music that actually sounds pretty damn finished if you ask me. But they all wanted me to stress to you that these are not finished pieces, bless them:
Before you ask, yes we will do it again. And again. And again.
But you’ll need to find our Discord server if you want to join in. See point 3.
5. We don’t like social media. But we’ll use it if we have to.
That’s it. That’s the tweet.
Except it isn’t, right?
You don’t need me to tell you how toxic social media is. I think we are all well aware of its dangers now. If you’re not, you should be.
Just because it doesn’t feel dangerous, doesn’t mean it’s safe. Just because it tastes good, doesn’t mean it’s good for you.
Some good things can come from social media, we know it can, it can provide visibility and community for marginalised voices and it can deliver positive change. It can — but it often doesn’t.
My take on this is: if you choose to be there, treat it as you would any dangerous place, approach with caution and act with purpose. Don’t sleepwalk your way through social media. Stay alert.
Of course, ask me again next year and I might give you another answer.
So, yes, we have a bit of a high-and-mighty principled position on this but nonetheless you will see Spirit Level on social media here and there. It’s because we believe in our artists and our projects so much and want to spread the word. Just know that we pledge to use social media with purpose and with the mental health of ourselves, our artists and our audience always front of mind.
6. We are a not-for-profit operation.
Like, not legally. But, you know…
I tend to think this is obvious to most people, but in case it isn’t, I can spell it out: Spirit Level is not a business, really.
I mean, legally, we are a business — we are technically a company with two co-directors, myself and my friend Wouter de Backer. Our registered business name is actually “Spirit Level Recordings” and our ACN is 601 714 596. Fascinating stuff hey.
Money comes in and it goes out, though never in great quantities, just teeny tiny amounts. We pass on as much income to our artists as we can while still maintaining our little operation.
I don’t have any kind of business training and I make it really obvious to anyone I work with that I do not have a business mentality either.
It’s a vibe thing.
Our deals are 50/50 after the label recoups its costs. In practice what this means is that the label will front the costs for a release’s artwork, mastering & photography costs. That’s usually it, though sometimes we’ll pay for other things too. It’s always a very open back and forth with the artist directly about what money is being spent and what it is being spent on. Then, if and when money comes in from the digital stores, the label pays itself back before distributing whatever comes in after that 50/50. Until the end of time, or until the artist says, ok that’s enough, I’ll take my music back please and thank you.
The money the label collects, i.e. Spirit Level’s 50%— it isn’t a lot — but it pays for things like: subscriptions and internet services that the label uses in the day-to-day (like DISCO, Gsuite, Zoom, Bandcamp Pro, Chartmetric when we can afford it haha); membership in organisations like AIR which provide us with valuable industry advocacy; a small weekly stipend for our very handsome and friendy label manager; bookkeeping and accounting costs as well as boring yearly business expenses like ASIC fees.
When there is a little extra cash accumulated in our label’s bank account, and this is very rare, we dip into that small war chest to try various things that might benefit all of us on the label. We once dropped a bit of money testing out some PR in Europe to see if it would work. (It largely didn’t, but hey — now we know.) We tried pressing some vinyl, which is very expensive.
We do these things with full transparency and always with the artist involved. More often than not, the war chest is empty which is good because it stops us from spending money we don’t have.
No-one takes a wage at Spirit Level. Haha. Honestly, just writing that makes me giggle. There are really only two people who you might say are “on staff” — it’s me doing my thing and then my friend Nik, who does a handful of hours each week of label management (handling artist’s assets, making things are in order, bits and pieces) in return for a stipend.
That stipend probably only covers him for like one nice meal out with a friend each week. He has a day job. So do I!
There are no contracts, but a lot of trust, and transparency. As you can see from everything I wrote above, I like transparency.
And of course, we only work with artists who we trust like close friends or family. That mutual trust is key.
It’s a vibe thing.
We don’t have a five-year business plan. But if Spirit Level ever does come into more money, we’ll likely use the funds to change the artist/label split of our royalty deals so that the artist sees more (i.e. bump up the artist side to 60/40 or 70/30 or even more) and/or we would use extra money to invest in community-facing projects such as WAV Island, or other creative and mentorship programs designed to provide social good. By the way, if you are reading this, and you have too much money, and want to give us some, this is my personal email address: timothyryanshiel@gmail.com.
Side note: I actually did look into what it takes in Australia to register your organisation as a non-profit organisation legally. There are a lot of hoops to jump through, as there probably should be, but it doesn’t look like a lot of fun. I like when things are fun. Maybe we will register for that in the future.
7. Our artists still make really cool videos.
Gosh, sorry. That bit was really fucking boring.
Quick, look over here:
8. We know a lot about web3 but have no idea what we should do about it, and that’s ok.
NFTs, DAOs and the lot. We’ve done our research.
We’ve read all the threads and the tweets and the takes, or as much of it as we could stomach. I’m in $FWB. Woo hoo.
We’ll get back to you.
9. Connection, community and compassion are what drive us.
Also, curiosity and creativity.
And cannoli. Croissants also are great.
Anything that starts with c, really. Ok, maybe not commerce. Or capitalism. Capitalism sucks! Am I right?! High five.
Coriander though? Excellent. I love coriander.
If you want to learn more about Spirit Level, here are some places you can do that:
- Head to our Bandcamp to listen to music and give money to our artists and to Spirit Level. Some people call this process “buying music” though honestly what does this term even mean in 2022)
- Yes, we are on Instagram, through gritted teeth, until we can all do better. Head there to get updates on our artists and projects, but only when the unholy algorithm deems it so, which won’t be often. Sorry bout that.
- Jump into the deep end of our Discord server by clicking here — you will be met with warmth from our friendly existing community. Unless, of course, you are reading this some time in the future when the link is broken because we’ve moved on. Sorry about that.
