Cooking Vinyl MD Rob Collins has told Music Week how the independent label's ethos has helped inspire recent successes such as two No.1 albums for Shed Seven.
The Britpop veterans signed a worldwide artist services deal with the company in 2023 and went on to net their first ever chart-topper in January with their sixth studio LP A Matter Of Time (30,647 sales, OCC) – their first long-player since 2017's Instant Pleasures (29.974 sales).
The York band then repeated the trick less than nine months later with Liquid Gold (29,104 sales), which celebrated their 30th anniversary as recording artists, reimagining tracks from their catalogue in new, orchestral versions alongside brand new song All Roads Lead To You.
Speaking in our latest edition, Collins suggested the campaign spoke volumes about Cooking Vinyl's approach.
“We’re really diligent and we really work hard and we look for every sale," he said. "We’re not lazy about our releases. In Shed Seven’s case, they haven’t had a manager for the majority of the campaign. Paul [Banks, guitarist] from the band is the manager, which is amazing. He runs his own business in York, he’s got a video production company, so he’s super organised, and was able to put out a lot of content and pull a lot of the strings that a manager would, but the band are really involved with the whole process."
We managed to strike up this amazing relationship of everyone going for the No.1, everyone believing in it
Rob Collins
He added: "We managed to strike up this amazing relationship of everyone going for the No.1, everyone believing in it. And that’s not just us and the band, it’s the wider team that we employed, plus the distributor. I don’t think we thought we were going to get the first No.1 back in January, but once you see the pre-orders coming in, you get a little bit excited.
"It happened because of a load of hard work, because the band leant right into the campaign and they did everything they were asked to do, like signing multiple copies in their thousands, doing all the in-stores, the out-stores, meeting the fans, really grafting. And on top of that, the guys are great on social media. It’s a really authentic voice that they speak in.”
Collins asserted that Shed Seven have been a good fit for the label, in part, because they share similar characteristics.
“We’re a bit simpatico," he said. "They’re underdogs and I think we’re underdogs in the overall business. We’re not first on everyone’s call list when it comes to a deal for a particular artist, from a manager or lawyer, but when we meet them and get in the room, we put on a really good show and we compete, not necessarily in a financial way but in a passion way – and in a sensible way that we think is sustainable for us and sustainable for the artist.”
A Matter Of Time's first-week sales of 17,756 were 86% physical, rising to 90% for Liquid Gold's opening week consumption of 25,622. And Collins said he considered the current state of the physical market to be "really healthy".
"If you look at Coldplay’s physical sales [for Moon Music], the share of CDs is off the scale," he said. "I couldn’t believe it. But I don’t think the CD has ever died, it’s always been there. We’ve always sold truckloads of CDs, be it Will Young or the Psychedelic Furs, and I think now it’s a cheaper physical format. A lot of kids that I hear from aren’t collecting vinyl because it’s too expensive, so they buy a CD instead.”
We don’t have 20 albums a month coming out; it’s quite a bespoke release schedule
Rob Collins
Other highlights for Cooking Vinyl this year have included Key (8,996 sales) by Alison Moyet, which peaked at No.8 in October, and Beneath The Neon Glow (6,810 sales) by singer-songwriter Elles Bailey, which reached No.12 in August.
The lastest signing is former chart-topping boy band Blue, with more new deals set to be announced.
For Collins, who has been at the label since 1999, the company's culture is attractive to artists.
“I think a lot of it boils down to passion and personality,” he said. “Passion, service, commitment, love of the music, actually going to their gigs, things that a lot of companies have forgotten how to do.
“We don’t have 20 albums a month coming out; it’s quite a bespoke release schedule. It’s much more of an independent label that is quite cultured and curated as opposed to, ‘Let’s put loads of stuff in the release schedule like a distributor, throw some services on top and see what happens.’”
Subscribers can read the full interview with Rob Collins and Cooking Vinyl co-founder Martin Goldschmidt, which also looks back at the ups and downs of the company’s near-four-decade history and its place in the indie sector, in the December issue of Music Week.
