Earache Records is an indie record label founded by Digby Pearson in the late 80s. They signed a lot of very important bands and there was much attention given to heavy metal at the time, Digby set up a licensing deal with a major label – Sony's Columbia Records.
The deal basically gave Columbia the rights to market the albums in the Americas for a certain period of time, at which point all rights would revert back to Earache. Releases from Godflesh, Carcass, Napalm Death, and Cathedral came out on the major and it was a big deal at the time.
Barney Greenway of Napalm Death was famously uncomfortable with the deal likening it to "selling out," which showed how attitudes towards majors was back then.
It's funny because of the way the music business works, to get any sort of proper distribution, you have to team with a major label distributor. So all the metal labels work with a big distributor now – even Napalm Death's label, Century Media (which ironically is owned by Sony now.)
This humor is not lost on Digby. With the news that Nuclear Blast was acquired yesterday and the news a few years ago of Century Media's sale to Sony, Digby pointed out on Twitter how curious it was that not a peep is being made about this anymore.
I licensed 7 albums for 18 months to Columbia Records in the 90s which was considered a heinous crime against metal, still discussed in books. 20 years later entire metal labels are sold off to Sony or to a French tech company and it barely raises an eyebrow #musicbizisfunny??
— ????? ??????? (@digearache) October 11, 2018
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