Rants // On Owning (Tiny) Music Labels

Words: John / Relaxed Machinery

A while back someone asked me about my experiences owning (tiny) music labels. I think it was @mrfresh.bsky.social. I owned an ambient / electronic label called Relaxed Machinery from 2010 – 2016. Tagline was

organic .: ambient :. techno

However, we didn’t get much techno out. 🙂

But, let me rewind. I got heavily into the ambient scene in the late 90’s after the last of my rock, alt, etc bands broke up. And I decided to finally focus on my own music for once.

I met some great people on the old mp3 .com – some still friends with today. Found ambient forums like Hypnos.

I did some website work – and doing one label, led to another. Mainly work for friends. Helping behind the scenes. In 2008, longtime friend who owned AtmoWorks wanted help and I came on board to help run things while he stepped away for health issues, and the other partner on tour.

As co-owner of AtmoWorks – I worked a ton with various artists helping them release. Did web stuff, and data updates – and accounting – which I didn’t enjoy. 🙂

What I did love was creating a community on a platform called Ning. Kinda WordPress with lots of people.

Summer 2009 rolled around and I left AtmoWorks and started plotting Relaxed Machinery. I wanted to keep it simple – kind of a netlabel / artist collective. Created a goofy origin story. Started a new community on Ning.

Launched January 2010.

I decided no accounting – let’s make it non-profit for the label. So everyone paid for their own releases in whatever format they wanted to. If they wanted on iTunes or amazon – they paid the digital distort. Set up their Bandcamp, etc… CD / CDR? sure.

They kept 100% of what they made.

So that eliminated the biggest issue to me – accounting. It also just made it easier to run. However, still ran it as a label – the label art was consistent each year. I did the marketing. Two people from AtmoWorks joined me – graphic designer, and good business person. He had organization.

And we ended up releasing 55 albums and ep’s over 6 years. The Community became really pretty large – and I wanted it inclusive so we had many ambient labels have their community home there. I wanted to share the love of music and give everyone a space.

Unfortunately, Ning became unstable.

And that platform essentially was just too far gone by 2014 – and I tried to find other places – but the magic was gone.

I think another key to our success was the premiere listening parties. First on StillStream and then on SomaFM. The new album would stream and everyone chat during.

Which was really lovely! And I’m grateful to the hosts of the various shows – and to Rusty at SomaFM. We had nearly 2,000 listeners on a couple of the premieres.

So by 2016 I was burned out. I hadn’t recorded anything of my own in years. I was tired. Shut down in spring.

Releases were interesting and it took us a while to find our groove. A lot of the artists were friends or friends of friends. Some cold demos of course.

Finally had to make a rule – we’re not putting on the schedule until you’re actually done. Had to scramble with too many changes.

Needed a solid 3 months lead time from done to release. Still in the days of people buying files or albums instead of streaming – though streaming was coming on fast.

I had a nice mailing list of reviewers, dj’s, mix makers, etc.

Ending for now. 🙂