Beat Delete: Pledge To Purchase All Those Out Of Stock Records

The fire at the Sony-DADC warehouse in Edmonton, UK during London's riots of summer 2011, is still effecting independent labels and music lovers across the world. The distributor supplied record shops with CD's, vinyl and DVD's by artists such as The XX and Darwin Deez as well as established artists including Arctic Monkeys and The Prodigy. It also held products for labels such as Warp, Ninjatune, Brownswood, Domino and Sunday Best, many of which lost their entire back catalogue of stock.

The problem with losing the stock of these records is the cost of re-pressing them. While it's easy enough to put in an order of 1000 copies of something you know will sell in a matter of weeks, it's not the same for a record that may take several years to recoup the investment. With added warehousing costs on top of expensive shipping and manufacture, many labels simply can’t afford to take that risk. As a result, we’re all – as music buyers – impoverished. This is particularly true of vinyl, where the costs of re-pressing small quantities of a record are exceptionally high.

This is where Beat Delete comes in.

Beat Delete is a kind of specialised Kickstarter, a website for the rescue of potentially lost releases. Customers will be able to pledge to buy a copy of a particular record of which the relevant label is out of stock. When a certain threshold is reached, the record will be re-pressed and will then be available again to the wider world. By making a contribution towards minimum costs, pledgers will have eased the risk inherent in a re-press and given the music they love the chance of reaching a wider audience.

The site is fully integrated with various social networks, so pledgers will be able to get their friends on board to try and get their release repressed. With the ability to sort releases on Beat Delete by ‘most funded’, browsers may even find a gem that is close to a repress and tip it over the threshold with their own order. Since the beta launch of the site at the start of the year there have been steady orders with one release 'King Geedorah's Take Me To Your Leader' 82% funded already.

Developed from an idea of an employee of Ninja Tune and “powered” by the same label, this is an innovation already supported by the following labels:

Accidental
Ninja Tune
Beggars
Big Dada
Brainfeeder
Cat Skills
Domino
Sunday Best
Tru Thoughts

Beat Delete is always looking to consistently add new record labels and releases to the site. Any labels interested in making out of press products available to the wider world, please contact info@beatdelete.com