FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 2005 - ISSUE 23, VOLUME 132
Zunior.com, the little label that could
Interview: Dave Ullrich, founder of Zunior.com records
S T O R Y - By Brendan Kennedy, A&E Editor
Dave Ullrich shows off his MP3 power.
Zunior.com is possibly the only source of legitimate digital music sale and distribution for independent Canadian artists, and is also the only strictly online record label of its kind in the world.
At Zunior.com, every album is $8.88 to download and individual songs can be purchased for $0.88.
The website states simply, “Zunior.com is a new kind of record label.”
Ullrich—a Queen’s grad, Comm ’93—was also the drummer for Kingston’s bass ’n’ drum, grunge-pop duo, The Inbreds— founded Zunior.com a little more than six months ago.
Ullrich and singer/bassist Mike O’Neill formed the Inbreds in the late ’80s and both ended up staying for seven years. In the mid-’90s, The Inbreds tore up the Canadian campus radio charts with songs like “Any Sense of Time” and “Amelia Earhart.” Their 1997 Kombinator album is still considered to be one of the best Canadian albums of all time.
Since then, however, Ullrich has gravitated towards the business side of the industry.
He spoke to the Journal by phone from his current home in Toronto to talk about his revolutionary music label.
“When I got out of The Inbreds, I definitely sort-of stepped away from music a fair amount.”
After a short hiatus, however, Ullrich said he found himself stepping into the scene once again—making websites for artists of the Gas Station [a studio in Toronto] cabal as well as people like Pete Elkas.
“The more I did, the more I realized that those kind of guys could really benefit from something like Zunior,” he said.
From the initial nucleus of a handful of bands, which included The Scribbled Out Man, The Kelele Brothers, as well as Ullrich’s former Inbreds cohort, Mike O’Neill (whose latest release is the label’s top seller), Zunior rapidly expanded and the label now represents more than 50 different artists.
The unique model of Zunior.com has allowed the label to grow at a speed that would be impossible for traditional record labels.
However, Zunior.com is only a labour of love for Ullrich. He does not make a living from the label. Artists pay only a small fee to join—to cover the transaction costs associated with PayPal—so, nearly every penny paid by customers goes directly to the artists themselves.
“Part of the truly idealistic side of Zunior, or something like Zunior, is this idea that you can really have—in the truest sense of the word—a direct relationship between a band and their fans,” Ullrich said.
“The digital distribution model means that you don’t need to rely on stores, or other various forms of middle people that slide between a band and their fans,” he said.
“Don Kerr [Canadian scenester drummer] sent out an e-mail to some of his friends describing what Zunior was about and he put it very succinctly. He said, ‘Music fans pay less for music, bands make more.’”
While it seemed that the major labels and industry big-wigs would never understand MP3s and file sharing software, the emergence of services like iTunes and Puretracks shows that the major players are beginning to learn about the digital music revolution.
“I think what iTunes has going on is cool, but the thing about iTunes is that it’s really just a faceplate for the major labels in a lot of ways,” Ullrich said.
“Historically, record deals have been some of the worst legal deals in so many ways—whether it’s the types of restrictions and rights, or the monetary benefits,” he said. “Payouts are just so miniscule compared to the amount of effort that bands put in.
“You have cases of bands who are selling millions and millions of records making next to nothing on album sales. And, I think the digital world is that, only a little worse.
“I wanted to try and get away from that so bands aren’t giving away 40 to 50% of the sale of a song or a record, to a service that really isn’t giving you any sort of marketing. All they’re doing is straight distribution,” he said. “When it’s just distribution, the deals seem like rip-offs.”
However, Ullrich is optimistic about the future of the music industry.
“I think you’ll start to see more of the artist-centred model as people become more and more comfortable with using the digital distribution method to buy music,” he said.
For Ullrich, Zunior.com represents the future of music distribution.
“Now, it seems that for a lot of people, CDs are becoming backup,” he said. “They still want to have it to look at it, but they burn it onto their computer or put it on their iPod and that’s the last time they see it.
“I see in the next five years, there will be an artist—maybe somebody like Beck—somebody who’s independent, savvy and smart, who will decide to release music completely outside of the framework of major labels, whether it’s through something like Zunior, or a completely self-made digital distribution mechanism,” he said. “They’ll release a song, the song will become a global hit and it will be able to be distributed completely outside of the major label model. This artist will sell millions and millions of copies of the song that has never touched the major label machine. I think that when that happens—and I believe that it is guaranteed to happen—it will completely turn the industry on its head.”
But Ullrich is not campaigning to be the leader of the new music revolution. He’d rather see the barriers between artist and fan completely obliterated.
“The goal is to actually get people motivated to do it on their own,” he said.
Ullrich also hopes that he can turn the perceived negatives associated with digital music—for instance the lack of an aesthetically-pleasing hard copy—into positive elements by expanding the concept of digital music distribution by including things like artwork, videos, and by providing the opportunity to deliver rare or unreleased material.
When you purchase an album at Zunior.com, in addition to downloading the songs, you also receive album artwork, which larger companies like iTunes or Puretracks don’t offer. Right now, Zunior.com is also selling B-sides, live shows, and other rare Inbreds material and Ullrich’s currently working on getting a live Rheostatics album, from the Whale Music era, up on the site.
“I wanted to showcase the way that you could use a digital distribution model to put out stuff that you wouldn’t normally put out.”
Zunior.com is certainly not going to dismantle the music industry on its own, but it is providing a glimpse into a possible future, and it only stands to reason that there are other innovative entrepreneurs like Dave Ullrich out there.
“This didn’t exist five years ago. I think there’s something very compelling about that, and I think it will only become more compelling when the technology becomes more accommodating and people become more comfortable with buying music digitally,” he said. “Then, there will be people who will move outside of the traditional model and say, ‘Why do I need a record label?’”
