INDEPENDENT RECORD LABEL.
ÅRHUS, DENMARK.
Most independent record labels start with one band. In this respect Morningside is no different from any other label. Jesper Broderson had some songs, and to get them heard he put a few of them online for people to download. If people liked the songs they could e-mail him and Jesper would print a CD and a cover and mail them. Cost was thus really kept to a minimum; the hosting of the website the biggest one.
From the start Jesper was aware that having more than his own songs on the website would make it more interesting to every-body. That way the website would not only be a band site, but a record label. So this was naturally the next step.
For me it was a hobby project, so I had no ambitions of making a record label that would grow big fast, the focus was always to have good bands for years.
When he started the label, Jesper was studying and on a state study grant which covered his living costs, and even as the label has grown and he could allow himself to take some money out of the company, he still kept a job alongside the record label. As the label grew bigger, it got increasingly hard to do all the work himself and this was when Jesper Mejdall entered the picture.
He had shown interest in the business side of the label and because it had at that point grown so much already I was looking for somebody to share the work with. I asked if he wanted to participate.
Even though Mejdall also has another job alongside his work on Morningside it was important for Jesper that he was interested in the business side of the label. There is no lack of people who are interested and want to help, but they always want to get involved with the creative stuff, and he wants to do that himself.
Along with Mejdall, Brodersen also has an accountant who does the books and taxes. To begin with he did this work himself but now thinks that getting the accountant is one of the best things he has done. All in all Morningside’s finances have been very conservative. The company was started with an overdraft of almost 7,000 Euros, which, as Jesper admits, is peanuts. Yet the 20 year old Jesper took this very seriously and made a business plan, outlining the cost of producing the record, keeping the breakeven point as low as possible, and this as well as the personal guarantee of two people secured him the overdraft.
In spite of the relatively low overdraft, they have been able to keep within its limits. Although Jesper admits that this has at times been difficult. The label can only support one act at a time and if the money runs low they have to wait for it to start to come in again before embarking on the next project. This has been particularly limiting for their work in the UK market, where they have been working with their biggest band, the Figurines. Yet, Jesper seems weary of looking for external funding.
No, I have too much work with the everyday work, so that it would take me a lot of time and energy to start going out and maybe looking for people that would invest, so it is probably not going to happen … And because I hate money. I’m scared of it. It really blocks me.
Although this attitude limits expansion, it keeps the company running in the way he has chosen.
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This is the sixth part of Volante’s series Creative Business. The series is a complete version of the book ”Creative Business: 10 lessons to help you build a business your way” (Volante, 2010). The book is available for purchase in an ebook version on Amazon or Lulu (Kindle, ePub or PDF), a paperback version distributed directly from the publisher and soon also a print-on-demand version distributed globally.
