I chatted with Craig Evans this week, better known for his work in creating the hugely popular 'Flying Vinyl'. His project, which offers new bands the chance to get their material pressed and sent out to unbeknown listeners has really taken off, and with the second edition heading out in the post soon, it only looks set to get bigger. Here's what he had to say...
1. What is Flying Vinyl all about?
Flying Vinyl’s a members club for true music lovers. Every month our members get a box of exclusively pressed 7” vinyl records with new music from alternative artists, along with odd bits of merchandise and a small pullout magazine with information about each artist in the box.
2. How has the response been so far?
It’s been kind of overwhelming. Social media’s of course allowed us to take feedback on the project and there’s been an enormous amount of interest in it. I think there’s this core of really hardcore new music lovers who just get what we’re doing and like the experience of the whole thing as a really intimate means of new music discovery.
3. Where did the idea originate from?
Well my background’s in digital marketing in music and as a result I spend a lot of time at gigs and discovering new music. It’s kind of frustrating because there’s so much incredible music bubbling under the surface and the vast majority of it doesn’t get through because of the amount of noise there is online. You’re constantly fighting with dwindling attention spans, adverts that drag listeners’ attention away from content and of course the preconceptions that people have about artists based on various online media (how many Facebook followers a band has). That’s before you even start talking about people multi-tasking - texting whilst listening, posting on social media, listening whilst on-the-go etc). At that same time I was reading a lot about the negativity surrounding Record Store Day this year. I think it’s been instrumental in getting young people to go and purchase something on vinyl and then turning them into collectors, but a lot of people feel like it’s been hijacked by the major labels. The emphasis used to be on encouraging people to buy records from artists they probably haven’t heard before and that switched to selling over-priced reissues of old records. So somewhere in all of that I felt like there was a need for someone to create a concept that properly curated music, pressed it onto quality vinyl and distributed it to proper, open-minded music lovers. I felt like it would be the most exciting experience to get this box land through your letterbox each month with a load of new music on vinyl and the listener would sit down and play each record without being distracted by anything other than a booklet filled with information about each artist, a beautiful listening experience which would be alien to most people under the age of 40 who’d grown up with CD’s and digital music.
4. How successful do you feel this project can become?
To be honest it’s already successful in that we set out to create a club for new music connoisseurs and promote great new music to them, which we’re doing, but I think it’s going to keep growing as vinyl sales continue to increase and as people want to better connect with music.
5. Flying Vinyl is becoming a great platform for new artists to get their material out there, has there been any extra popular finds so far?
Well our first box went out in June and we’re just getting ready to send out the July box. We’re really aware that music’s subjective and have put a huge amount of time into curating the boxes to make sure that everything in there is the absolute best new alternative music in the world. The feedback from June has been incredible. The first week when it was landing on doorsteps our social media pages were just going crazy with people posting about the artists and the feedback was probably 99% positive. The best thing was actually a couple of weeks later after people had listened to the box a few times and got really familiar with the tracks, we started seeing so many tweets and messages from people who’d ended up buying tickets to see the artists from the June box at shows, or purchased albums and singles digitally. Really that’s the ultimate aim of Flying Vinyl, to connect true music-lovers with music that they’ll go on to become fans of. Coming up in the next couple of boxes we’ve got artists such as Eaves, Meadowlark, Theo Verney, Kid Wave and Kagoule so we’re setting the bar really high.
6. How important is it to you that vinyl makes a come back, like it is doing so right now?
Oh massively. Over the last 20 years a variety of tech companies have blown through the industry and re-evaluated what music is worth in financial terms. It started as ‘less than a cup of coffee’ and now we’re heading towards never really paying for music despite it being so massively important culturally and socially. This seems to have taught whole generations of listeners that music is a disposable, cheap product to be listened to through computer speakers or poor-quality headphones. Vinyl’s the antidote to that, it goes completely against where music’s been heading and I think that the same people who’ve grown up with digital music are frustrated by the disposable nature of it, they want something that they can connect with on a deeper level and that’s why vinyl sales are going through the roof despite the rock-bottom price of digital music currently. So of course I’m going to say it’s great that more and more kids are going out and buying turntables and vinyl records because they’re potential Flying Vinyl customers, but from a wider perspective I care more that people are buying music on vinyl because it shows that there are still a core of people who truly care about music and are willing to invest in that.
7. What are the future plans for Flying Vinyl?
We’re going to be announcing some various expansions to the concept in the next few months but for now our focus is to continue working with the best indie labels in the world and bringing great new music to the forefront using vinyl as the most personable platform to do so.
8. Where can we find out more about the project?
You can visit our website (www.flyingvinyl.co.uk) where there’s a bit more information and a blog page that lists previous releases. Also we spend a lot of time chatting with our members across social media, so feel free to get in touch with any questions or new music recommendations:
