Welcome to our first exclusive series for this year, “Lost Labels Of Yesterday”. In this trilogy, we will remind ourselves of music imprints that decided to hit the brake; whether long-forgotten or recently abandoned. While this would not be an in-depth analysis, we will attempt to find the reason on why these once thriving labels had to forfeit their potential and cease operation.
Disclaimer: To refrain any legal or other complexities, this article won’t be naming the individuals involved, directly or indirectly, behind these events.
This one almost feels like kicking a hornet’s nest. For the closing instalment of this series, I will be revisiting the Cell Recordings; a brief dive into its ambitious nascence to scandalous descent uncovering a risqué business. Those who guessed the hint from the preceding episode, give yourself a pat, because the aforementioned label was nothing short of notoriety.
The third week of November in 2017 was a usual and busy one for me. In the last year of school, there was not much excitement in my life apart from academics. Little did I know on how much frenzy was heading towards me and the blog, which I had recently joined back that summer. Later a cold evening, a teammate sent me bewildering assortment of messages which left me scratching my head, struggling to form a rationale for what I had seen.
You see, I had received rock-solid evidence exposing the unethical behaviour of one of the most notable up and coming music publisher: Cell Recordings. According to these data and proofs, the 2016 founded imprint was not only faking its statistics on both SoundCloud and Spotify, but ran a scamming demo service which charged considerable fee for a generic feedback, often coming from big names in the scene (which was obviously counterfeit).
This wasn’t just another typical scenario. Cell had an already impressive roster, inclusive of some of today’s heavyweights such as Olly James, Kevu, SaberZ and many other reputed acts from the Dance music business. They maintained an exterior facade as a hard-working upstart meant to carve a crucial milestone in the industry, competing with other esteemed brands.
Whole matter was nothing sort of sordid and overwhelming affair to me at the time. As soon our exposé had been published, the wrongdoings of Cell spread as if a wildfire had begun in a dry forest awaiting a spark of ignition. We received both applaud and backlash, with the former quickly aggravating the latter as other incriminating details about the guilty party surfaced. Unfortunately, in a day or two, we had to draw a non-negotiable parley with you-know-who, as he threatened to drag us into a defamation case, something which we didn’t have either the time or the resources to handle. Nonetheless, nothing much was left to be done.
In the aftermath of this incident, Cell Recordings lost both its accountability and clung onto a tarnished reputation. I didn’t give much heeding to what happened thereafter, and as far I know, the label changed hands as it was sold to another management. In fact, if you happen to visit their Facebook page right now, it is scrubbed clean of any troubled history, as a plain banner greets with the text “The new chapter is coming” . Yet rocket science is not needed to conclude that not much is to be expected from this hollow message; after all, first impressions are the best one, isn’t?
That was it for “Lost Labels of Yesterday”.
What do you think about this series and the labels mentioned, especially the one talked about today? Thank you for reading and supporting, so long my fellow readers!
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