Photo: Judith Burrows

The Editor's Box Ian Anderson's comment column

Before I wander off on another stream of editorial consciousness I should probably do a bit of shameless boasting. Yes, this is our 360th issue – one for every degree of our coverage, you could say, though we might biff you for being pretentious – and next month we enter our 35th year. Possibly even more remarkable is that every single one of those has been published on time. As far as I know, there is no other folk/ roots music magazine in history that has a 100% unbroken publication record anywhere near matching ours.

We’ve always been a totally independent magazine too – some may say bloody-mindedly so! And apart from a period in the late ’80s when some of the majors briefly glimpsed a bandwagon, I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of the best, most exciting music we’ve covered over the years has been put out by small independent labels. Here in 2013 that’s even more pronouncedly so.

So independent artists are always our core, but this issue actually celebrates artistic independence and the DIY ethic more overtly. Mainstream music culture often associates that term with the punk era and the birth of what became known as ‘indie’ labels, but people in folk (and jazz and blues too) had already been following that path for many years before the glorious year zero of ’76 came along.

Part of it was because, outside the brief commercial trad jazz and folk booms of the 1960s, you were unlikely to get a deal with a major, but it was also helped by a quirky loophole in the UK taxation system. Until 1973 when ‘purchase tax’ was abolished to be replaced by VAT, you didn’t have to pay purchase tax on records pressed in 99 copies or fewer. My own first two records were limited edition 99 copy EPs. There were specialist pressing plants whose main business was catering to that market, and often the covers were hand assembled. Yes folks, early teens building free flight model aeroplanes certainly helped train a lad at being a dab hand with steel rule, scalpel and glue!

Half a century on from those glory days of 99 copy DIY vinyl, we are equally blessed with specialist pressers (nowadays for short run CDs) and packaging suppliers. The big difference today is that many artists actually prefer to go the independent, DIY route. The days when you dreamed about getting a deal with a clueless, exploitative major label are well gone. Why would you want to do that when you now have open, level playing field access to democratic distribution systems which puts the potential buyer only a click or two away from purchasing your music.

Yes, there are still advantages in going with an old-style distributor if you want to get into the few remaining record shops and the on-line brand leaders like Amazon or iTunes. But actually, a person at a computer browser can just as easily buy a CD or download via Bandcamp and you get to keep much more of their purchase price. You just need to let that customer know that your recording exists and where to find it. Which is where fRoots still comes in…