What/who inspired you into setting up a record label ?

Necessity, basically. When we did the first release (Magnus Magnusson 7”) it was part of a uni project and never meant to be more than that, we just stuck a fictional label name on there! A couple of years later I resurrected the name for self releasing some of the early Bangers releases.

The early releases were my own bands or our friends, no one was interested in putting out our records so we just had to do it ourselves. I’d studied music production and business stuff and worked at a small label and distribution company in Cornwall, so I’d learnt enough to do an okay job of it.

What’s been your highlights as a label to date ?

Ah, it’s too hard to pick one! I feel like running a label is 90% slogging it out, 10% brief highlights. Every time we can make something cool happen for one of our bands I’m excited about it! I’m mostly happy we’ve managed to keep it going.

Saying that, moving to Bristol and opening the shop has been a big one in recent history, everyone’s been so welcoming and it’s cool to meet the people that are into our bands on a regular basis.

How have you managed to keep a record label running in an age of easy access digital streaming ?

The music industry’s constantly changing, no one knows what the fuck’s going on! Streaming is just another development that everyone’s trying to figure out. Obviously vinyl is our main focus but streaming is becoming more and more important in making sure we don’t lose money. Everyone always talks about the vinyl revival and increasing record sales, but just because your Dad’s rebuying all his favourite 70s rock reissues from Tesco doesn’t change the fact that for new bands, record sales are getting harder to come by.

I use Spotify every day and it’s an amazing discovery tool, we’d be doing our bands a disservice if we didn’t try to get the most out of it for them. The income from streaming doesn’t make up for record sales but it is becoming one of the main places people find new music.

It’s important to make listeners aware that streaming should be the start, not the end. If you find a new band you like, buy a gig ticket, buy a shirt, buy a record, share their shit, tell your friends.

What inspired the name you have given your label ?

The name comes from the first record we put out, a 7” by my old folk punk duo, Magnus Magnusson. The band was named after the Mastermind presenter (and an appreciation for alliteration), so Specialist Subject seemed the obvious choice!

Any rad releases you have planned you can tell us about ?

I’m really excited about what we have coming up next year, already announced the new Bad Sleep LP (an awesome punk band from Olympia) and the new Woahnows album. Not much else I can talk about yet but made a tentative list the other day of releases for 2019 and it’s up to about 10 already, half bands we’ve worked with before and half that are new to the label. Looks like it’ll be a good year!

If you could put out a record from any band still going/or split up, who would it be?

I’d probably be down to put out a record by Fucked Up or Self Defense Family, they’re two bands that are ridiculously prolific and I enjoy a lot. Be good to tick off the list! How about a split?

Honestly though I’m quite good at separating music that I love from music that I’d love to put out! With the label I love releasing stuff by new bands when we get to figure out, “how am I going to show everyone what’s so awesome about this band?”. Either that or when we get to work on projects with friends, that’s what the label has always been since the start.

Go visit the rad people in Specialist Subject Records on this link