April 15, 2023

As a fan of you guys just as (hopefully) you are a fan of us, we'd like to be open and transparent with you all of the situation, because you mean a lot to us.
I will start with the general situation first, and then you can keep reading if you’d like details on how we got here, and more thoughts on the challenges and dilemmas facing us. Thank you for reading.

THE SITUATION.
The situation is not good. I could sit here all day and talk about a war, an inflation, a recession, a post-pandemic, a vinyl buying bubble that burst (will cover this later/below), everyone has their interpretations and opinions, and mostly their reasons and hurts, but current physical sales levels, which suddenly and rapidly fell in early mid 2022, are not able to cover the expenses of the big commitments we took in 2021 and 2022 on the heels of our best year ever (2021).

It’s not just the rapidly changing world situation which put us here, but a concatenation of connected and simultaneous catastrophic events, namely our long time vinyl supplier, 8MERCH, who in turn due to their own COVID-induced difficulties in mid 2022 tried to pull a scam/blackmail move on us to save/cover their own ass, attempting to retroactively impose 40-50-60% “surcharges” to all our then in-progress orders from 2021 and early 2022, all of which had an agreed-on quote given, reviewed and approved. Some 6-7 months later, that price and quote was tossed out the window by them and they demanded the surcharges applied and imposed to the original quote price to complete the orders. Unable and unwilling to accept their blackmail, they cancelled all our orders, some 6-7 months after they had been placed. This lead us to have to re-order all our vinyl elsewhere starting all over with turnaround times from the start of the line to maintain and honor our word and commitments to our bands, resulting in a 6-month gap of no releases and in a huge bottleneck of 15-16 releases from 2021/22 now being ready to be delivered and paid for, in a time of all time record low sales that has been ongoing for a year now. From now till December 2023 we will be essentially releasing a year and half-worth of backed up releases.

We’re taking all this with a positive attitude, with appreciation, humility, and love and respect for anyone, near, far past and present and future who has ever spent $1 on this label. Thank you. We love you and thank you for your kindness, and if you have nothing left to give, we understand you, and will be forever grateful for having been a part in our story.

But if you do still have a little something to give, and if you care for Sentient Ruin, then consider this a call to arms. Every single penny counts right now, and every single contribution could determine whatever the unfolding of events chose life or death for us.

THE MEASURES.
With 3-4 orders to pay every month starting this spring till the end of the year, and bands waiting on their releases to come out (some of them since 2021), and sales stagnating, the situation of inhuman pressure on us is crushing, and we’ve taken drastic measures to cushion the impact of this and try to minimize the damage. Namely to cut costs and minimize risks we have decided that:

  • all limited edition colored vinyl is cancelled indefinitely with few exceptions

  • amounts ordered will be cut in half, so just know that from now on indefinitely, all our releases will be even more limited in numbers produced

  • slipcases, spot colors, and other desirable packaging extras area cancelled indefinitely with few exceptions

  • screen printed bulk-ordered merch is cancelled with few exceptions

  • to fill the void for the above merch cancellation we’ve launched a merch-on-demand service via our webshop (and more shops coming soon) with a full spread of new and overgrowing print on demand apparel which we hope will help us bring in some sales without the gamble and commitment of up front costs to produce the merch as the traditional way goes

  • new band signings are on hold indefinitely until this release bottleneck clears and some unsold stock frees up space at the HQ to allow for more to enter

  • once the bottleneck of releases is cleared, and if we survive the storm with some cash left to continue, we will downscale in every sense, mainly in the amount of releases per year, with 2 releases per month max, or 24-25 per year max.

A few more measures or just obligate changes in how we operate will be:

  • cancellation of EU vinyl fulltilment via Bandcamp. We simply can not keep paying for shipping and VAT to send copies to the EU fulfillment partner that no one buys, resulting in storage and warehousing fees for dead stock and more shipping money spent to get the dead stock out of there to avoid further fees. Their shipping rates have increased as well making the offering less desirable and effective anyway

  • since the upcoming releases will be distributed black vinyl only, these will be available in Europe/World as always via the traditional distribution avenues like Season of Mist etc.

  • permanent sale at our webshop: after the spring Record Store Day sale is over, some of the stuff listed here, will be on sale indefinitely till its all gone with drastic discount prices applied until it’s all gone

  • reducing prices across the board for all products and services where and if possible

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP.
Unfortunately this is a one-trick solution:

  • please buy our physical stuff if/where/when you can. We’ve taken all the measures we can to meet you in the middle with this, with sales, discounts, etc. Physical releases are 99% of our sustainability (more on this and why below).

  • GOFUNDME? Why? No thanks, this will never be a one way donation request thing. We have tons to give back for your “donations”. And that is tons of great releases by great bands.

  • this is not forever: bare with us till December when the last of delayed/bottlenecked releases is scheduled for. After that release will be far more sparse and less overwhelming in numbers. But from now till December, any penny and/or help will count

  • LISTEN TO OUR BANDS! Really, this is a crucial aspect. Listening via SR is free, all our releases are streamable in full for free across all streaming platforms, and this is important to discover some bands or releases you might have missed which you may want to own physically. What we can definitely not afford right now is missed opportunities or things flying under radar!

THE “DIGITAL SOLUTION”…
Or the “why don’t you make your digital releases cheaper or ‘name your price’ or offer cheaper downloads or subscriptions so that we can support you” suggestion. With everyone’s financial struggles wholeheartedly in mind, and humbly and and thankfully listening to everyone’s much appreciated feedback and suggestions, simply put:

  • “I want the digital releases cheaper” is no answer or solution to us. When you have $X amount to make minimum to cover costs, you can see on your own how this is a one way solution that helps you, but doesn’t help us in any way. It will just encourage people to go the “pay what you want” route and push them further away from our physical sales which is the core asset of value which ensures our sustainability. So if anything, the prices of the physical are going down, not so much of the digital. You can deduce on your own how “making a killing on digital” with our HQ filling up with unsold merch is no kind of help or solution.

  • reputable, serious, and dedicated artists want their music physically released. Any musician who’s worked hard on their music knows the feeling and moment of satisfaction that comes in holding all the result of your vision, hard work and labor in your hands. Let alone the fact physical products can be sold at shows and on tours to keep musician life sustainable and rewarding.

  • based on the above, “getting rid of the problem”, AKA the costs of physical releases, and going the “digital label route”, would effectively make reputable and ambitious artists who understandably want their music physically released ignore Sentient Ruin and opt for labels who can offer them a physical release, resulting in a dramatic decline in the quality of our roster and releases. And I would rather chose death over that. That’s not why I spent te last 10 years of my life doing what I do with this label

  • and conversely also per the two above, if we expect to keep a vision and bar of quality high, then we must offer physical releases to our artists, and that means that then those physical releases must sell, and there is no way out of this chicken-egg situation.

FURTHER INFOS, PREDICTIONS, THOUGHTS, INTERPRETATIONS.

Sentient Ruin is, has always been, and forever will be a ZERO COMPROMISE entity. Intrinsic to its existence is its nature of entity living and existing at the edge, where the extreme and the inhuman dominates all, and where the commercial value of notions like familiar, comfortable, marketable, sellable, trendy, popular or fashionable, was always banished and non-existing from the start. I’ve always only released shit I liked to listen to, that’s the only ever motivator behind my work with Sentient Ruin. As such its defiant and isolationist nature has always been the looming shadow of a possible and inevitable fate. But hard work, a clear vision that identified a clear fan base, and good working conditions in the last 10 years have brought fourth exponential and steady growth, in turn bringing expansion and more ambition to take the next step, like using the initial overhead from tape sales to re-invest into vinyl co-releases with EU labels, and the overhead from that reinvested into exclusive vinyl releases, complemented by our own distribution etc etc.

While I’ve worked inhuman hours a week, unending, for a decade non-stop, to unearth, envision, assemble and distribute our releases out in the world, for ten years, I’ve never made a dime off it. Due to the SF Bay Area’s insane and notorious costs of living, I’ve always had to work a regular full time job to feed my kids and pay the rent and bills, with label work taking nights and weekends, and all the label’s earnings have always just gone back into the next band and release, with the little overhead if present just ensuring stability and/or being reinvested to grow and explained above, into the occasional extras like elaborate packagings, merchandise, covering taxes or the occasional warehouse/office upgrades as needed. Sentient Ruin has never been profitable, but it has always been sustainable, and that was already happiness to me. I’m not interested in chasing the buck, I’m happy with not having a life, free time, or an income form it. But having a vision I believe in, fulfilling a dream I had since being a child and young music collector, without having to compromise anything in the commitment to the utmost underground and obscurity of artists with practically zero commercial value, is priceless to me and the greatest “profit” of all.

So if you think I will try to dig myself out of this by trying to chase an easy buck by starting to release artists with higher commercial appeal, you have the wrong picuture of what I do and who I am. I am totally happy working 90 hours a week, to be able to release obscure black industrial, noise, obscure post-punk or war metal that will never make me a profit. As insane as that sounds, that was always my dream. But there is a limit to everything, I simply can not reach the point where in order to keep things going, I must take the strain of a rapidly deteriorating economic situation to divert my personal income into the label to keep it going, as that would jeopardize my financial stability and my ability to take care of my family.

So if things do not return to at least a rudiment of sustainability, Sentient Ruin will end.

I have appreciated everyone’s feedback to our Bandcamp message recently, but unfortunately most of the interactions confirmed our fears: that people are no longer interested in, or capable of, or confident in, or willing to commit to buying physical products at a steady pace. When physical products are 99% of our survival and livelihood.

Some customers have pointed out how all the vinyl they bought in the last years cluttered their home, and that’s a fair point. I am a collector/hoarder my self and know that feeling very well. But what leads someone to feel like they went too far with no measure, balance or self control? The only plausible explanation I can give is a bubble, a bursted bubble. And now it is all coming into perspective. How could record plants be overwhelmed for years with months-long turnaround times and clear issues in quality control and just problems pertaining to prioritizing “quantity-over-quality”? How could the demand always be so high as to create, perpetrate, justify and normalize such a perpetual and clear unbalance of demand over offer? I think we are all starting to learn and realize what happened there. And we are admitting that perhaps we - Sentient Ruin - were also cause, part, cause and effect in the problem, as every release sold fairly well, some exceptionally well, so “lets just order more”…

If you got this far reading, thank you, and just know you will likely never again see me open up like this about my work, vision, passion and dedication to my creation, and to underground music. I always hoped and assumed the releases would do all the talking for me. But today I humbly stepped out of the shadow asking for your help, so here are my two cents back. So thank you. For listening, and for caring for Sentient Ruin, it means the world to me and motivates me to fight till the end.

Sentient Ruin isn’t dead just yet, and just with the survivalist mindset with which I built this, the same aggressive survivalist mindset will go into defending it from demise.

Onward, to Golgotha.

LOVE, M.