Submarine Channel

2Pause: Chain Reactions

“Fucking hell. My country’s going down the pan,” said music video director Ceri Frost on his Facebook Wall early this morning, as a response to the UK riots that are spreading like wildfire across the UK.

Even if you’re nowhere near Tottenham, or any of the other urban war zones, you might still be indirectly affected by the UK riots, albeit in a delayed-chain-reaction kind of way – if, like us, you love your music videos. Turns out a catastrophic amount of Pias’ stocks has been lost in the Monday fires which completely destroyed a music distribution warehouse owned by Sony DADC. Several labels, among which Warp, Domino (home of The Last Shadow Puppets, Psapp and Tricky), Lucky Number (commissioner of Gotye’s Heart’s a Mess and multiple Sebastien Tellier videos) and Ninja Tune (with Amon Tobin, Ape School and Blockhead among its artists) have suffered considerable losses and are now facing manufacturing issues to refill their stocks.

Interviewed by the Guardian, industry analyst Paul Scaife said that “Physical retail is still absolutely crucial to many in the independent sector and if – as seems quite likely – several smaller labels aren’t covered by insurers, this could be the difference between survival and going out of business.”

All the labels affected will have to find ways to recover from their losses. Seems only natural that the investments in music videos will be reduced dramatically.

More at: Guardian.co.uk