Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Tough Times at Lookout

After honoring their handshake deal with Berkeley's Lookout Records for over a decade, Green Day pulled its back catalog from Lookout in July, citing unpaid royalties. Green Day's pre-major label output constituted a significant portion of the Lookout's overall sales. Without it, the label's continued viability as a titan among indies is questionable.

Rob Harvilla does a nice job of dissecting Lookout's rise and fall in last week's East Bay Express. His conclusion seems to be that Lookout's current fiscal woes stem from lousy business practices rather than untoward ones.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

...and Lookout signed the wrong Wannabes. Instead of taking a chance on some grizzled loud pop band from Austin called the Wannabes, they signed some juvenile loud pop band from Seattle called the Wannabes. So the lesson is... don't fuck with us. We'll put your crappy label under one way or another... eventually, by events "seemingly" completely outside of our control.