Research On Rough Trade 1970's

Rough trade was founded in 1976 and set up in West London. The label was set up in 1978 and also went into the distribution business that year. The musical trend that was the main thing back then was punk. Punk was very popular when rough trade first started out and that was the main thing they sold, however rough trade also sold reggae music as the area the shop was located had a strong carribean culture there.

Rough Trade was very different from the majour big companies. First of all there main focus wasnt all about making profit they didnt throw a contract at their artist to keep them under controll. Rough Trade liked to give their artist freedom in whatever they wanted to bring out and did not pressurise them to sell what they wanted. Unlike the big corporations Rough Trade actually looked after their artist made sure they were ok, But not all artist were greatfull and some of them left them as soon as they got big for deal with a big label industry.

Rough Trade used a very smart technique to expand the independent music scene. On each album in the shop they had a set of instructions inside for people to read, These instructions were things like how to make your own album covers etc. These instructions were a big help for these unknown artist to get themselves out there and gave people hope that they could become big without being enslaved by a contract from a big corporation. In 1979 Richard Scott was put in charge of international distribution.