With Yoyaku making strides in developing their artistic wing in the shape of Atelier14 and Chapelle XIV they recently evolved the booking agency arm of their operation too in the form of Interwave. It would seem that this was only the first wave of moves in the brands developments as they are now ready to launch their new digital music only store AZE.
It is hard to imagine our community and the wider electronic music universe without the French imprint and the many labels that fill its stable or 150,000 records per annum that distribution arm yydistribution sends out. By their own admission, Yoyaku explain their position with regards to vinyl only, “Vinyl culture is something that our electronic music scene is attached to.
I would even say disproportionately, as younger generations (including us) swear by “vinyl-only” records – as if it made the release better.” This is not always the case that vinyl is a barometer of quality music and their new AZE digital music store will undoubtedly prove.
As many labels and artists will concede with a tear in their eye current delays to record pressing is crippling release schedules and can sometimes mean delays of 5/6 months before a record is released. This will invariably have a knock-on effect on artists and labels creative process and with there being over 2000 labels already falling under the Yoyaku umbrella they are best placed to produce a digital store to best represent our community.
The digital store will be heavily curated by the Yoyaku team and it has been no mean, “It has been a year of hard work developing the website, contacting all the record labels or their digital distributors. Today we are launching the store with more than 4000 tracks but plan to import around 30 new labels per month with selection from their catalogue.” The good news is that as well being able to buy Yoyaku and their distributed labels music via there new online and physical stores you will soon be able to buy the digital versions of some of the releases.
They have also began testing the temperature of the water on this with their recent bundle deal where on selected record releases from Discobar, Irenic, Distrikt Paris, Joule and YYK no label as well as the vinyl release buyers will also get the digital files. This is a great way to introduce digital collectors to the joy of vinyl (and vice versa) and will enable digi buyers to begin a life long love of vinyl as well as digital music. As always, the execution on these projects is of paramount and a lot of time and effort has clearly gone into this decision. Obviously, vinyl culture is very dear to the Yoyaku but it would seem that this love of wax should not hold back the sharing of new and exciting music and that is even more important.
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More info on AZE
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