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Running your Own Indie Label: Exclusive Interview with Audio Antihero Label founder Jamie Halliday

We speak to Jamie Halliday - founder of the hugely successful indie label Audio Antihero (home to Frog, Avery Friedman, CIAO MALZ, Magana, Nosferatu D2, The Noisy, Leilani Patao, and Tiberius) - which is a DIY one-person operation whose acts have been featured in the likes of Pitchfork, BBC, NPR, Bandcamp Daily, and more. 

By Eimear O SullivanMusicngear Editor

In this exclusive interview, we discuss how to set up a label, approaching artists, the reality of the financial side of running a label, what the day-to-day operations look like, doing PR for music releases, not burning out and more.

This interview is broken into two sections. Section one sees what culture Jamie is enjoying at the moment, and section two discusses the running, setting up, admin and overall running of an indie, DIY label. 

Section 1: Culture

Movies you are enjoying at the moment:

I recently re-watched Josh Becker’s ‘Running Time,’ which is a pretty good, low-budget, and kinda guerrilla heist film with a great cast. The film plays in real time and does the Hitchcock ‘Rope’ thing of presenting itself as one continuous shot. It’s not perfect, but I really like it. I enjoy a lot of stuff that Michigan crew of Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, Scott Spiegel and Becker did, initially working as outsiders before bringing those quirks to LA. See also: ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except.’

Audio Antihero alumni Cloud, aka Tyler Taormina, is now a big-shot bully in Hollywood and recently produced Carson Lund’s feature debut, ‘Eephus.’ I thought it was a stunning film about baseball and the passing of time. After Taormina’s beautiful ‘Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,’ I’m perplexed by how those Omnes Films guys can put together these loosely plotted works, based around things I don’t really enjoy (Christmas, baseball), and have them feel totally intoxicating.

Something else I just saw was this 1991 Horror Comedy film I’d never heard of called ‘Nothing But Trouble’ with Chevy Chase, Demi Moore, John Candy, Dan Aykroyd (who directs), Daniel Baldwin, and Tupac Shakur. I honestly loved it, but I’m fascinated by the choices. It has almost nothing that you could anticipate a major production’s audience wanting to see. It’s like they saw the very modest box office returns of ‘The ‘Burbs’ and were like, “We can do worse.” It's so stupid, but super fun. I saw someone say that the trick to enjoying this fever dream is to see Chevy Chase as the villain, which is easy enough to do.

Also, as an intellectual, I’ve been playing video games to decompress, but unfortunately, I picked 'Resident Evil 7: Biohazard' most recently, which feels like being in hell.

Music you are listening to at the moment: 

I really enjoyed the self-titled debuts by Perish and Toyger this year. I think they both have something quite special, and I hope they find an audience. That “Country Girl” song by Greet Death makes me feel insane, too; I love it.

Leilani Patao did a really cool 15-hour broadcast through WNYU on Thanksgiving this year, just playing Native and Indigenous music and interviews. Buddy Red Bow and Xit/Tom Bee were a couple of artists I enjoyed a ton from that.

Tiberius, a recent addition to Audio Antihero, just featured on a great benefit compilation for Warm Up Boston called Allston X Allston, which is all local bands covering one another. It’s folks like Sweet Petunia, Gollylagging, Winkler, Paper Lady, Clifford, Alexander, and lots of others. It’s a little overwhelming because it’s so good, and you want to hear more of the performing artist but also the original recordings too.

I also have two CD and cassette boomboxes in my place, and recently on those, I like to rock Mission of Burma, Emperor X, and that first fucking Limp Bizkit album.

An album (or artist) that changed it all for you:

Busta Rhymes’ ‘Extinction Level Event’ I got into through my big cousin and was my first experience with what you might call “grown-up” music in that it wasn’t marketed via children’s magazines and TV shows. It was probably my first proper experience with the album format, versus radio, singles, and ‘Now That’s What I Call Music’ compilations.

I don’t listen to it nowadays but Dre’s ‘2001’ was massive. Just to truly love an album like that. Things like Metallica’s black album, which I don’t really like anymore, and Slipknot’s debut were my big introductions to Rock music, which is what my love for other types of music grew out from.

My dad’s bootleg copy of Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ was huge for me, and led me to ‘Bleach,’ which took me a while to like, but that versus the ultra-produced, stadium-ready music I was used to was really the first time I’d heard great music that felt attainable. Like, it could be made by normal people in the real world. That was important for me at that age, just to be able to see myself existing in the same universe as the things I enjoyed.

I can’t remember which, but something I got by the Smashing Pumpkins was important because it taught me that being a completist for one band was offering extremely diminishing returns, and it would be a better idea to try out something new, rather than follow Billy Corgan into his own abyss.

Gang Starr’s ‘Moment Of Truth’ is a really important album to me too, I truly believe that the title track must have saved lives. 

Section 2: Running and setting up a music label

We might run through this step by step, for readers who are interested in how to generally go about this. Someone has decided they would like to set up their own music label - what happens next? 

I’m approaching my answers from my experiences operating as a DIY, one-person label, which is probably more of a hobby on steroids than a business. I doubt anyone looking to run a label in any other fashion has much to learn from me.

So, presumably, if you want to start a label, you already have a name and artist in mind. From there you need to think about structure and what you want to offer through your label, so consider:

1. Distribution: For a first-timer, you probably won’t be able to sign with a national distributor, so this will probably be Bandcamp, a Distrokid-type service, and maybe giving some sale-or-return stock to local record shops.
2. Promotion and building a network: Setting up spots where people can follow your label and your releases can be shared or discovered. i.e., social media, a website, a newsletter or Substack. It’s a long and frustrating slog, but what else can you do?
3. Publicity: Will you be approaching or hiring someone to pitch press, radio, playlisters, YouTubers/TikTokers, etc.? Do you value those things? Figure out your priorities and start building a list of leads and contacts.
4. Fulfillment: If you’re producing physical media, what is your capacity to manage mail orders? Do you need a fulfillment partner?

I think people respond well to a proven concept, so I’d recommend laying a foundation by getting your online spots in order. It’s also a lot better to have one release done or evidently in motion than to have six announced. There’s a lot of talk, so it says a lot to show you can follow through. When Audio Antihero started I was trying to swing for the fences, but I also think it can be a good idea to start small with a digital single or compilation or something like that, just to get something out, start learning the process, and make your first mistakes with a low overhead.

Really consider the financial aspect. Everything costs money, and an album release can be a bottomless pit if you let it. Ideally, you can press a nice vinyl edition of an album, hire an elite mastering engineer, hire top-level radio pluggers and publicists, get constant airplay, and be placed in a heap of playlists. Unfortunately, you may need to pick just one or two of those things and then do a DIY version of the rest. Also, if you do consider hiring publicists/pluggers, etc., my general rule of thumb is that if they’re the ones approaching you, they probably aren’t very good, so definitely do your research on anyone talking about taking you to “the next level.” 

I’ve seen people kinda bet the farm on a release, with a “let’s do it properly” attitude, and that can yield a lot of benefits. Unfortunately, no matter how expensive the master was or how many times your press release is copied and pasted by news editors, it won’t guarantee that your very fancy gatefold vinyl will sell to a whole new audience. 

In my opinion, the way to do it properly is to do it sustainably. Audio Antihero has done okay at times; I’ve been interviewed for the BBC and Public Radio International; my releases have gotten onto a lot of the big sites, they’ve charted in the NACC 200, and had some national radio play, too. I love all of this stuff so much, but the needle usually doesn’t move overnight. There really isn’t a cheat code, and there’s no substitute for an established, paying audience.

Also, no por nada, but when setting up your label, please remember that the label name you thought was cool when you were, like, 20 may not sound so good down the road. But here we are.

In the beginning days of setting up a label, how would you recommend approaching artists?

Honestly and intentionally. As I mentioned, unless you have the resources and time to manage multiple projects, I’d recommend starting out, focusing on one at a time, rather than running through a Christmas list of artists you’d love to work with all at once. You don’t want to overcommit and end up letting people down or burning out before you’ve even started (there’ll be plenty of time for that later).

Try to find artists you think you can be a benefit to, rather than ones you think will somehow “make” you. Be transparent about your level of experience and what you can offer. For a true debuting DIY label, that could just be effort and enthusiasm, which will work for the artists who are right for you. You should never "fake it till you make it" at the expense of those who trust you.

Take time to talk to the artist about their expectations, and be honest about if you think you can meet those. I’m constantly talking to artists who either assumed or were led to believe that their label would be getting press coverage for them, so if you aren’t willing to do that, or just can’t yet say what your success rate will be, please be upfront about that. With Audio Antihero, I know that I can get press for my artists, as I have a track record of doing so, but I still have to be upfront that I can’t make any promises on specific sites, since there’s so many factors at play when trying to secure coverage for music. Even your most reliable press contact goes out of town sometimes, and nobody can like everything you send them.

For me personally, I’ve had a lot of difficult life changes and relocations over the last few years, from which the label has been both a brilliant distraction and a hindrance to rebuilding other aspects of my life, the social, financial, etc. I’ve also recently been experiencing some label-related burnout and depression, so something new that I’m considering for these early stages is communicating my commitments to artists early on while establishing limits on my end, too.

After taking a bit of a break from new releases, I’d like to develop some kind of a roadmap of what our promotional campaign and budget will be, which can illustrate the work we will be doing together, while reeling me in from my AuDHD instincts to hyperfixate and work nonstop by setting a limit on what my responsibilities are (i.e., what capacity do I have to serve as an unofficial manager,  needs-must booking agent, what’s the cutoff point for money I’m putting in, etc.).

What inspired you to set up your own music label?

I just really wanted to do it. I’d been in bands, and I’d written for zines and blogs, and I wanted to stay involved in music. The Blue Light District, a site local to me when I was still living in South London, started a label and put out a CD EP by a band called Chet. It just kind of blew my mind that random people could manufacture a retail-quality CD, and I figured that maybe I could do that too.

The gap in the market…there was a local band called Nosferatu D2, who I was pretty obsessed with. They recorded an album but broke up before the label they were working with could release it. I wanted Nosferatu D2 to get a proper release, so that seemed like a good way to start. 

People thought I was daft for doing this for a band who couldn’t tour, and one reviewer was pretty mean to me about it! But it went pretty well, in my opinion. They had a small but passionate enough group of fans, including some kinda high-profile ones, that made it possible to get some buzz and press and to sell enough of the way too many CDs to make a profit. It was a different time then too, where you could just cold email some pretty big sites asking them to review an album for you, and sometimes they actually would. It was also a world where a good enough chunk of people would read about an album and buy a CD off the internet without hearing it first.

When choosing your first artist, I believe you should go for something different that can act as a calling card and make you memorable. It’s probably no use seeking out something with a dull mass appeal when you’re working on a shoestring budget and have no access to appeal to said masses.

Those earliest days of Audio Antihero with Nosferatu D2 and Benjamin Shaw were some of the happiest and most exciting of my life. I hope you’ll be able to launch with artists who allow you to experience your own version of that.

What are the general day-to-day operations for running a label?

During a campaign, it tends to be communicating with the artist to understand their priorities, gathering assets (artwork, images, masters), creating pitch materials (press release, newsletter copy) and arranging distribution. 

Then it’s the pitching and chasing your press/radio contacts and seeking out new people who the current release might resonate with, or to further any other strategy you might have. For example, Tiberius just charted in the North American College & Community Radio charts, and to keep that momentum going as much as possible, I’ve been seeking out emails for every DJ and music director I can find, looking out for Emo-ish shows, Americana-ish shows, and just about anyone in the great state of Massachusetts. 

Then there’s the kind of forever duties of social posts, mail order, artist payouts, etc. Here and there, I’ve tried to help artists out with pitching to festivals, booking agents, or whatever else, too. It gets tough when you’re working with a lot of artists at once, but when I’ve had a smaller roster, I’ve really enjoyed continuing to find promotional opportunities for folks in the longer-term post-release phase.

You also run a PR company as part of Audio Antihero; and a very effective one at that, resulting in music write ups in coveted online publications such as Pitchfork, NPR and Bandcamp Daily to name a few; could you talk about this side of things?

That’s really kind of you. I never intended to be a freelance publicist, but over the last couple of years, there’s been decent demand for me, more demand than I can confidently meet anyway. I think the release of Frog’s ‘Grog’ really helped, as we did so well, and I was pretty hands-on in touting those successes, so requests started coming in. More recently, prospective clients seem to be finding me through newer artists I’m working with, which is really nice. I wish I could do more of it.

I learned this side of things purely by doing it. I tried to learn from feedback and mistakes. If a writer would ask me for something I hadn’t included, such as lyrics or a producer credit, I would try to include those things in future pitches. Knowing I’d never be the biggest or the best at what I do, the goal was to make it as easy as possible for a writer to choose to cover us, and saving them from having to ask for missing information is one way to do that.

For a good PR campaign, you first need your basics ready to go in an email. This includes ways to stream and download the release, a press release that tells the album’s story, good-quality images, links to the artist’s pages, artwork, lyrics, and anything else you think will help a writer understand, appreciate and promote your record. I suggest sending this out 8-12 weeks ahead of the album’s release date in order to give press proper lead time and yourself time to follow up.

Getting the record to editors is great, but seeking out writers is just as important. An editor can get you on a commission list, but you still need a writer to pick it up. In the past, I’ve had writers who can’t get editor approval to cover something for me, and editors who can’t find a writer to cover that same release, and occasionally, it’s possible to introduce the two.

Oftentimes, I hear about debuting artists doing their own PR and just sending their records out to major press outlets. Unsurprisingly, it’s uncommon for them to receive much of a response. So, I recommend seeking out smaller sites too, ones who might be more open to a new band without name recognition or an established fanbase. The main thing is to start building a foundation and telling your story, and press quotes from blogs and early interviews are a way to do that. 

I have been lucky to get coverage from bigger press outlets this year, especially for the Frog, Avery Friedman and Tiberius albums, as well as the ‘True Names’ Trans Youth benefit compilation. We got some really good support, but I think a potential trap people can fall into is that they see these outlets, and their instinct is “to just focus on the big stuff.” I think this is a mistake for smaller or debuting artists, since, unfortunately, whether an album gets big or small press isn’t a choice I get to make.

So, with that in mind, I’d always prefer to put in some extra effort to confirm a broad spread of outlets and coverage, rather than bet the whole campaign on the things least likely to come through.

If you’re creative, you can also make your own opportunities by pitching sites on more unique features that the artist is passionate about. This year, Leilani Patao wrote about their decision to withhold their music from streaming services, Tiberius wrote a “making of” essay for their latest album, The Noisy did an artist-to-artist interview with CIAO MALZ about ‘The Sopranos,’ and Magana did a photo essay for her latest EP in addition to writing short fiction stories about each song. We’ve also been placing seasonal playlists, Pride features, novella excerpts, retrospectives, scene reports, track-by-track commentaries, tour diaries, guest mixes, top 10s, and lots of other fun things.

Think also about the communities the artist is a part of. There’s sites dedicated to covering music by women, music by LGBTQIA+ artists, and you can also find some region-specific coverage through locally-focused sites (i.e., NYS Music in New York, BuzzBands LA in Los Angeles, and Allston Pudding in Boston) or airplay, interviews and radio sessions with college and community radio stations. WFUV in New York has a great “NY Slice” feature for local artists each weekday.

Were there any resources/knowledge bases you found to be very helpful for setting up and running Audio AntiHero?

I was fortunate that by the time the label was ready to launch, I’d been interning and working in the music industry for a year or so. Some people were kind enough to give me advice or answer questions about manufacturing. It was also helpful to just see aspects of the industry that I didn’t like, which showed me what I didn’t want to be.

I was also very lucky to have befriended a couple of other tiny independent labels called I Blame the Parents and Daddy Tank. They were down to share their experiences with me, which is a big help when you’re totally lacking context. I’ve tried to pay that forward ever since. It’s a lot of fun talking to college kids about music and PR, because oftentimes there’s a bunch of ways that they know more than I do.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe you’ll find a real roadmap for how these things are supposed to be done, at least not one that fully understands your situation, especially in an industry where “the thing” is always changing, and you never know how people will respond to the music itself. People have hit me up to tell me their plan of “we’re going to release three singles, go on tour off that buzz, and then release the album with all that momentum behind us.” It sounds great, but you can’t plan momentum.

Generally speaking, how does the financial side of running a label work? (e.g royalties, etc)

Honestly, for me, the financial side doesn’t work. Like, with a budget, you can make some things happen. You can get your music onto websites, into playlists, and on the radio. Typically, though, none of these promotional perks directly recoup the expense of gaining that traction. I can’t tell you a thing about influencers and TikTok, etc., but I imagine it’s a similar deal.

Traditionally, these expenses are seen as a longer-term investment, as recognition slowly grows with each successive release (hence the multi-album deal). I’ve never wanted to lock an artist into working with me past the individual project, though, so that’s trickier here. I can sink a lot of money and time into trying to elevate an artist, and if I succeed, someone with more resources will likely swoop in to profit off that investment. But what’s the alternative? Be a dickhead?

I tried a lot of different things in 2025, so I’m still figuring it out, but generally I put in what I can, I aim to be upfront about those limitations, and then we try to make something happen with what we have. Doing music for money is like eating haggis for your cholesterol; it's the wrong way to go, but it can be a pretty good time just the same.

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About Eimear O Sullivan

Eimear Ann O Sullivan is a multi-genre music producer, audio engineer and vocalist. After receiving a Masters in Music Technology from the CIT Cork School of Music, she went on to operate as a producer under the name Blakkheart. Her releases have received critical acclaim from Ireland's biggest music publications, such as District Magazine and Nialler9, alongside receiving heavy commercial radio airplay. She currently works in Cork recording studio Flashpoint CC. Previous clients of hers include the likes of Comedy Central’s Dragony Aunt star Candy Warhol, rapper Darce and Outsider YP. (Photo credit @Fabian Boros)

Contact Eimear O Sullivan at eimear.o.sullivan@musicngear.com

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