Gavin Glass hurting as Indi Entertainment cease trading

Word reached Hot Press during the week that Irish distributor Indi Entertainment had ceased trading and was going into voluntary liquidation.
It also reached Dublin artist Gavin Glass, whose latest, acclaimed album Sunday Songs was being handled by the company.
"I got an email from RMG Digital to say: 'following the news of Indi's bankruptcy, we're just letting you know RMG will be business as usual,'" Glass says. "So I read that and my balls dropped. WHAT?! First I'd heard about it!"
To mark Sunday Songs arrival earlier this summer, Glass had secured promotion in Tower Records' front window, at a cost of €700.
"I hadn't paid them, because I knew the album was selling and doing pretty well so I figured they could take that out of the balance to save me paying them."
Not only that, when Glass went to retrieve his remaining stock, there were only 70 CDs left to claim from a run of 1000.
"So there are still CDs in shops or else they've been sold. It's a serious chunk of change. It mightn't be a serious chunk of change to Beyonce but it is to me."
With Indi going into liquidation, the likelihood of Glass getting his cut from stock sold is not very strong.
"Once the liquidators are in there, the first person to get paid will be the tax man. In order for them to pull the plug like that, it'll be highly unlikely that I'll get anything for it.
"It's crap," he continues. "But there's no point in getting down about it. Everybody's in the same situation. Mundy, my best mate, went out and got 2000 CDs and he was lucky that he got a good chunk of his stock back off them. His album was out a month before mine so he got in a few returns in that time.
"I was about to hand over a load of vinyl to them as well, which would have been another four grand down the drain. Thankfully that didn't happen."
Taking a philosophical approach, Glass is trying to put it behind him and look ahead.
"We've a single on the way. Richie Egan from Jape is doing a remix and there'll be a video and all of that. I'm going to have to get another thousand CDs printed up, that's the start. I've Electric Picnic coming up, I've a tour of New York. Seventy CDs isn't going to get me very far because I'd sell that on a good night."
His fellow artists have rallied round.
"The one thing that's really cheered me up is the amount of people that have got in touch. Conor O'Brien and Richie were on to me today. Declan O'Rourke... Everybody was on saying 'I'm really sorry, what can I do?'"
Now it's the turn of Irish music fans to show their support.
"I'm going to put together a gig with hopefully Mundy, Declan and Ollie Cole and the four of us will do a kind of 'firesale' charity gig for ourselves. We'll put on an amazing night, celebrate independent music, split the money and use that to get our next batch of CDs done up."
We will bring you full details of the Whelan's show when they are finalised.
Glass is now grappling with what lessons to take from Indi's abrupt closure. At a time when it is difficult enough to sell physical albums, to then miss out on the money earned from doing so really rubs salt in the wound.
"I don't know if I'll learn from this and go 'from now on I'm a cottage industry with total control'," he says. "Going with an independent distributor helps take the sting and the hassle out of getting your record in shop. There are so few shops and there's so much content out there that it's very hard to get your CD on the shelf, let alone get it sold.
"You're competing with One Direction and all these people that there is a mass market for. For some dude that's doing alt. Americana, it's a much harder sell. But maybe you just have to fucking take control of everything."
You can purchase Sunday Songs by Gavin Glass for only €8 on his Bandcamp.
Indi Entertainment formed following the 2010 merger between RMGChart and All Media Entertainment. As well as handling distribution for independent music artists from Glass to Glen Hansard, they had also been involved with DVD releases of hit Irish TV series The Fall and Love/Hate.