About

The story of Channel 9 Records...

Channel 9 Records was founded in 2015 by Danielle "Danz" Johnson (me!). Prior to the formation of Channel 9, I had been self-releasing all of my own material - which I'm still essentially doing - but I'll explain further. 

When I was first starting out in the music world, I was stubborn when it came to getting a record deal. I didn't want to give up half of my rights to a record label (give up 50% of my profit) or lose the rights to master recordings.

Instead of waiting around for the perfect deal, I self-released my music. I designed my own album artwork, booked my own shows until I found a booking agent, took my own promo photos, etc.

Eventually I thought to myself, "Hey, why can't I just start my own label?" I was doing a lot of stuff a label would be doing anyway. Plus, I thought having a mysterious label name attached to my records would validate them in a way.

So I signed a distribution deal and Channel 9 Records was born! The name, a homage to an early Computer Magic song entitled Science Channel 9.

As it turns out, running a label is hard work if you want to do it right. There's release schedules to sort out, tours to plan, music videos to shoot, promo to be sorted, vinyl pressing plants to place orders with and shipments to physical distributors to be made.

Merchandise must be designed and printed - which hopefully will arrive in time for the big release day. Then there's tracking inventory, shipping, ordering shipping supplies, hiring College radio specialists, submitting songs to Spotify playlist curators, updating multiple social media profile pages to reflect the new release, building websites, updating those too, hoping you invested enough money in all the right places to make money back. Really, you're gambling on art, and who knows if you'll make a profit. Then there's the accounting. Oh. My. God.

And on top of all this - I'm still the musician in this equation. I write, record and produce all of my own songs. 

Hard work indeed!

Now, as a person who truly values the tangibility of music, it's important for me to have my songs available in some kind of physical form. The batches are small because I don't have major label funding. But in actuality, I love limited edition vinyls!

Without going too far down the rabbit hole, I was an avid collector of vinyl growing up. I loved multi-colored vinyls, limited edition stuff, special b-sides and so on. So it just made sense to do this.

Channel 9 Records releases high quality limited edition vinyls and cassettes. They may be produced in limited quantities for financial reasons, but maybe this makes them more special!

You can be 100% certain that all the profits are going straight to the artist, because I am the artist. I am the sole owner of Channel 9 Records.

Thanks for being a customer, more releases coming soon!

Danz