Extract from an interview with Jon Davis from iCrunch.

Jon is co-founder of iCrunch the UK's leading dance music portal: a showcase for leading independent record labels. The site was recently awared Best Entertainment Site by New Media Age.

M: Jon Davis talking about the sense of opportunity behind iCrunch.
J: I hadn't heard of it {MP3} and I started to look around to try and find some information about MP3 and discovered three major things. MP3.com, which at the time only had 10,000 users; a company called 'Good Noise', which was doing unsigned music; and 'Diamond Multimedia', that made the Rio. We imported the Rio in October 1998 and it just blew up. It just really blew our minds. The fact that you could download the music from the Internet and you could be portable with it - that's what the driving force behind iCrunch was.

J: We did it because no one else was doing it and it was incredibly exciting. We didn't necessarily know where 'it' was going to take us at that time, but we just thought that it was incredible that no one else was exploiting the opportunity.

M: The model as it stands at the moment - you give independent labels a platform to sell their music. What's the motivation behind that?
J: I think they need help in this area. Primarily, yes, what we are doing is promoting 'independent' music, we're marketing 'independent' music and we're distributing 'independent' music. This sits in the retail chain as both the retail store and the distribution company, so we're not just about selling music through our own site - we're about teaming up with lots of properties out there to sell music. Most of the 'independent' record labels can't actually do that for themselves. In terms of resource, in terms of the staff, in terms of the time it takes - even the skills and expertise. They don't have those things in house, so they need to work with another company that can help them exploit their rights.

J: If you look at how the UK record industry works, the 'independent' labels and even the major labels, use distributors to distribute their products. The majors own their own distribution companies and the 'independents', some do have a stake in some distribution companies, but they employ other companies to distribute their products. This leaves the A&R people to get on with the artists' development and marketing, using distribution companies to distribute them. I think that they will always need middlemen, helping them out, exploiting their products, leaving them to get on with what they do best.

M: Do you think that small enterprises, such as iCrunch, have the advantage [flexible structures] over majors?
J: Definitely, small companies can move a lot quicker and the challenge now {for iCrunch}, with 35 employees, is to still move that quickly. Up until now we have been able to. We now have 35 staff, between here, LA and Hamburg. The hardest thing is that when you grow that quickly, moving from 3 to 35 in six months, that's a pretty rapid rate of expansion. It's not the biggest, but the challenge then becomes one of managing internally and managing the brand. Making sure that things are moving in the right direction.

[Ends]