As Blood Runs Black Also Claim Standby Records Screwed Them Financially
This morning we published an article about Davey Suicide’s legal battle with Standby Records, in which Suicide is alleging that the label purposely withheld money owed his band and kept crooked books, among other sketchy behavior.
Now former Standby Records artists As Blood Runs Black have come out to share their own experience with the label and its head, Neil Sheehan, and the story is no more flattering than Davey Suicide’s. The PRP alerted us to a post on ABRB’s Facebook page yesterday:
Wow!! Want to share this to give everyone a peek on what goes on behind the scenes. We went through a very similar situation with not 1 but 2 labels.
After selling around 80K records (not including streams) with our previous label on a 50/50 split and never seeing or receiving majority of our earnings, (not including other forms of revenue such as online merch, advances, etc.. we didn’t see/get over 90% of this either) we decided to self release our last album by crowd funding it. From the money we raised we finished writing and recording Ground Zero and after completion we ended up getting offers from established labels to put it out. After long thought and negotiations and considering partnering up with a label again we were approached by a “manager” who promised to take us away from the nightmare we were living and ultimately connected us with Neil. Neil on contract promised to spend about double what we raised and give us control on how that was spent.
Sounded too good to be true however the “manager” who approached us sold us on the idea on how we would basically be our own label with label resources and have the money we needed to push the album like we intended and everything will be taken care of. We politely passed on all other offers and accepted StandBy’s agreement and basically stepped on another land mine. Most of what was promised didn’t get done and a good portion of perks that were supposed to go out to our crowd funders didn’t get delivered.
Without going into our story too much you might understand how with things like this going on behind the scenes why this band had so many member changes and why there were huge gaps in between albums. It was tough to stay motivated and continue to be passionate when most of the financial reward from your hard work was going to someone else. This type of behavior built internal divides and influenced a lot of us to turn to alcohol and develop shitty attitudes towards each other, the scene and industry.
NOT ALL LABELS ARE LIKE THIS. We just had a bad draw two times in a row. After all these years of pain and behind the scenes BS we have no clue where we are as a band today… Maybe one day we’ll have enough gas in the tank to put out one last album… who knows, time will tell.
Until then thanks to everyone while doing our best to hide it still supported us no matter what BS we had to deal with/go through. We appreciate you giving us an ear to blast music in. One Love!
As Blood Runs Black’s words certainly don’t bode well for Standby Records’ side of this case, but the label has yet to comment publicly on the matter. We’ll update you all if and when they do.
