BPI starts fund for labels hit by PIAS Fire

With Label Love and AIM/PIAS already running funding campaigns to help the independent record labels that lost their stock in last week’s Sony/PIAS warehouse fire; BPI (the British record industry’s trade association) has announced a fund of their own.

The BPI are making more than £100,000 in interest-free loans available to labels in need of financial help. In a statement BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said:

“The BPI is founded on the principle that majors and indies should work together and that a vibrant independent sector benefits the recorded music business as a whole. For that reason, I am delighted that independent and major members of BPI are showing their solidarity by creating a growing fund to assist indie labels that experience financial difficulties as a result of destruction of stock in the Sony DADC warehouse.”

With estimated losses currently standing at 3.25 million discs, not 1.5 as previously reported, it seems that the labels affected need as much help as they can get. In related news, the indie label Finders Keepers has asked friends like Jarvis Cocker, David Holmes and Gruff Rhys to curate a series of compilation albums.