Welcome to your custom deep dive. We've pulled
together your requested sources today to explore
a really fascinating microhistory of the modern
music business. Yeah, and it's a very revealing
one. It really is. So if you're intrigued by
the business of the vinyl revival or the history
of the Liverpool music scene or honestly just
the brutal realities of independent record labels,
you are absolutely in the right place. Oh, sure.
Today, we are looking at the rise and fall of
a Liverpool music empire, all through the lens
of a single iconic location. We're talking about
Jacaranda Records. Our mission today is to understand
what happens when a historic music venue, the
actual 1958 launch pad for the Silver Beatles,
no less attempts this massive, wildly ambitious
expansion into the modern record industry. And
we mean massive. Yeah, we're talking immersive
audio, a vinyl pressing plant, the whole nine
yards, only to see... that specific grand experiment
dissolved by 2025. It is a story of incredible
vision but also the friction between grand ambition
and industry reality. It's a remarkable case
study really. We're looking at a juxtaposition
that is almost perfectly balanced in its extremes.
How do you mean? Well on one side of the ledger
you have this staggering long -term success in
retail and live hospitality. We are talking about
a physical space that hasn't just survived, but
has actively thrived for decades. It's seamlessly
adapted to modern consumer demands. And then
on the exact other side of the ledger, you have
the rapid, highly publicized failure of this
utopian record label. Which is wild when you
think about it under the same brand. Exactly.
It forces us to ask some very difficult questions
about the nature of the music business today.
Because cultural capital, historical significance,
and even a booming retail arm... they do not
automatically grant you the technical or financial
capacity to conquer music manufacturing. Or artist
development, for that matter. Precisely. Okay,
let's unpack this. Because to really understand
the sheer scale of the ambition behind Jacaranda
Records, you have to understand the literal physical
ground they are standing on. Yeah. You can't
separate the business from the building. You
really can't. We're talking about a location
that holds layers upon layers of musical archaeology.
The story begins at the flagship venue, the Jacaranda,
which is situated at 21 to 23 Slater Street in
Liverpool. Right, right in the heart of it. Opened
in 1958 by a guy named Alan Williams. Now, for
anyone who studies music history, 1958 in Liverpool
is essentially the big bang of modern guitar
pop. Absolutely. The post -war context of Liverpool
is critical here. Set the scene for us a bit.
Well, it was a bustling seaport, you know. While
the rest of the UK was relying on the BBC for
this heavily curated, honestly somewhat sterile
entertainment, Liverpool had an edge. The merchant
sailors. Exactly. You had merchant sales coming
back in the United States with armfuls of American
R &B, blues, and early rock and roll records.
And Alan Williams opens the Jacaranda right in
the middle of this exact cultural crucible. Which
is just perfect timing. It is. But what I find
fascinating is that the Jacaranda wasn't conceived
as this pristine, high -end establishment. It
was a raw, functional incubator. Yeah, it was
rough around the edges. Very. It functioned as
a rehearsal space and a stage for a group of
local kids. Specifically, John Lennon, Paul McCartney,
George Harrison, and Stuart Sutcliffe. Which
is just insane to think about. Right. And this
was the era when they were performing under the
name The Silver Beatles. I want you, the listener,
to just build a vivid picture in your mind for
a second. Close your eyes and imagine the sensory
experience of walking into that space today.
It's powerful. You are a young, hungry musician.
You've got your guitar case in your hand. You
walk off Slater Street, and you head down those
stairs into the basement to play a Tuesday night
gig. Just a standard Tuesday night. Right. And
as you navigate those tight stairs, you are brushing
past walls that still, to this day, feature the
original murals painted by Stuart Sutcliffe and
John Lennon. The actual paint strokes. Yes. You
are inhaling the same damp cellar air. You are
setting up your amplifiers in the exact same
physical dimensions where the founders of modern
pop music figured out how to harmonize. How to
fight. Yeah, how to fight and how to be a band.
If we connect this to the bigger picture, we
really have to confront the psychological weight
of that legacy. It's got to be heavy. It's immense.
Operating a modern business or even just playing
a gig in a space literally painted by John Lennon
before he became the John Lennon is a massive
psychological burden. I can imagine. It acts
as an incredible double -edged sword. On one
side, it sets an impossibly high, almost crushing
bar. The ghosts of the greatest pop songwriters
of the 20th century are quite literally embedded
in the architecture. So how do you just strum
a generic four -chord indie song in that room
without feeling entirely inadequate? Exactly.
But on the flip side, it serves as the ultimate
tangible inspiration. It strips away the myth
-making. Right, it grounds it. It proves that
world -changing art doesn't descend from Mount
Olympus. It starts in a cramped, sweaty basement
in Liverpool. I look at it as a form of cultural
validation and tell every kid who walks in there,
hey, they started here with nothing, just like
you. But there's another layer to this 1958 origin
story that I find almost spooky. It's the cyclical
nature of the building's identity itself. You
are referring to Sid's Disc Den. Yes, Sid's Disc
Den. Because long before Alan Williams bought
the building, long before there was a coffee
bar, long before the Silver Beatles were making
noise in the basement, the 1950s iteration of
this exact space was a jazz record store called
Sid's Disc Den. The historical poetry of that
detail is really remarkable. It means that the
foundational DNA of 21 to 23 Slater Street was
rooted in the retail exchange of physical music.
It was a shock first. It was a place where people
gathered to discover jazz, to socialize over
vinyl, and to physically purchase art. Yeah.
The building begins its life as a record store.
It transforms into an incubator for live rock
and roll. And then, as we will see, it attempts
to synthesize both of those identities decades
later. It's like the architecture itself just
demands that music be sold within its walls.
That's a great way to put it. Which brings us
hurtling forward into the modern era. We're going
to jump from the black and white echoes of 1958
all the way to 2014. A very different landscape.
Very different. A man named Graham Stanley takes
over as the managing director of the Jacaranda.
Right. And Stanley looks at this historic, slightly
weary venue, which he puts through a major refurbishment
in 2014, by the way. Yeah, it needed it. It did.
And he decides to lean heavily into that latent
DNA we were just talking about. By June 2015,
he opens the Jacaranda Records Store right on
the first floor of the Slater Street venue. We
really need to pause here and examine the macroeconomic
timing of this decision. OK, let's do it. Because
Graham Stanley, taking over in 2014 and opening
the record store in 2015, this places him squarely
at the critical inflection point of the 2010's
vinyl revival. Right. That timing is not an accident.
Not at all. To understand why this matters, we
have to look at the landscape of music consumption
at that exact moment. The early 2010s were defined
by the rapid ascension of streaming platforms.
Spotify, Apple Music. Exactly. Physical media
was widely considered a dying format. The CD
market was in free fall, and even digital downloads
via iTunes were being completely cannibalized
by subscription streaming. Everyone thought physical
music was just over. The narrative was that the
future was entirely invisible and stored in the
cloud. Precisely. But there was a counter movement
brewing underneath all of that. The vinyl revival
started as a very niche, underground phenomenon.
Driven by the purists. Yeah, driven by audiophiles
and collectors who were pushing back against
the sterile, hyper -compressed nature of digital
MP3s. They wanted the warmth of analog sound.
The ritual of it, too. Exactly. But by 2014 and
2015, that niche trend was rapidly breaking into
the mainstream. It was no longer just for the
hardcore Crete diggers and those dusty, intimidating
underground shops. Right. It was becoming trendy
again. A broader demographic was beginning to
romanticize the format. Stanley recognized that
the cultural pendulum was swinging back toward
tangibility, and he positioned Jacaranda perfectly
to catch that momentum. But I do want to push
back on the idea that this was just a simple,
obvious business move. Merging a record store
with a historic bar seems like a logistical nightmare.
Oh, it is an incredibly difficult operational
puzzle. You are attempting to run two fundamentally
opposed business models under one roof. Right.
Let's break down the economics and the logistics
of both for a second. On the hospitality side,
You're managing a 60 -year -old property that
hosts live music and serves alcohol. Which is
chaotic. Highly chaotic. The economics of a bar
rely on high volume, fast turnover, late night
hours, and crowd control. It is a messy, loud,
and inherently unpredictable environment. You're
dealing with broken glasses, sticky floors. And
just the general unpredictability of a late night
Liverpool crowd. Right. And then you look at
the retail side. Exactly. The retail side, specifically
a vinyl record store, requires an entirely different
operational mindset altogether. Because the product
is so fragile. Yes. Vinyl records are fragile,
expensive, temperature sensitive pieces of inventory.
They require careful curation, specialized supply
chains, meticulous inventory tracking. And a
chill environment. A calm, brise -friendly environment,
yes. You are dealing with highly discerning customers
who care about the condition of the cardboard
sleeve and the specific pressing of the record.
So trying to synthesize the rowdy, high -volume
energy of a historic live music venue with the
delicate, hyper -organized nature of a boutique
vinyl shop is like trying to mix oil and water.
It's incredibly tough. And yet they made an emulsion
out of it. They didn't just survive, they thrived.
By 2020, Jacaranda Records was actually shortlisted
for Music Week's Independent Retailer of the
Year Award. That is a massive industry cosign.
It really is. It proves that this wasn't just
a gimmick for tourists looking for Beatles memorabilia.
They were functioning as an elite, highly respected
independent record store on a national level.
Which is no small feat. And to prove its longevity,
that specific retail store celebrated its 10
-year anniversary in July 2025. Surviving for
a decade in modern retail is an achievement in
itself. But surviving for a decade, selling a
legacy physical format in an era where every
recorded sound in human history is available
for free on a smartphone that is a minor miracle.
So why did it work? We really have to ask why.
I don't believe It was purely due to their inventory
selection, as good as it might have been. It
succeeded because Jacaranda wasn't selling a
piece of plastic. They were monetizing a deeply
resonant physical experience. I want you, the
listener, to think about this in the context
of your own life. Why do you still go out of
your way to buy a physical book or a vinyl record
or print photographs? It's the tactile connection.
Exactly. We crave a tactile connection to the
art we love. When a customer walks into Jacaranda
Records and buys an album, they aren't just engaging
in a sterile commercial transaction, they are
engaging in a ritual. A very specific ritual.
They are flipping through... the racks in the
exact same building where the Liverpool music
scene was birthed. They are buying a physical
artifact in the house that Alan Williams built
above the stage where Lennon and McCartney cut
their teeth. They are purchasing a tangible connection
to the mythos of the city. It is the commodification
of aura. The philosopher Walter Benjamin talked
about the aura of a work of art. The unique presence
of an original time and space. Okay, I like that.
Digital streaming strips music of its aura. It
makes it ubiquitous and cheap. Jacaranda restored
the aura by placing the transaction within a
cathedral of musical history. Wow. Yeah. However,
Graham Stanley was not content to merely operate
a successful heritage retail shop. He was looking
at the broader ecosystem of the city. He wanted
more. He understood that to truly solidify their
position, they needed to control the flow of
the culture itself. Which brings us to their
live music footprint, because the retail store
was really just one piece of a much larger puzzle.
Graham Stanley also operates a company called
Out of Phase Events, which functions as a booking,
promotion, and marketing agency. This is a critical
pivot point in the narrative. Tell me why. Because
if you own a historic venue, you control the
stage. If you own a record store, You control
the distribution of the final product. But if
you own a booking and promotion agency, you control
the talent pipeline. You become the gatekeeper.
Exactly. Yeah. By establishing out of phase events,
Stanley was no longer just passively providing
a space for bands to play. He was actively curating
the local music economy. He was deciding who
gets heard. Yes. He was booking the acts, marketing
the shows, and deciding who received the spotlight.
And once you control the pipeline, you need more
pipes. The original Slater Street basement is
legendary, but it has severe physical limitations.
It's tidy. Right. You can only fit so many people
into a 1950 cellar. So. In May 2018, they make
a massive move. They expand beyond their historic
home and open a space called Jacaranda Phase
One on Seal Street. A very smart move. It was
designed as a 180 capacity live music venue that
also functioned as a record store. They essentially
took the hybrid DNA of Slater Street and cloned
it in a new location. What stands out about Phase
One is the terminology they used to describe
it. It was initially billed as a pop -up. Right.
In the modern retail and hospitality lexicon,
a pop -up implies something ephemeral. It is
a temporary activation, usually lasting a few
weeks or maybe months. Just to test the waters.
Exactly. Yeah. It's designed to capitalize on
a fleeting trend, test a market or generate short
term hype without the crushing burden of a long
term commercial lease. But this pop up lasted
for five years. Yeah, that's the thing. It ran
from May 2018 all the way to New Year's Eve in
2023. A pop up that sustains itself for half
a decade is an oxymoron. It is no longer a pop
-up. It is a permanent fixture of the community
that simply happens to have a flexible lease.
That's true. The fact that Phase One survived
for five years proved something vital about the
Jacaranda business model. It proved that their
success wasn't entirely dependent on the ghosts
of the Silver Beatles. Oh, right. It wasn't just
the history selling the records. Precisely. The
hybrid concept itself, a curated record store
seamlessly integrated with a 180 capacity live
room, was highly viable. deeply desired by the
Liverpool public, even when completely removed
from the historical gravity of the original Slater
Street address. It proved the concept was portable.
They had successfully decoupled their business
acumen from their historical crutch. That's a
huge milestone for any heritage brand. And because
they proved it worked on Seal Street, they decided
to take an enormous, highly calculated risk.
In January 2024, they relaunched the phase one
concept, but they moved it to the Baltic Triangle.
A very vibrant area. Yeah, specifically taking
over a space in the Canes Brewery Village. They
rebranded it as Jacaranda Baltic and they didn't
just move, they leveled up. They really did.
They expanded into a 400 capacity basement performance
space while maintaining a ground level record
store. We need to analyze. the mathematics of
this expansion. Let's do it. Because moving from
a 180 capacity room to a 400 capacity room is
not just a linear step up. It is an entirely
different stratosphere of the live music business.
Break that down for us. Why is 400 such a terrifying
number for an independent promoter? Well, In
the live music touring circuit, a 180 capacity
room is generally considered a developmental
space. It is for local bands bringing their friends
or deeply underground touring acts. The stakes
are lower. The financial overhead is relatively
low, yes. If you only sell 80 tickets, the room
still looks half full, the bar makes enough to
cover the sound engineer, and you survive to
fight another day. But 400 changes the game entirely.
Completely. A 400 capacity venue places you squarely
in the crosshairs of national and international
touring agencies. To fill a 400 cap room, you
cannot rely on local bands selling tickets to
their cousins. No, you need names. You have to
book established mid -tier touring acts, and
these acts require significant financial guarantees
upfront. You have to pay them regardless of who
shows up. Exactly. They require complex technical
riders, advanced lighting rigs, higher security
staffing, and aggressive, expensive marketing
campaigns. So the math gets scary fast. If you
book a band into a 400 cap room and you only
sell 80 tickets, you don't just have a quiet
night. You take a devastating financial loss.
You lose money on the guarantee. You lose money
on the staffing. And the bar takes a massive
hit. It is a high wire act without a net. It
truly is. The risk profile increases exponentially.
Therefore, the fact that Graham Stanley and his
team successfully executed this jump to Jacaranda
Baltic in 2024 indicates a massive amount of
confidence in their operational capacity. And
it shows profound health in the Liverpool live
music ecosystem. They were consistently pulling
the numbers required to justify a 400 cap room.
Which is incredibly impressive. So let's take
a wide angle look at the empire they had successfully
built by this point. It is a masterfully constructed
trifecta. First, you have the retail arm. They
are selling the physical culture through the
stores on Slater Street and the Baltic Triangle.
Second, you have the hospitality arm. They are
hosting the culture in these historically significant
and newly scaled venues. And third, you have
the promotional arm. They are booking and driving
the culture via out of phase events. It is a
brilliant, self -sustaining loop of music discovery
and consumption. It is a highly optimized engine
for presenting music. But human ambition is a
dangerous thing. Oh is. When you build an engine
that runs perfectly, the natural instinct is
to try and build the fuel as well. They had mastered
the presentation and distribution of art. The
next fatal step was deciding they needed to manufacture
it. Here's where it gets really interesting.
Because in November 2018, right as they are proving
the phase one pop -up model on Seal Street, a
British music producer named Ray Mia approaches
Graham Stanley. And this changes everything.
Completely. They don't just decide to casually
put out a few local 7 -inch singles. They decide
to form a proper record label, Jacaranda Records.
But the vision they outline is utterly staggering.
Staggering is the right word. They want to build
an entirely enclosed global music hub. And the
two pillars of this vision were an immersive
audio recording studio and a massive, fully operational
vinyl record pressing plant. Just massive infrastructure.
And by February 2019, just three months after
that initial conversation, they had already begun
construction on the immersive audio facility.
The sheer audacity of this plan cannot be overstated.
We are looking at an attempt at total vertical
integration on an independent level. Let's dissect
the concept of vertical integration for a minute.
Sure. In a traditional supply chain, different
companies handle different stages of a product's
life. A band writes a song, a separate studio
records it, a separate label funds it, a separate
factory manufactures the vinyl, a separate distributor
ships it, and a separate retail store like Jacaranda
sells it. Everyone has their specialty. Exactly.
But Ramia and Graham Stanley looked at that sprawling,
complex global supply chain and decided they
were going to do every single piece of it themselves
under one roof in Liverpool. It is essentially
the Motown model. Barry Gordy did this in Detroit
in the 1960s. He had the recording studio, the
songwriters, the pressing facilities, the charm
school for the artists, the management and the
distribution all contained within the Hitsville
USA ecosystem. I understand the romantic comparison
to Motown, but I really have to push back on
it strongly. Why is that? Attempting the Motown
model in 1960s Detroit is fundamentally different
from attempting it in 2018 Liverpool. Barry Gordy
was operating in an era of centralized media.
Meaning fewer gatekeepers. Meaning if he could
leverage his network to get a song at a few major
regional radio stations, he had a guaranteed
pipeline to millions of consumers. He controlled
the monopoly on the local means of production
and the distribution channels were highly concentrated.
Where as in 2018? In 2018, the landscape is infinitely
fragmented. We're talking about the algorithmic
era. You are not competing for a slot on a local
radio station. You are competing against 40 ,000
new tracks uploaded to Spotify every single day.
Yeah, that is a sobering statistic. You are fighting
the opaque algorithms of global tech conglomerates.
Attempting to build an enclosed physical ecosystem
to combat a decentralized digital reality is
an incredibly fraught strategy. It's an uphill
battle before you even pour the concrete. Exactly.
But beyond the conceptual flaw, we have to look
at the staggering logistical and financial realities
of the infrastructure they actually proposed.
Let's start with the immersive audio recording
studio. Yeah, for someone who isn't an audiophile,
what exactly does immersive audio mean in the
context of 2018, and why is it so hard to build?
When we talk about standard music production,
we're usually talking about stereo sound. a left
channel and a right channel. Your brain perceives
a flat left to right sonic image. Like a standard
pair of headphones. Right. Immersive audio, often
associated with formats like Dolby Atmos, completely
shatters that paradigm. It treats individual
sounds not as channels, but as independent 3D
objects that can be placed literally anywhere
in a spherical space around the listener. That
sounds amazing, honestly. It is. You can place
the vocal directly in front of the listener's
nose, the drums behind their head, and a guitar
solo floating above them. What does it take to
build a room that can actually mix that? It requires
an astronomical amount of capital and acoustic
engineering. You cannot just throw 12 speakers
into a room and call it immersive. The acoustic
treatment of the room must be mathematically
flawless to prevent phase cancellation and unwanted
reflections. You need highly specialized proprietary
hardware and software arrays. In 2018, immersive
audio was largely the domain of massive film
mixing stages in Hollywood, or elite, multi -million
dollar facilities earned by major labels. For
an independent record store in Liverpool to attempt
to build an immersive audio facility on an independent
budget is a testament to an almost terrifying
level of ambition. They wanted to leapfrog standard
recording studios and jump straight to the bleeding
edge of audio technology. And if that wasn't
ambitious enough, we have the second pillar of
their plan, the record pressing plant. This is
the part that genuinely blows my mind. The listener
really needs to grasp the logistical nightmare
of manufacturing physical vinyl. It is arguably
one of the most difficult, archaic and temperamental
manufacturing processes still operating in the
modern world. Let's spend some time breaking
down exactly what Ray Mia and Graham Stanley
were signing up for when they said they wanted
to build a pressing plant. Please do because
I think most people assume you just plug a USB
drive into a machine and a record pops out. Nothing
could be further from the truth. Pressing a vinyl
record is closer to medieval alchemy than modern
tech manufacturing. First you have the machinery
itself. In 2018, there were very few companies
manufacturing new vinyl pressing machines. So
what did everyone use? Most existing plants were
using refurbished, heavily modified hydraulic
presses from the 1970s. These machines weigh
literal tons. They require massively reinforced
concrete floors just to hold their weight without
cracking the foundation. And they require extreme
temperature fluctuations, right? Precisely. To
press a record, you take raw PVC plastic pellets,
often called biscuits, and you have to heat them
using extreme high pressure industrial steam.
The press clamps down with immense hydraulic
force, stamping the physical grooves into the
hot plastic. Then, instantly, the machine must
flush the molds with freezing chilled water to
cure the plastic before the press opens. That
sounds intense. It is. This means a pressing
plant requires a massive industrial grade boiler
system to generate the steam and a massive industrial
grade chilling tower to generate the cold water.
You are essentially building a heavy industrial
chemical plant. So you need specialized engineers
just to keep the building from exploding. Literally,
yes. You are dealing with highly pressurized
steam lines. Furthermore, the global supply chain
for raw PVC pellets is notoriously volatile.
Let alone the chemicals for the stampers. Right.
The materials used to create the metal stampers,
the lacquers, the silvering chemicals, the electroplating
baths, involve highly toxic, heavily regulated
substances. Which explains the massive bottlenecks
during the vinyl boom. There is a reason why,
during the peak of the vinyl revival, there were
multi -month bottlenecks in the industry. The
barrier to entry for manufacturing is incredibly
high. The expertise required to master a record
for vinyl, cut the lacquer, create the stampers
and dial in the hydraulic pressure of the machines
is a dying, highly specialized art form. And
Jacaranda Records, an entity born from a retail
store and a live venue, looked at that terrifying,
toxic, heavy industrial nightmare and said, yeah,
we should build that from scratch in Liverpool.
It highlights a fundamental misunderstanding
of core competencies. Graham Stanley understood
how to sell a record to a customer. He understood
how to book a band. Better than almost anyone.
Yes. But the leap from retail curation to heavy
industrial manufacturing is a chasm that cannot
easily be crossed with mere enthusiasm and historical
legacy. They were attempting to be the cutting
edge digital laboratory and the grimy heavy industrial
factory at the exact same time. And they were
bringing artists into this highly volatile ecosystem.
Let's look at the human element of this ambition.
Because by the summer of 2019, the label begins
building its roster. They sign a Runcorn Act
named Spilt and a Liverpool based act named Shards.
And by the end of 2019, they sign a singer songwriter
named Amy Stephen. That's a solid start. It is.
But they didn't just sign these artists to a
standard modern indie deal where you put out
an EP and see how it goes. They sign these acts
to 10 year contracts. What's fascinating here
is the sheer anachronism of a 10 year contract.
In the context of the modern music industry,
a decade long commitment is practically unheard
of. Let's break down why that is so shocking.
How does an independent contract usually work
today? Well, in the current digital landscape,
the music industry is obsessed with mitigating
risk and maximizing immediate return. Labels
are looking for virality. They want the sure
thing. They scour TikTok and algorithmic playlists
for songs that are already trending independently.
When they sign an artist, they typically offer
a very short -term deal. Like a single or an
EP. Perhaps a single album or just an EP with
options for the label to extend if it becomes
a hit or drop the artist immediately if it fails.
The attention span of the consumer is measured
in seconds. If a single underperforms in its
first week, the label often cuts its losses and
moves on to the next viral trend. So the idea
of signing an unknown local act for 10 years
is the exact opposite of the current industry
playbook. It is a complete rejection of the algorithmic
model. It is the throwback to the 1970s. Think
about the classic artist development model of
the 20th century. Give us an example. Look at
an artist like Bruce Springsteen. His first two
albums didn't set the world on fire commercially,
but Columbia Records believed in him. They invested
the time and capital to let him develop his sound,
tour relentlessly, make mistakes, and grow into
the artist who eventually delivered Born to Run
on his third try. That is the romantic view of
a 10 -year deal. It sounds beautiful, really.
It says, we believe in you. We are not going
to drop you if your first single doesn't chart.
We are going to build a career together. It is
deeply romantic. And autistically, it is arguably
the most ethical and supportive way to nurture
talent. However, from a strictly business perspective,
especially for an independent startup label,
it is an immense, almost suffocating financial
liability. Why is it such a burden? Think about
the cash flow required. When you sign an artist
to a 10 -year deal, you are legally obligating
yourself to fund their career for a decade. You
are on the hook for recording advances, studio
time, which remember they were trying to do in
a hyper -expensive immersive audio facility.
Right. Marketing budgets, tour support, PR campaigns,
and physical manufacturing costs for multiple
album cycles. And if the band breaks up in year
three? Then you have a massive legal and financial
mess. If the band's sound falls out of cultural
favor in year four, you are still obligated to
fund them. You are locking up your available
capital in long -term high -risk investments
with no guarantee of a return. It's extremely
dangerous. You're acting like a major label with
deep corporate pockets, but operating with the
fragile cash flow of an independent enterprise.
The pressure on both the label and the artists
must have been immense. And when we look at the
timeline provided in the sources, there is a
very telling gap. Yes, there is. We have these
massive structural announcements and these decade
-long signings happening in 2018 and 2019, but
their flagship release, a compilation album titled
Tales from the Jackarondo Volume 01, does not
actually come out until 2022. That three -year
gap is highly significant. While the specific
day -to -day operations of that period aren't
exhaustively detailed in the sources, a three
-year delay between signing acts to a 10 -year
deal and releasing a compilation implies massive
operational friction. Well, getting anything
built takes time. If you are trying to build
an immersive studio and source heavy machinery
for a pressing plant from scratch, you are going
to hit delays. Undoubtedly. The friction of attempting
to build physical infrastructure while simultaneously
trying to manage the creative output of multiple
artists is immense. It's too many spinning plates.
But when 2022 finally arrives, it appears the
creative dam breaks. They release the compilation.
Tales from the Jacaranda Volume 01. It features
the original 2019 Chinese Bilt, Shards, and Amy
Stephen, but it also showcases a broader roster.
Yeah, we see newer acts like Dust Monk, The Phil
Jones Experience, and later that same year, in
late 2022, they sign another act called Waiting
Till Marriage and release their debut single.
For a brief moment, it looks like the Empire
is fully operational. They have the historic
pedigree, they have the award winning retail
store, they have the expanding live venues, they
have the immersive studio ambitions, and they
have a diverse roster of artists releasing physical
product. Ramia and Graham Stanley's utopian vision
really seems to be materializing. right then.
It is the apex of their ambition. But the higher
you build a structure without a solid foundation,
the more spectacular the collapse. Which brings
us to the final sobering chapter of the Jacaranda
Records label. The collapse is abrupt, definitive,
and structurally devastating. By 2025, an application
for the dissolution of Jacaranda Records limited
the specific corporate entity housing the record
label was submitted. And just like that, it's
over. The label was officially closed. The dream
of the global music hub, the immersive audio
dominance, the pressing plant, and the romantic
10 -year artist contracts it all dissolved. It
vanished. In fact, one of the primary source
articles maps out this exact trajectory and asks
a haunting, incredibly blunt question. Jacaranda
Records wanted to change the industry. How did
it go so wrong? This raises an important question.
How can a single brand identity be simultaneously
so wildly successful and so fundamentally unsuccessful?
It's a paradox. We have to look at the timeline.
In the exact same year 2025 that the record label
formally applied for dissolution, the Jacaranda
retail record store on Slater Street was triumphantly
celebrating its 10 -year anniversary of unbroken
success. And just one year prior to the dissolution,
in 2024, They successfully and aggressively expanded
their live venue footprint to the 400 capacity
Jacaranda Baltic space. It is a profound paradox.
How do you reconcile a booming hospitality and
retail sector with a bankrupt production sector
under the exact same brand? You reconcile it
by understanding the brutal, uncompromising economics
of core competencies. We discussed this earlier,
but the dissolution makes it starkly clear. The
business of facilitating culture is fundamentally
different from the business of manufacturing
culture. Break that down. What is the difference
in risk? The venues and the retail stores are
facilitators. When Jacarona Baltic hosts a touring
band, they are facilitating an event. The risk
is relatively contained. They sell tickets, they
sell beer, they pay the band their guarantee,
and the night ends. The math is predictable.
Even if it's a tight margin, it's a known margin.
Exactly. When the Jacaranda record store buys
100 copies of the new Taylor Swift album wholesale
and sells them retail, they are facilitating
a transaction. The margins are small, but they
are known. The label was attempting to manufacture
the culture from scratch. producing music, funding
artists for a decade, building cutting edge audio
laboratories, and attempting to operate heavy
industrial pressing machinery. These activities
carry massive, compounding, uncontrollable risks.
You're throwing money into a void, hoping it
sings back. You are sinking hundreds of thousands
of dollars into unproven artistic commodities
and highly volatile manufacturing supply chains.
Graham Stanley and his team possessed a genius
level understanding of how to host a crowd, curate
a vibe, and honor the legacy of Alan Williams.
But they lacked the specialized institutional
capital required to survive the brutal realities
of music production and manufacturing. I want
you to apply this to your own life for a moment.
Have you ever been really good at something,
maybe a hobby or a small project, and you decided
to aggressively expand it into areas you didn't
fully understand simply because you were confident
in your initial success? It's a common trap.
It is. The story of Jack Renner Records is a
masterclass in the dangers of expanding beyond
your core competency. They knew exactly how to
sell the vinyl. They had absolutely no business
trying to press the vinyl. It is a story of incredible
vision, colliding with the harsh, unforgiving
realities of a spreadsheet. They attempted to
build a monolithic, self -contained industry
within Liverpool, a city that is historically
famous for its organic, decentralized, and often
chaotic musical exports. It just didn't fit the
city's vibe maybe? Perhaps not. The failure of
the label does not diminish the nobility of their
ambition, but it serves as a stark warning about
the sheer difficulty of independent vertical
integration. So as we wrap up this deep dive
into the archives, let's take a moment to survey
the incredible journey we've mapped out today.
We started all the way back in 1958, breathing
the damp cellar air and feeling the psychological
weight of John Lennon and Stuart Secliffe's paint
on the walls of a Slater Street basement. A lot
of history in that room. We watched Graham Stanley
brilliantly read the cultural tea leaves in 2014,
writing the crests of the 2015 vinyl revival,
to turn a historic bar into a nationally recognized
retail space. We saw them dream impossibly big
in 2018, launching a utopian label with visions
of immersive audio, pressing plants, and radically
romantic 10 -year artist deals. And we saw the
limits of that dream. And finally, we witnessed
the quiet dissolution of that specific manufacturing
dream in 2025, even as their foundational live
venues and retail stores continue to thrive and
expand. The autonomy between their failures and
their successes is really the defining feature
of this entire narrative. So what does this all
mean? For me, it means that failure in one specific
arena, the dissolution of the record label, absolutely
does not negate the resounding continued success
of the broader enterprise. Not at all. The venues
are packed. The artists are still playing. The
record store just celebrated a decade of defying
digital gravity. Jacaranda remains a vital beating
heart in the Liverpool music scene. They swung
for the fences. with the label and they struck
out, but they are still playing in the major
leagues when it comes to keeping physical retail
and live music alive. I agree and I think there
is a profound lasting lesson here about the nature
of music consumption in the 21st century. I'm
gonna leave you with this final thought. Go for
it. We exist in an era where digital streaming
has made music invisible, weightless, and practically
infinite. The art form has been reduced to data
stored in the cloud. Because music is everywhere.
It runs the risk of meaning nothing. It becomes
wallpaper. Exactly. In that context, physical
spaces like Jacaranda spaces, where you can actually
smell the cardboard sleeves and the hot vinyl
of a new record, where you can feel the physical
vibration of a kick drum rattling your ribcage
in a 400 capacity room, and where you can literally
trace the history of the medium painted onto
the basement walls. Those spaces are becoming
the true premium product of the music industry.
That is so true. The grand, ambitious record
label that wanted to change the industry may
have collapsed under its own weight. But perhaps
the tactile physical community that Jacaranda
successfully built and maintained is what will
actually change the industry in the long run.
The cloud is infinite, but the basement is real.
I love that. Take that thought with you the next
time you walk into your local record shop. Thank
you for joining us on this custom exploration
and take care.