Today have the third and penultimate conversation from our Label Focus mini-series presented by Zara Hedderman. So far we’ve heard from Willie Stewart of Nyahh Records and Joey Edwards from Pizza Pizza Records and in this episode, you’ll hear Zara speaking with Michael Roe, label and artist manager with Faction Records. 

Faction Records is coming close to reaching a massive milestone of 20 years in business after it was founded by Ken Allen in 2006. You may remember a compilation CD from around that time called Faction One and featured bands like Director, The Immediate, Republic of Loose and Future Kings of Spain amongst others. Today, populating Faction’s roster of artists are a number of firm favourites with critics and audiences such as Sorcha Richardson, Niamh Regan, Martin Hayes, and Jape. 

Over the course of the chat Michael delved into the many ways that the industry is changing and how he and his colleagues at Faction work with their artists to develop their careers and prepare them to build their audience base and engage with international markets. In this regard, the conversation explores different elements of the business-side of the artist-label relationship and how important it is to have a plan but also not fear failure along the way. Zara and Michael discuss the impact of artists self-releasing their music and how that’s changing the overall landscape and the importance of the relationships artists build with various media outlets and journalists. 

We’ll have another episode, the final one in this series, very soon, but until then, here’s Michael Roe of Faction Records.

Keep up to date on Faction Records here:
https://www.instagram.com/factionmusicie

Music featured:

Annamoe Drive - Procrastination
https://anamoedrive.bandcamp.com/track/procrastination

Niamh Regan - Madonna
https://niamhregan.bandcamp.com/track/madonna

Séan Joyce - My Face
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrE9V3Ccs7I