Since its emergence in the late 1960s, the German rock and metal industry has developed from a relatively weak music production economy compared to the US and UK to one of the main locations for international record production. Back then, countercultural rock music had little infrastructural support because major record companies only promoted schlager-infused rock’n’roll, and there were no independent labels worth mentioning for niche popular music and privately owned recording studios. Within a few years, krautrock established this infrastructure in the 1970s. Small independent record companies helped bands like Tangerine Dream to international fame, but overlooked is that the vast majority of artists were allowed to record albums even if they did not yield a commercial return. In their too ambitious and idealistic endeavour, the three primary labels, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser’s Ohr, Pilz and Kosmische Kuriere, went bankrupt within six years. Supporting German progressive rock music to establish a left-wing counterculture and not bow to the demands of capitalist society was not sustainable. After Kaiser went out of business, many krautrock artists opened their own labels to continue releasing music, about one hundred labels in 1977, most of them eventually ending in financial disaster (Simmeth 2016, p. 210). The lack of economically viable record companies for rock music made krautrock disappear from the scene towards the end of the decade.
When metal began to flourish in West Germany in the mid-1980s, it could build on the achievements of krautrock. Just as anyone could start a fanzine or fan club, anyone could open a record company or recording studio and contribute to the metal community this way. As the previous analysis showed, many individuals took advantage of the new opportunities. According to record label Neat biographer John Tucker (2015, p. 11), there were only five notable independent record companies in the UK during the prime of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (approx. 1979–1983). The German scene benefitted from a much larger number of labels of diverse sizes.
The motivations for opening these companies are consistent with those described in the literature on independent labels (Messick 2020; Strachan 2007). Many emerged naturally as an extension of a music-related practice like tape trading or distribution, record store retailing or music performing and production. Some arose out of fandom, trying to support the careers of promising artists who could not otherwise find a label. Others like GAMA have been accused of trying to cash in on the metal trend (Neudi 2017) by running a label to utilise their recording studio, but the same has been said about Neat (Tucker 2015, pp. 145, 188, 325), which does not diminish their role for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Most labels, including the larger ones like Steamhammer, Century Media and Nuclear Blast, have credibly emphasised their community-oriented principles. Only a few have been able to juggle these communal ideals with their economic necessities, and so over time, most labels closed or were taken over by larger companies. Of the labels studied, only Nuclear Blast is still independent, while Century Media was the last one being merged into Sony Music in 2015.
A communal spirit characterised early German metal, so individuals saw their involvement in music as an extension of their fan practice rather than a profession (see Messick 2020; Strachan 2007). Hardly any professionals were in the scene when it was formed with its various industries like the record business or journalism. Clear distinctions between fans, musicians, recordists, journalists and record business entrepreneurs barely existed. To give a representative but incomplete list: Steeler vocalist Peter Burtz was journalist and editor for Metal Hammer; Metal Hammer editor Charly Rinne ran No Remorse Records; Aaarrg owner Ralph Hubert was Mekong Delta bassist and a metal producer; Eulenspygel musicians Peter Garratoni and Günter Marek operated a recording studio and their GAMA label; Robert Kampf founded Century Media to release music by his own band Despair; fellow Despair guitarist Waldemar Sorychta became one of the main record producers of early German metal; Nuclear Blast founder Michael Staiger was an avid tape-trader and mail-order-operator who gave German metal fans access to foreign releases; Eloy guitarist and vocalist Frank Bornemann owned one of Germany’s main metal recording facilities, Horus; Tommy Newton of Fargo/Victory ran the Area 51 recording studio; founders of Rock Hard magazine like Götz Kühnemund also ran the fan club Metal-Maniacs-Germany. While this lack of clear affiliation sometimes caused problems with objectivity, especially in journalism, it prevented hard barriers between artists, businesses and media, and it facilitated interaction in the interest of the wider scene. This blurring of roles seems to be typical not only of German metal. Autobiographies of other labels show that US Metal Blade’s Brian Slagel began as a tape trader and fanzine writer (Slagel 2017), US Megaforce’s Jon Zazula as a tape trader and record store owner (Zazula 2019), and British Peaceville’s Paul Halmshaw as a punk musician (Halmshaw 2019). Nevertheless, all the indications are that fans and lay practitioners formed metal communities in the 1980s and laid the foundations for a significant industry to come.
For many record label owners, running their business meant considerable personal investment, as was stressed in interviews and covered in metal journalism. Messick’s (2020) study may have found some contemporary metal indie label operators declaring their losses as hobby expenses, but for the majority, producing music in a pre-digital era involved substantial costs threatening their owners’ existence, including larger labels like Century Media (see Krumm 2012, pp. 41–45). In this regard, the German labels were no different from their British and American counterparts; the autobiographies of Megaforce founder Jon Zazula (2019) and Peaceville founder Paul Halmshaw (2019) describe similar concerns that eventually let them to sell their labels. Compared to those major financial crises, broken marriages (see, e.g., Mader et al. 1998, p. 15) are a less drastic consequence, but still a personal loss resulting from business ventures.
Kerrang! author Howard Johnson described the function of independent labels as allowing amateurs to produce a record and become semi-professional or even professional for a while before returning to the ranks of fans (see Waksman 2009, p. 187). Despite the polemic nature of this statement, it is demonstrably not entirely wrong. Interviews in metal magazines suggest that most German metal artists could not make a living from their music. Of the four popular “Teutonic thrash bands”, only Kreator were able to live from music (Himmelstein 2001), not so Sodom (Kühnemund 1988b), Destruction (Jaedike 2001) and Tankard, the latter describing themselves as a ‘semi-professional hobby band’ (Jaedike 2004, p. 94). Other notable exceptions were Helloween (Stratmann 2015), Running Wild (Klemm 1985) and Grave Digger (Kleiner 1986). Century Media founder Robert Kampf stated in a 2004 interview that to make a living from music, metal bands needed 50,000 copies sold per album (Stratmann 2004). He also made public that the label’s top albums in the 1990s, such as Tiamat’s (1994) Wild Honey, sold 60,000 copies in Germany (Krumm 2012, p. 44), indicating very few releases allowed their artists to become fully “professional”. Similarly, British Peaceville owner Paul Halmshaw (2019, p. 149) described how not even his label’s top artists like My Dying Bride could draw a monthly salary from their record sales, nor could Scandinavian bands like Soilwork (Buffo 2002). These findings suggest that most metal artists needed to generate other sources of income like teaching or had to pursue their serious leisure careers (Stebbins 2009, 2017) alongside their non-music-related day jobs. This finding supports research criticising the widespread belittling of semi-professional music careers, seeing them as merely a stepping stone to a full-time music career (see Finnegan 1989; Miller 2018).
In terms of music studios and record producers, German metal seemed to echo the earlier krautrock tradition, where the leading figures Conny Plank and Dieter Dierks placed artists above commercial interests (Reetze 2020, p. 259; Stubbs 2014, pp. 337–338). The Horus Sound Studio in Hanover, founded by the krautrock band Eloy, was one of the central German rock and metal studios from 1979. After Eloy broke up, the studio became Frank Bornemann’s company, which he saw as a full-service enterprise with talent scouting, artist development and production management. An explanation of his business philosophy sheds light on German metal in the 1980s:
Especially newcomer bands still have a hard time in Germany. There are hardly any suitable contact points for young bands in our country, only a few companies have the necessary know-how in all aspects of the biz, which is needed if a new group wants to progress. Seriously, much is still left to chance. Lack of competence is still a negative feature of the German music business, apart from the very few internationally experienced managers and producers. These few would be hopelessly overburdened if they were to take intensive care of promising talents in addition to their day-to-day business. An infrastructure of the kind that has grown in the USA or England over decades is still largely lacking in Germany. That is where we want to start. When we decide to work with a band, we accompany them intensively through all phases of their further development, help, advise, build up and try, as far as possible, to remove all difficulties from the band’s path. We are musicians ourselves and therefore always approach the work from a musician’s point of view. (Klüsener 1988, p. 30; translation)
Not being a charity organisation, the studio was required to be economically viable. Hence, besides a few smaller bands like Kingdom/Domain, Scanner or Steeltower/Heavens Gate, mainly Germany’s top metal bands like Helloween, Kreator, Gamma Ray, Rage and Sodom recorded albums at Horus. Other notable producers, Harris Johns with his Music Lab and Siegfried Bemm with his Woodhouse, were decisive for the early successes of Noise and Century Media, respectively. Research on early German metal producers (Herbst 2019, 2021a, 2021b) and label documentaries (Gehlke 2017; Krumm 2012) show their commitment to the German metal scene, with little regard to commercial considerations beyond what was necessary to stay afloat—much in the tradition of earlier krautrock producers.
Besides the alleged lack of professional recording studios and producers in Bornemann’s view, managers were widely missing, which has been repeatedly highlighted as a structural disadvantage for German rock musicians in the 1970s krautrock era (Reetze 2020, pp. 214–215; Simmeth 2016, p. 208) and still in 1980s metal music (Klüsener 1989). Managers have sometimes been portrayed as manipulative and exploitative agents in the music industry (Rogan 1988). However, they are also acknowledged as helpful advisers for artists, as they devise career strategies, settle disputes with record labels, organise concerts and promotional events, and allow artists to focus on their music (Negus 2001, p. 41). Bogdan “Boggy” Kopec and Ralf Christian “Limb” Schnoor were the two main metal managers of the 1980s with a great impact on the professionalisation of German metal. For bands like Helloween, Kreator, Sodom, Running Wild and Rage, they organised tours (Krumm 2011, pp. 363–364; Schmenk & Krumm 2010, p. 85), drove the bands, were their fan club presidents and took care of their royalties (Gehlke 2017, pp. 148–149). Sodom once explained the advantages of management as follows: ‘Before we got management, we had to do everything ourselves. That was a really hard time. We paid a lot of money, were often on the road and had to set up everything ourselves at shows’ (Glaub 1995, p. 33; translation). Modern artists must be entrepreneurs (Wade Morris 2014); Netherton (2017) even speaks of an ‘entrepreneurial imperative’ for contemporary metal bands that places entrepreneurship at the centre of artistic identity. In contrast, managers in the 1980s and 1990s freed metal bands from this administrative burden.
Negus (1999, 2001, 2010) has advocated for record labels to be acknowledged as ‘cultural intermediaries’ (see also Bourdieu 1986) and enablers of cultural production. Overall, the companies studied worked for their artists and audiences. Just as their international counterparts, Metal Blade (Slagel 2017), Megaforce (Zazula 2019) and Neat (Tucker 2015), many German labels started by importing foreign records to offer them at affordable prices. As most of these labels were genuinely interested in developing musical careers, they soon began signing bands to foster promising domestic talents. What distinguished German companies from the Anglo-American scenes was perhaps the way they perceived their businesses. For example, instead of competing with major labels, British Neat Records saw itself as discoverer of bands for the major label Music Corporation of America (MCA) (Tucker 2015, p. 117; Waksman 2009, pp. 187–188). Jon Zazula revealed in his autobiography that Megaforce’s business philosophy was much the same:
We always wanted them [Metallica] to be on a major label. We wanted all our bands to, but hoped they would stay with us for management and direction… we felt if we had a major label attached [to] it [, it] would only help get the band bigger. The touring, promotion, advertisements, record distribution, and getting the bands on the radio, it would just elevate the bands and skyrocket them to success. (Zazula 2019, p. 11)
Metal Blade took a similar approach according to Brian Slagel’s memoir:
I had no qualms with Slayer signing to a major label because I knew—everybody knew—it was going to happen sometime… A major label has the ability to offer a group the kind of money that young men can’t refuse, and it’s great for those bands to get that opportunity. I was just a small label with a few acts. I couldn’t compete with the majors, and made no attempt to do so. (Slagel 2017, p. 75)
Available sources of German labels give little reason to presume that they intended to develop their bands to be sold profitably to major labels. At least for the bigger companies Noise, Century Media and Nuclear Blast, interview statements indicate that increased revenues were spent on production, touring and promotion to support their bands. These labels also used income from successful artists to subsidise smaller bands to improve their chances of growing and becoming the next generation of successful artists, who would, in turn, support emerging newcomers.
The data suggests that German labels had a nuanced relationship with the major labels. For the three just mentioned labels, it is documented that they occasionally collaborated with major labels if it was beneficial to their top bands, not much different from the reasons Brian Slagel (2017) and Jon Zazula (2019) stated. At most times, however, they collaborated with each other. For example, Century Media shared operations with Noise and Nuclear Blast in the USA since the mid-1990s and licensed the catalogue of SPV and fellow German progressive metal label InsideOut (Krumm 2012), seeing good business relations as a ‘code of honour’ (Krumm 2012, p. 203). Similarly, Brian Sharp of Century Media USA described the labels’ mutual wish for bands not to move to the majors but to their fellow German competitors: ‘If a band leaves Century Media, we would rather have them with Nuclear Blast than with any other company’ (Krumm 2012, p. 102; translation). This intention to keep bands should not be equated with hindering prospective bands from growing and obtaining more support from a major company. While with Steamhammer, Noise, Century Media and Nuclear Blast all four leading German metal labels of the 1980s and 1990s were initially distributed by German independent SPV, they eventually created their own distribution channels in key international markets to allow genre-appropriate promotion and distribution, as well as more efficient and coherent operations (Wells 2017, pp. 185–186). These infrastructures were extended by distribution deals with major labels, combining the benefits for a band to be managed by an independent label with the distribution power of a major label (Negus 1999, p. 59; Wells 2017). Based on the metal magazine discourse, it was advantageous for a band’s image to be signed to an independent rather than a major label (see also Negus 2001, p. 18). Bands with a major label like Axxis (EMI) were sometimes mocked in the press and disliked by metal fans. After their reunion and change to German independent labels Massacre and AFM, Axxis—perhaps to make peace with having lost their major company support—highlighted the advantages of a German indie label because they had less external pressure (Mineur 2004b), even though it forced them to open a recording studio and music publishing company to remain “professional” (Mineur 2004a).