In the year 2025, it takes a special kind of madman to run an indie label — and, for the record, we here at Harmonic are grateful to pretty much all of them. But it takes an even MORE unique flavor of madness to decide you're going to run a label that dedicates a portion of its proceeds to charity, and that's why we decided we had to have a chat with Cayle Sharratt, whose Share It Music imprint has raised money for an array of wonderful organizations and social causes while also distributing some terrific records for its roster of talented acts.

How did Cayle decide to embark on this path? What are some of the challenges he's faced and lessons he's learned along the way? And which indie artists are in heavy rotation for him these days? For the answers to all those questions and more, read on.

‍It's become woefully apparent over the last 20 to 25 years that it is exceedingly difficult to make money with music in almost any capacity. So the idea that you would start a label whose mission is to not only try to make money, but to give it away is mildly outlandish. Where did you get the idea to do this? And then we can maybe walk through some of what I'm imagining are pretty unique challenges?

Totally. Yeah, so for that first part, the idea actually came from another label that kind of operates the same way: Hopeless Records, which is a Southern California-based kind of punk rock label. I grew up listening to a lot of their bands. They have a label that's called Sub City Records. So it's a subsidiary of Hopeless Records, but otherwise under the umbrella of Hopeless. And that's kind of how I learned about this sort of model. 

Bands like Thrice and Avenge Sevenfold and some of those Southern California bands from the early 2000s were putting out records under the Hopeless umbrella, but on Sub City, where they would be talking about and partnering with particular nonprofit organizations that were meaningful to those bands in some way. And that's really the idea behind Share It Music, too. That's what I have tried to copy, for lack of a better word. It really spoke to me at the time, and still does, obviously. Bringing together music that I enjoy and people that I like working with, that I want to try to expose their music to more listeners and a larger audience, but also bringing them together with community organizations that are meaningful to those particular artists as well. 

The way that we do that is donate a portion of proceeds from that particular artist's record, whether it's a sale or streaming income, or if they get music in a film or TV show and there's a license for that. Any sort of proceeds that are coming in, we donate to the cause that is important to that particular artist. So it's not my own brilliant idea. It's something that somebody has done before me, but it was meaningful and is meaningful and something that I wanted to try to do once I felt comfortable and had the experience to do.

I got a press release for one of your artists, and as soon as I saw that that was part of the label's mission, I was like, "I have to talk to these people." We need that type of soulfulness right now. Not just because of what has happened with the music industry over the last couple of decades, but because of what feels like is happening in every corner of the world. 

So thank you, but also, how do you find the margin to do this?

Thank you very much for those kind words. It is certainly meaningful, especially now, with federal funding being cut. Luckily, our organization doesn't rely on that sort of funding.

We work with small budgets. When we spend money, we try to do it in a thoughtful way. We do hire out for publicity. You mentioned the press release. If we're making a vinyl record, we obviously have to pay to have those made. So, you know, I think I'm just mindful of the cost of those things. We don't have the budget to make 50,000 records, and we don't have the budget to sign a band that is going to be needing that sort of funding to do their work. So a lot of it is just being thoughtful about the artists that we work with, and being upfront in managing expectations about what our budgets are, but also doing the best we can with the resources that we have. We're very lucky to be distributed by Sub Pop Records, which is actually where my full-time day job is. So there is a great amount of help that we get from them.

Getting the music into digital services. If we have vinyl records, selling them to the shops that they have direct accounts with. All of our records are on the Sub Pop Megamart, their online store, so they're sold through that channel as well. We get things like help with college and non-com radio support through a company that Sub Pop works with. 

So there are lots of ways that, you know, that relationship also helps. But as far as making money, I think we're just trying to be smart and continue operations. It's a small operation. It's just myself doing the, you know, signing bands and doing the label work. Although, as I mentioned, we hire out for other sorts of things. There are many hands that are making it work, but the operation is just kind of kept small so it can continue.

You work in business and legal affairs for Sub Pop, and I imagine that must give you a big advantage. I think that a lot of people who decide to start labels, the type of label that we're talking about, don't come from that type of background. They just want to be involved in art that makes them feel good, and so they make a lot of mistakes. I'm guessing the fact that you come from a business background is probably very beneficial to what you're trying to do.

Yeah, yeah, I certainly hope so. I mean, that was kind of my thought process as well, getting into it. Like I mentioned, having this kind of idea of what this record label is and what this — it's a nonprofit organization that we otherwise operate as a record label. having that idea early on, it wasn't something that I jumped into right away because I didn't know exactly how to do it. And then, yeah, after being at Sub Pop for a number of years and in my current position, it was like, okay, now I feel comfortable and I know the different aspects of the record label, the marketing and the social media and the publicity and all these different things that make up what a record label does.

It was definitely beneficial to have seen that firsthand and to experience it and yeah, have the business background where I knew what the budgets roughly should be and could be and, you know, what things cost and what they should cost, and when you're paying too much. Having that experience was certainly beneficial and I hope it's translated into, making Share It Music the success that it's been to the extent that it's successful at this point.

It also probably made it easier for you to just know how to establish a nonprofit and how to legally donate money, and things like that. A lot of people would sort of just jump in and make a lot of mistakes in those respects as well.

I could see that happening for sure. It takes a little bit of research and know-how and time and effort. And then once you do, I mean, we operate at kind of the bare minimum of reporting and all the business aspects of it. There are certain rules as far as the nonprofit goes where, if we're making less than a certain amount, then our reporting requirements are less. If I don't take any sort of financial benefit from the label, which I don't, the reporting requirements are less. So it's strategically bare minimum. And that makes it easier. 

You know, if it were to grow and expand, then there would be a lot more responsibilities and a lot more time and effort, frankly, that would be involved, which isn't a bad thing. Growing is a goal. But as far as where we are right now, just kind of keeping things even and steady and kind of at the minimum of what we need to do has been a good approach to what we're doing.

One of the things that we keep hearing from younger artists here is that music, to a degree among a certain crowd, has become seen as sort of a loss leader. I would like to think the pendulum is swinging a little in the other direction now and people are starting to understand that music does have value and it should be paid for, but I'm curious. It sounds like you select the artists that you sign, you approach them, you do the A&R, so to speak. When you talk about all this, do you get that feeling from artists that they feel like their music is not the product anymore? I hate using that word. That it's, you know, that it's merch that they can sell at a live show or whatever. 

The relationship between the audience and the music has been altered and even corrupted to such a degree that there's a generation of artists who don't feel like they can even hope to sell music in the way that we used to.

Yeah, I think there's certainly truth to that. You know, a lot of the artists that we work with have day jobs. Music is their creative passion and it's what they do, and it's how they interpret and engage with the world around them. But it's not necessarily their full-time day job. You know, a lot of them are working full-time during the week and music is something that they do to fill in the rest of their time. So I think it's a passion for them in that way. 

But also, the artists that we work with, they're always engaged when we're making a vinyl record, doing a lot of the design themselves, creating the artwork for that. They're all engaged on social media. So I think they do appreciate and want to interact with the audience and want to, you know, talk about their music creatively. For lack of a better term, sell it to the audience and the listeners and their fans and have that engagement. 

But I think you're exactly right that it's difficult, and that the returns are diminishing and the price of music and what artists are getting paid is continually being pushed down and pushed down. There are certain organizations and companies out there that are, I think, trying to find new ways to value music and make sure that its value is upheld. There are certain nooks and crannies of places out there that are trying to push in the opposite direction as well.

I'm curious, at your level, what the throughput is in terms of streaming numbers versus sales. How often does streaming a release lead to somebody actually purchasing? I know you can't really know that, but...

Yeah, no, that's a really good question. I mean, it is hard to know. It's hard to develop an audience, I think, on digital services. I don't want to diminish any listeners that we get that way. But as far as financial return, it's always better, I think, to have a record sale, you know?

I think it signals a bigger engagement from the fan and the listener themselves. They actually want a tangible product. They're gonna go wherever they can buy the record online or in a physical indie record store. There's more engagement that way. There's more buy-in that way.

If a listener is that engaged, then I would assume they're still going to stream the record too. But they've also got this physical product that is maybe, and hopefully, more meaningful to them than going in and passively listening on their computer or their phone.

One of the planks of the work we're trying to do here rests on recommendations. If you buy something, you can write a recommendation, you can share that, and if somebody purchases the music through you, then you get a little commission. But also, those recommendations exist on the product page, which leads to an environment where things are a little less siloed and you're not just finding something on your own and listening to it by yourself. There's more of a community. I think you're fortunate to be in a music city where that probably happens organically all the time, but that's less and less the case, I think, in other pockets of the country.

Yeah. I mentioned Hopeless at the beginning. That was the kind of music that me and my friends listened to growing up, and still do. Earlier this summer, we all went to a punk rock show up in Bellingham, Washington that featured these bands that we've been listening to since high school that are still around and still performing and playing and part of a scene. 

But you also mentioned the community and recommendations, and I mean, honestly, that's how a lot of the bands that Share It Music works with and releases music from have kind of come to my attention. Through, you know, my friends or coworkers or people that I know and respect and have a similar taste in music. They're like, "If you heard this band you should meet this person, they manage so-and-so." It's that kind of community feel just in the A&R role that I do too.

When I was running a label, often when I approached artists, they were kind of wary. Naturally, if somebody comes at you promising to cut you a check, you're often a little dubious. So I'm wondering about your conversations with artists that you approach, because you're not only offering to sign them and release their music, but also there's this other component to it. How often do you get the sense that it sounds like it's too good to be true? And then from there, how involved or how difficult is it for the artists that you sign to pick a cause that they want to benefit?

On the first part, I'm fortunate to, like I mentioned, have some of these recommendations through friends or connections. So in those instances, I think they kind of already know how it works and know that it's legitimate and know that it's not like there's not some ulterior motive.

So in those conversations, it's generally very supportive and they want to learn more and they want to know how it operates, and have a lot of the same questions and things that we've been talking about. But in instances where I have done some cold calls in emailing artists and managers, sometimes I'll get no response or sometimes they'll just, you know, politely pass. And of course that's okay. It doesn't work for everybody. There are all kinds of different considerations that go into that sort of stuff. It's easy to release music yourself these days, and record labels should be scrutinized for that. If you're not offering a service or an array of services that are valuable to a particular artist, they should by all means not feel the need to sign to a label, right? Because they can upload the music to Spotify themselves and they can make their own vinyl records and there are ways that they can do it independently, truly independently. 

And then as far as the bands and the organizations, when we start to have the conversations about working together, I'm certainly talking to them about that aspect of it. And some of them have an organization in mind right away. Some of them, it takes a while, especially if it's a group of folks and they kind of want to talk through what's important to them as a group, as opposed to particular individuals. 

So it kind of depends, I think, on the artist in those situations. But they all have chosen organizations, and being a Seattle-based record label ourselves, some of them are Seattle-based and some of them have chosen particular organizations that overlap. But I think that particular piece of it is really meaningful to the artists that we work with, and that probably tends to do with the type of folks they are. What's meaningful to them is meaningful to us too. It hasn't been a challenge, I guess is the point.

The response you get from those organizations must be pretty gratifying.

For sure, yeah, yeah. A lot of the time, they're surprised. Like, "You wanna do what? And the artist wants — who's the artist?" And we certainly get — if you go to our website, there's a page that has just a little information about each of the organizations that we support and we've made donations to. But before I put that on our website, I'll send an email to the organization and ask if we can use their logo. They've all said yes, which is wonderful. Some of the time, we'll get the reply to that initial email, and it'll be like, "Well, tell me more. What exactly are you doing? And who is the band? And can we hear the music? And please, we're not actually, this isn't a partnership, but you're just donating?" They're very smart and insightful clarifying questions. They are protective and wary, but certainly grateful as well.

I didn't prep you for this, but I don't think you're going to have any problem doing it. The last thing we usually ask is for three indie artist recommendations.

Let me think of some stuff that I've been listening to and like lately. There's this band from Australia called Press Club — they have a number of albums out now, and the last one came out earlier this year.

They're wonderful. They're kind of a punk indie band. They haven't come to the US on tour, unfortunately, yet. I'm hoping they will someday soon. They go to the UK, I think, fairly frequently, maybe every other year or so. So I think they have a fairly decent following there. That's one that I routinely go back to.

One that's local here in Seattle — well, I guess just a little bit north of Seattle — is a guy whose project is called Little Wins. His name is Andrew Vate and he was in the band Sisters, which was a duo a number years ago. And then he was doing some production work and recording and moved into that, and kind of stepped away for a while. But now he's back and he's got his solo project. It's kind of like folk alt country. I think I've heard him call it that. Very engaging, very cool lyrically, very cool musically. I'm excited to hear his record; I've been following the tracks that he's put out in advance of that.

Let's maybe go back to Australia. Another band I'd recommend as well, they're called Salarymen. They are a duo, guy and a girl, and they're putting out their debut record, which I think comes out in October, and they've released a couple of tracks from that. This is a band that a friend of mine recommended to me last year when they were putting out some singles and an EP, and their track "On the Run" is the one that I listened to most last year.. It was on an EP that came out last year, but now they're following up with their first full length record. I've heard them describe it as a kind of throwback to Fleetwood Mac. Kind of a retro sound, but a contemporary artist.