We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lio Kanine. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lio below.
Lio, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
My mission as a young 20 Year Old was simply to work in the music industry in some capacity.
I honestly didn’t know how or what job I was gonna do, but just wanted to be involved somehow.
I first started by working in venues / night clubs booking live bands, Djs, and promoting shows.
I later moved onto forming co-founding our own record label, Kanine Records, and releasing records by various
independent artists.
Then moved onto co-founding The New Colossus Festival and helping to book multiple artists from around the world in the NYC / Brooklyn areas. For many of these artists, these were their first shows ever in the U.S. / NYC area.
Lio, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY since 2000, I have worked in pretty much every aspect of the music business. From working in small indie record stores (Rebel Rebel, Rough Trade), to running club nights for 15 years in the NYC/Brooklyn area (booking bands, djing, promoting), managing bands, A&R and Sales at various indie labels (Mexican Summer, Rough Trade), working in physical and digital distribution (Alternative Distribution Alliance), to currently co-running my own record label (Kanine Records) and helping start The New Colossus Festival (www.newcolossusfestival.com) in NYC its been an amazing adventure.
But I would have to say my greatest feat has been running and maintaining the healthy environment that Kanine Records (www.kaninerecords.com) has had for the past 20 years. From releasing numerous debut releases from indie greats like Grizzly Bear, Chairlift, Surfer Blood, Braids, and many more we have helped culture a true environment of music love.
And we continue to do so each day with each new release. You can find the same musical love within many of our newer releases by artists; Blushing, Lucid Express, Punchlove, High. and many more.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
For Kanine Records, its pretty simple, we make quality records. We are super picky about the quality of the bands / artists recordings. As well as how the artwork turns out. Good artwork sells more vinyl, cds, Cassettess, Tshirts, posters (physical product).
If you have low quality artwork people will pass up on picking up the record often and just stream it for free online. But if the artwork is super cool, they will want to collect it just for the packaging alone.
For The New Colossus Festival we pride ourselves on discovering and booking new artists / bands that are about to break before anyone else. So people know to pay attention to us to in order to find out what quality artist is about to break.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
For The New Colossus Festival, I met my two partners organically.
We all worked in the music industry already within clubs. Booking live bands and promoting them via press and radio.
The idea came about when we saw a hole in the marketplace in NYC that needed to be filled. So we reacted and came together with the like minded idea of putting together this company to fill that need in the music economy.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://newcolossusfestival.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/newcolossusfestival/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NewColossusFestival/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@newcolossusfestival922