The Snuts on their independent future: “Major labels gaslight you into thinking you can’t exist without them”

Emerging from West Lothian back in 2015, The Snuts were set to be guitar music’s freshest triumph from the beginning. A string of successful singles and their self-produced EP ‘The Matador’ caught the eyes of major label Parlophone (The Beatles, Lily Allen, Babyshambles), who signed them in 2018. After two releases – both rated 4-stars by NME – they decided to walk away and form their own label: Happy Artist Records.

“When we got signed, we were young, and the landscape of music was completely different,” bassist Callum Wilson explains to NME ahead of their sold-out homecoming shows in Glasgow’s SWG3. Joined by vocalist and guitarist Jack Cochrane, they tell us of the pressure they were under to adapt their marketing strategies to gain success.

“The way the label worked was that they had a marketing team, a digital team… they had all these people to help you to get your music out there. Then as TikTok started to rise, all these things got stripped away from us.”

TikTok – and the demands that comes with maintaining a profile there – is a recurring issue artists have confronted since the app’s boom in popularity.

“Your life needs to be marketed, basically, and we were struggling with that for a while,” Wilson continues. “We went to a meeting to talk about [our upcoming] record and we got promptly told that the music doesn’t matter. It was strictly a TikTok planning session. Which is quite hard as an artist, when you put so much into what you’ve created… and [then] it needs to get stripped down to a one minute sound bite for a social media platform that, chances are, is gonna die in ten years.”

After this meeting – that went “pretty terribly” – the band found themselves mulling over their options. “We were sat having a pint afterwards, feeling a little bit deflated, thinking: shit. Imagine if we just did all this ourselves. What if we started our own thing?”

Thus was born Happy Artist Records: the band’s new independent label, distributed by The Orchard. The name has haunted Cochrane since a particularly alarming conversation with a label exec during the making of their first album, ‘W.L.’

“He asked how I was feeling about [the album so far], so I said, ‘yeah, I’m feeling good,” Cochrane begins, before Wilson delivers the shocker: “[The label exec] literally let out a shudder and sigh and was like, ‘Ugh! There’s nothing worse than a happy artist!’” Parlophone did not respond to NME’s request for comment.

“I just think being an artist should be a much happier experience,” Cochrane continues. “I suppose you have to suffer for the art, but I don’t think you have to suffer as much as you’re expected to – you should suffer as much as everyone else!”

It’s a trope so tired it’s almost laughable, the idea of a tortured musical genius weighed down by the burden of their brilliance. Within this context, though, it’s even more sinister. The Snuts’ experience demonstrates a real issue within the entertainment industry as a whole: an artist’s labour rights.

When Cochrane describes his hopes for the future of their label – “the ultimate goal is, in the next ten years, to make [the industry] a much safer space for artists to create what they want to create, and promote the way they want to promote” – Wilson is quick to interject with “where you can [also] get paid fairly for your work.”

“We’re not quite ready to sign other people yet but we do hope to move into that zone where we can, hopefully, provide space for other artists to feel confident in themselves and express themselves in the way that we feel now for this third record,” he adds.

With reference to the SAG-AFTRA strikes putting Hollywood on hold with no sign of either side pulling back, Wilson believes the music industry would benefit from established artists using their leverage to stand in solidarity with smaller acts.

“You’ve got some of the biggest stars in the world on strike and they’re not doing it for themselves. They’re doing it for all the ones smaller than themselves, and the writers…this industry would be better if we had huge acts saying ‘nah, we need a better system for everybody. This isn’t really working. The way labels are forcing people to feel, it isn’t fair, it’s emotionally taxing, it’s financially taxing. There needs to be a middle ground.”’

If the industry needs a reshuffle, disempowering these profit-driven companies may be a good start. “Major labels almost… gaslight you into thinking you can’t exist without them. Because you don’t have that little black book of producers, or all those industry contacts,” Callum concludes.

That’s why Happy Artist Records is determined to nurture artists, rather than exploit them. The same goes towards fans. Cochrane believes “there’s an expectation [from record labels] to really milk your fanbase, especially with indie bands.”

“Our last record was called ‘Burn the Empire’. It was about all these social issues that were very important to us, and the record label was breathing down our neck to try and sell like, the Super Mega Family Bundle which was like, £150 quid for like 4000 cassettes. It just felt really wrong…It felt uncomfortable for us to be pushing that on our fans.”

In 2022, Cochrane successfully encouraged fans to “bombard” Parlophone into letting the band release ‘Burn the Empire’ a week early, so that crowds would be able to sing along to the new songs on the tour that followed. Now, they host a Discord server which allows them to announce impromptu events – “Like, let’s all meet up at a record store on Thursday. We’ll put a link out to like 150 free tickets. Come down and we’ll play some music” – they’ve found that the online fanbase is “growing arms and legs.”

“The fans will talk to each other and have meet-ups, and it’ll kinda turn the crowd experience around too… they’ve used that music to connect on a social level.”

The first of their two biggest Scottish headlines to date attest to this. It’s a big homecoming, and the crowd is awash with elation. Scottish flags adorn the necks of topless teenage boys who sit on the shoulders of their friends, screaming their lungs out. Watching the back-and-forth between band and audience is mesmerising. It’s a delightful mixture of Scottish pride and community, but what makes it truly special is the comfort and joy a fan gets from watching a band that’s from where you’re from, made up of people like you and your friends, singing songs about the experiences and issues that make up your life.

“Some of you have been coming to our gigs since we were first playing at the Hug and Pint, so here’s a song for you,” says Cochrane before ‘What’s Going On,’ an early cut from their debut EP. A raucous cheer from the crowd and then it’s hand-in-hand, arms-round-the-shoulders sing-alongs.

That spirit is unwavering throughout. Even when the band perform the as-yet unreleased ‘Dreams’ – a jangly indie-pop song that hints towards a fresh, poppier sound on their upcoming record. Of which, Cochrane says they’ve “managed to keep it risky and exciting. It doesn’t just sound like a carbon copy of ourselves or what anyone else is doing. It’s the easiest record we’ve ever done…and it’s the first time we’ve made a record in Scotland!”

On all fronts, the future is twinkling for The Snuts. SWG3’s atmosphere will no doubt be replicated at Reading & Leeds, which the band are particularly excited about. In past times, Reading would be “the only show of the year [their] label would come down to” which heightened the pressure, but, newly independent, they’re revitalised.

“We feel like we’ve got so much more to offer this year than we did last year. We’re much more confident in our performance,” Cochrane concludes.

After witnessing the euphoria of SWG3, it’s no wonder. The Snuts should be confident. Their fans’ adoration isn’t going anywhere  – and with their admirable efforts to prioritise music over profit, we’re sure they’ll gain a whole lot more along the way.

The Snuts’ ‘Dreams’ is out now. They perform at Reading & Leeds Festivals this weekend (Aug 25-27)

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