Rough Trade

1: 1970's

• Rough Trade began as a small shop on 20th February 1956 in West London.
• The popular music trend was Punk Rock, Reggae.
• Rough Trade was started as a small shop which eventually grew into a music distribution company for bands that people would have never heard of.
• The techniques Rough Trade used was the introduction of a different genre of music, when they introduced Reggae and bands walking into the shop with demos and tapes of their music and asking Rough Trade to distributed it.
• The bands became popular and made high hits in the charts which eventually got bands to go and try to get their music distributed.

2: 1980's

• Rough Trade offered their clients a 50/50 split of the money that the bands records sold.
• If the bands were a big hit, then they were snatched up by bigger recored labels which eventually caused Rough Trade to sell the shop to the staff because they was not making any income.
• The Smith's, Stiff Little Fingers, Scritti Politti, The Strokes made success through Rough Trade.
• The Rave scene started at the end of the 80's.
• Rough Trade went international compared to other independent music labels

3: 1990's

• March 1991 2/3 of the staff was axed, June 1991 Rough Trade finished.
• Major record labels branch out into the independent music scene by offer the bands a contract for their major record label.
• Geoff revived Rough Trade with the help of of Jeanette Lee.
• Rough Trade recruited 'PULP' who started there rise back up but when they recruited 'The Strokes' who introduced indie music in September 2000, Rough Trade was back on track.

4: 21th Century

• After The Strokes' introducing indie music in September 2000, Rough Trade then recruited 'Duffy' who released Rough Trade's first ever number 1 record release.