Dogpatch Press

“World’s first furry-centered, full-service music distribution netlabel.”

A new netlabel for furry music has been announced! When I think of a label, especially on the small indie side, I think of curation for a certain sound or scene. (Example: a Q&A is coming soon with a fur from Sri Lanka where I asked about Goa Trance.) Here’s one I’ve been enjoying: Numero Group is a reissue label. Imagine digging through thrift store junk and finding a weird one of a kind record that sounds amazing — that’s everything they put out. They specialize in the history of unsung niches, local scenes and their heroes. It makes richer music history than the well-worn stuff on classic rock channels.

Specialty and indie labels make diversity. With that in mind I talked to Finn.

A music style for furries? 

From Fuzznet Music so far, I saw lots of EDM and electronic. Finn says: “That’s just the biggest amount. But we have classic, vocal and orchestral as well.” So will support for artists always be the main purpose or could there be more curation as it grows?

(Finn:) Yeah support for the involved artists is definitely the main goal. We don’t aim for a specific style or genre, but rather take in anyone that fits streaming requirements, sounds cool and wants to join. We define “Furry music” as anything that is made by furries, although there are a few furries who make songs with lyrics specifically tailored to furries, too. The idea is, by having all under one roof, if someone finds a song by our label the chances are high that they might check out the others and make a snowball effect.

If furry became attached to a certain style, what could it be? Imagine a cartoon world where Raccooncore is music from trash instruments.

I think apart from songs featuring furry lyrics (Fox and Pepper, NIIC, Nos Hyena etc.), music is a very broad and varied concept. I mean if the album cover, title or profile picture doesn’t feature an anthro character, there’s nothing that really “makes” it furry. A specific “furry sound” doesn’t exist, which is part of the reason it’s a less popular form of media inside this community. Personally I sure would be a fan of “Raccooncore” though. ;D

Further ambitions?

A label can back a scene, for example some are attached to record stores and festivals. It would be neat to have a con attract furry musicians. (There’s already a furry film fest — put ’em together!) You have ambitions to launch music, but do you foresee anything like that coming out? Is it just a matter of “time will tell?”

I think “Time will tell” fits best here. We’re still getting comfortable just launching and promoting music (I might add we also officially curate songs and artist that aren’t in Fuzznet via Spotify Playlists consisting only of Furry Musicians of various genres that are displayed on our Profile). Although we already have one small “gig” offering a few of our tracks to an upcoming furry-themed Minecraft con/event that has DJs playing live music. Doing similar things is something I’ll keep looking into.

Music Careers, Nuts and Bolts, and the Team

Well known musicians like Fox & Pepper or NIIC Dog built names by hard work on their own. Can you say more about working with a label, what a netlabel does, how it’s set up, the potential benefits of doing it for furry talent, and how artists or writers benefit from working together? Have you noticed anthology or collab projects that made an impact for musicians (like film scoring)? Is there a team collaborating with you?

The job of a traditional label ranges from management over distribution to marketing, or securing deals with other artists and projects. Though that often comes at quite a cost and turns increasingly less popular due to price and the fact that self-distribution becomes easier and cheaper each day (with the added benefit of keeping all your revenue to yourself). Same goes for promotion via social media if you know what you’re doing. Most furry musicians I know of run things by themselves for these reasons.

In terms of collab projects there’s the The Fandom documentary that has a completely original score by Fox & Pepper. I’d love to secure gigs and opportunities like these for our label.

A Netlabel is a rather new thing in the industry (obviously growing traction by growth of the internet itself). But it’s a rather loose term. Typically a netlabel is a small record label or brand name that almost exclusively exists in digital form and is run by a considerably lower number of people compared to a traditional label. Additionally artists often retain their copyright and more control over what happens with their music and data. Netlabels are often passion projects and tend to utilize guerrilla marketing rather than traditional means of promotion.

That’s pretty much the case for us. As of now, I run this whole project by myself, artists retain all their rights, we only distribute digitally and there’s no contractual limitations or obligations to speak of. I have a job in social media and online advertising so I put my profession to work, and mostly do it simply because I enjoy doing so. As of now we have 25 artists on board, and we communicate via our own chat group and frequently exchange ideas, opinions and updates.

How to Get Involved

Fuzznet has a Patreon. How else can potential members to join or support? What do you need? Are there any tips for what to avoid or how to stand out?

For people interested to join the project:

Officially sign ups are closed (there was more interest than expected and I’m working through backlog) but I’m still on the lookout for artists that seem particularly interesting or work outside the all-encompassing EDM/Electronic genre. We also prefer people who are not yet published on Spotify and other streaming platforms other than Bandcamp or Soundcloud. So if anyone reading this happens to still be unreleased and produces any genre that isn’t EDM (and I really don’t mean this in any bad way, I LOVE electronic music) I would be delighted to have a conversation with you!

For people interested supporting the project:

The easiest way to support would sure be to simply stream, favorite or add our music to your personal playlists on any streaming platforms we publish on. You can find all our main platforms here.

Otherwise we can always use more money (haha who doesn’t) for paid promotion, paying for tools/plugins and funding our online presence. We could also always need people just sharing our posts on Twitter and Instagram, or fellow people that know their way in the marketing world.

Tell me again where to find the music?

Our main links are fuzznet.world/music (landing page) and music.fuzznet.world (streaming links). Both pages include all the information about us, release dates, artists and social media links. We focus our main efforts on Spotify, as that one is the globally biggest platform to work with. For our Furry Musician playlists (for ALL furry musicians, in or outside of Fuzznet) we have playlists.fuzznet.world.

My main homepage is fuzznet.world where you’ll find all the various other projects I have to offer.

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, please follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon. Want to get involved? Use these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for anything — or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. (Content Policy.)