“There are plenty more gems out there”: How to reissue a record in 8 steps with Mr Bongo

Step 6: Know the market

Dave: We had a vague inkling that people were turning to 45s as opposed to LPs. The beauty about these [Brazil 45s, pictured] Walter Coelho, who’s actually Portuguese, and if you know the track, they just sound amazing, really punchy. No one’s really buying 12”s anyway but it just seems people are really picking up on the series, there’s a nice uniformity to the artwork, an amalgamation of classic fonts and then the old style sleeves.

I guess it’s just DJs and people who like that format. If you’ve just got killer tracks, 40 or 50 of them in a box, you know you can just pull any one out no matter how drunk you are and it’ll work.

Matt: Why 45s work so well is a unique mixture of factors, but I would just say straight on hits, the price point is right, the collectible nature of them, I think there’s just a perfect storm. I always look at it as generations of buyers. So a good example is the house music scene, it’s been a big thing reissuing ’90s or later ’80s house, now there’s loads of those records that still exist but those labels are pushing those things to the forefront for the people who weren’t around to buy them. There’s always new audiences and new markets, and good music never changes.

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