Spiked Charm Records is the fulfilment of a lifelong dream since I was 7 years old (over 40 years ago!). I always wanted to make vinyl records and was fascinated by the magic of those little vibrations stored in a spiral groove.
Records, tapes and CD's
Records, tapes and CDs are amazing. They provide something to hold, something to look at, a piece of pictorial art as well as the music recorded upon them.
In today’s digital world, thrust upon us by business economics, we tolerate the brittle digital sound and artefact ridden mp3, not because we want it that way, but because it’s usually all there is.
Don’t get me wrong. Digital music is darn convenient for portable listening, but when you tell your girl/boyfriend “come round and look at my Spotify playlist” it doesn’t seem to me to be as appealing as “come and see my album collection”.
Collectibles you can treasure
More and more we are now renting our music. We pay monthly subs to listen, but actually own nothing. Also, very little of the money from your subs and advertising revenue actually reaches the artists.
The old technologies still work well today and by the 1990s had reached a pinnacle of performance that has only ever been surpassed by the introduction of high sample rate, loss-less digital formats which sadly are not used for most downloads or streaming media.
Giving unsigned artists an easy way to distribute records and tapes
We provide a platform for less well known artists to gain exposure and earn sensible royalties. This website contains music by a collection of artists that want to give you physical artefacts you can love, own, treasure and hand down to your children, just like the old days.
We produce hand-made limited edition vinyl and cassette tape formats, as well as high quality CD, DVD audio and, yes - we do have loss-less HQ downloads too!
Share and keep in touch with us
If you like what you hear and see and you want to see artists able to earn from their craft without giving up their copyright and creative control to record companies, please share this website with your friends.
If you have your own original music that you want to share in this way, please contact me.
In the meantime, please enjoy!
Spiked Charm Records - People
Now having his mid-life crisis, Mike creates electronic experimental music for fun under his band name “Beyond Sane” and is looking forward to the day when he finishes his first album.
Mike has a lot of engineering experience, including within the music industry. Mike also worked as an engineer for one of the country’s leading Cassette Tape Duplication companies. This was back in the 1980s when Tape sales were at there peak, manufacturing plants were busy and the pressure was on to keep up production.
Mike is also the founder of the Melody Ground Project and has designed and built the record lathes and other duplication and production equipment used by Spiked Charm to make our products. Mike created the Melody Ground Project so that he can bring his dream of a genuine physical media platform for unsigned artists, into reality, within a very small budget.
It’s not just us….
We are also grateful for the support of Google & Bandcamp (for labels), who provide elements of our platform and distribution network, our distribution aggregators, plus the help and advice fromPRS for Music and of course we are most grateful to our artists for their creativity and willingness to get behind use and see our project succeed.
We’d also love to thank all Music Lovers Everywhere who simply enjoy buying, listening to and sharing physical media
