Esfor Limited is an established music business that seeks out exciting new artists and composers to compliment its existing catalogue and provides innovative, ground-breaking and passionate music to its loyal customer base. We can now offer our services to individuals, businesses and educational establishments to help with any projects that you may require, in ALL genres. We can provide a service to make available CDs, downloads and limited edition collections that can then be sold to the general public.
For Artists
All our labels are artist-led, and as such, our agreements and methods of working are designed to appeal to the artistic creative process. We have recorded many contemporary composers and musicians of the calibre of Jonathan Harvey, Markus Stockhausen, Vinko Globokar, Ellen Christie, Lawrence Casserley, Simon Emmerson, Ion Stefanescu and many others. Artists may sign to any of our existing labels or we can even set up new ones to accommodate individual establishments or new styles and genres. Esfor has no long-term artist contracts where artists are forced to produce a number of releases within a certain period. Each project is undertaken with a separate agreement and a royalty rate is payable to the artist on every CD or download sold.
For Education
We have particular experience partnering educational facilities for the benefit of students and lecturers. We have worked with many Universities and teaching establishments in the UK and throughout the world, and have many individual educators that have created projects with us. Royalties can be paid to the artist, the establishment, or both.
For Business
Since 1993 we have worked with organisations, both large and small, and can always find ways in which your company would benefit from working with us.
The Process
We first meet with artists or their representative, agreeing basic terms and discussing how best the project can progress.
Once a project is agreed, we allow the artist/s COMPLETE artistic freedom to create and deliver the recording that they wish to release, only ever suggesting, and never forcing, changes to the development of the recording. We normally assume that the artist, business or establishment will pay for the recording from their own sources. We then require funding as a contribution towards the creation, manufacture and promotion of the release.
This can be as little as £3500 and can come from personal finances, or be funded by external sources. If no funding is immediately available, it may be that the neccessary funding may be obtained from individuals, charities and educational establishments. We have much experience with this type of funding and can advise throughout the application process.
Once the master recording is handed over it will then be mastered and scheduled for release. We have our own in-house designers who can work with the artists to ensure that all packaging, artwork and text meet with their approval. Alternatively we can accept basic artwork design from the artist themselves. We will then adapt the artwork to comply with the essential information that must appear on each release.
When the release date approaches we will then ensure that all our distributors, reviewers and commercial contacts are made aware of the release, and as soon as the release is available, promotional copies will be sent out.
Each artist will be supplied with a number of copies of each release, free of charge for their own private use. We expect that any promotional usage would be requested though us. Further copies are available for purchase by the artist at heavily discounted rates. These can either be for personal use, or for resale by the artist themselves.
Our products are considered to be long term projects, and remain available to the customer over very long periods. We do not believe in promoting a release for the first few months of issue, and then moving on to the next release. We therefore also request joint ownership of the releases (after an exclusive period) in perpetuity. This means that we can continue to use the recordings to promote the artists work for many years into the future, thus providing a constant stream of income to the artists, whilst not restricting their right to license the recordings to other third parties on a non-exclusive basis.
As you can see, Esfor believes in doing things differently, and as we grow, we hope our artists grow with us and, as we have found, return to us even when they have had lucrative contracts with other record labels.