The Secret History of Warp Records

'By the midpoint of the 1990s the momentum of the independent sector had stalled almost to a halt.
Rough Trade and Factory had both ceased trading. Creation and 4AD were in the hands of a support staff as [Alan] McGee and [Ivo] Watts-Russell, exhausted and broken, had removed themselves from the day-to-day running of their compaines. Daniel Miller was finding himself in the difficult position of firing and rehiring staff as Mute’s finances became increasingly volatile. With the end of Rough Trade Distribution came the end of the most sympathetic route to market for independently released music – a market that was now beginning to harden into a professional era of double-format CD singles, high-end advertising campaigns and overpriced albums. The music often associated with independence or indie – four-piece guitar bands referencing the Sixties – had become mainstream and rebranded Britpop. Almost none of the bands associated with it were signed to independent labels...'

Via Fact