Touch & Go Shuts Down Distro, Lays Off Staff, Cuts Back on New Releases

As reported by the Chicago Tribune, Touch & Go is shutting down their distribution arm, laying off staff, and scaling back on doing new releases.

I don’t think they’re the first indie-centric distributor to go in recent years, and I doubt they’ll be the last. Distribution is a huge expense, particularly when considering the convergence of the industry, the overall economy, ever-rising shipping costs, and that fact that all of the effort is going toward shipping freightloads of CDs which are increasingly hard to sell to music stores that are increasingly going out-of-business.

Sad news indeed, but not entirely shocking.

- Ryan Catbird