Goodbye Lookout Records

Although it stopped releasing new material in 2005, Lookout Records is officially closing its doors in the coming months. Lookout was the go-to punk-pop label in the 90s and early 00s and the home of artists like Green Day, Operation Ivy, and the Donnas before they moved to bigger labels. Citing lagging sales and the demise of their distribution and mail order partners, the decision was inevitable:

It wasn't easy to keep catalog items in print and that became especially challenging when our primary compact disc manufacturer and our distribution partner Lumberjack-Mordam went out of business unexpectedly. Having our physical distributor and a manufacturer go belly up disrupted our sales, meant a significant loss of income, and caused inventory and accounting problems. The next year when our mail order partner, Little Type, went out of business, Lookout was also dealt another significant blow. We did our best to resolve the issued caused by these developments but both ultimately amounted to a lot more work and severely impacted income.

As someone whose musical "coming of age" coincided with the commercialization of alternative and punk which benefitted a lot of smaller labels too, this is pretty bittersweet.  The era of discovering new artists through zines or mail-order companies may have ended nearly a decade ago, but hearing that these small, but hugely influential labels are folding gives it a sense of finality. Goodbye Lookout.