Rainsoaked Records is an independently owned and operated record label out of Southwest Michigan whose focus is to release high-quality music in digital format and make it available to the public at no cost. Just as we believe music should be.

We here at RR realize that the way people access music, as well as the social attitude towards music and the record industry, has changed dramatically in the past ten years. We aim to establish a modern (yet still commercially viable) method for listeners to receive the entire spectrum of an artists work without having to dig into their pockets or risk downloading with illegal, and often virus / spy-ware addled, Peer-to-Peer services.

It’s no secret in 2008 that the way the music industry operates is often times detrimental to the artists who work so hard to bring people such a beautiful gift. Those with the checkbooks tend to call the shots and, unfortunately, that’s usually not the fans or the artists. And granted, there is a reason for that. Producing quality records and getting them heard by the public is an expensive process, but we here at Rainsoaked believe that there are alternatives.

Sponsor ads, public donations, and merchandise sales are just a few ways other industries have thrived for years and years while still bringing their content to the public for free. (Heck, television has been ahead of the curve half a century.) And, while many streaming music sites have set a lot of groundwork for the idea, we don’t want people to only be able to listen to the music while visiting rainsoakedrecords.com. We want fans to have access to our artists’ free releases for their home playlists, on their iPods, in their cars, or anywhere else. Just as if they’d purchased the albums from their local music store or off an online downloading service.

We also believe that the way industry functions presently, while not only a strain on people’s wallets, is detrimental to the environment as well. To keep up with the high cost of CD pressing and recording many lesser-known artists have to tour excessively in order to make back that money, either for themselves or their respective labels. However due to changes in technology and the means artists have to promote themselves, this has become somewhat of an antiquated practice that simply costs too much in fuel and electricity. Don’t get us wrong, we love live music (in fact you’ll catch our staff scattered across clubs from Chicago to Detroit on any given weekend), but venturing all across America just to break even is crazy.

So, with CD sales plummeting and the cost of life constantly on the upswing, we think it’s time for a change. Music is a beautiful thing that should be shared with friends and loved ones. It’s the soundtrack to your life. It can inspire, make you laugh, make you cry, or make your whole day brighter (or darker, if that’s what you’re into.) We don’t think anyone has the right to tell you what you can or can’t listen to, or that you need to pay them for the right to hear it.

Rainsoaked Records is just a small part of the movement to get music out of high-rise offices and into people’s hands where it belongs. Which is an idea we couldn’t be prouder to be a part of.

Downloading releases from Rainsoaked records couldn’t be simpler.
We offer our albums, EPs, and singles at variable rates to accommodate your needs for size or quality.

Simply right-click on the filename of the album you wish to download and click “save as” (or “save target as…” whatever the case may be.) You’ll be prompted to save a .zip file containing a folder, mp3s, and any digital media that accompanies the album (cover art, release notes, videos, etc.)

Open that .zip and extract the folder or simply drag and drop it to the location on your computer you’d like it to go. Then just drag the files into your music player of choice and enjoy!

(for more information on sizes and quality see our FAQ.)

Rainsoaked Records was originally established in 2004 as the label and publishing company for Aj Draper & the Force of Nature, though it had always sort of been my plan to go into recording and producing for other artists in addition to my own material. The business concept came to be after the original release of our debut full-length, which ended up being shelved by the band due to quality issues.

We shelved The Rest Is a Long Story because… some of the tracks weren’t very good. Not the songs themselves, just the production we’d paid for. So we wound up with a huge box of CDs just sitting in my studio that we didn’t really want to sell and couldn’t afford to fix and repress. Then, a while after, I had intended to release our single “Sex & Drugs” as a free download, which is nothing out of the ordinary for a band at our level. It’s actually quite common for lesser- known artists to release a couple of free downloads off their albums to help spread the word. As it went about, I just kept adding tracks until it wound up as a five-track ep. I’d thought about pressing it, but I liked the idea of just putting it out there. Since I’d done the production myself and all the tracks that needed outside studio work had already been paid for, it wasn’t much of a strain on the pocketbook. We even held a little midnight online release.

The whole thing sort of grew from that point. Shortly after I was noticing how prominent our plays were becoming online as compared to some of our friends' bands around Michigan who had much greater fan-bases. Groups who’d have six times as many myspace friends as us were getting out-played by us week by week on Last.FM. So, the idea really clicked at that point. After that I redid a lot of the mixing for The Rest is a Long Story and we released it for free as well. More so out of necessity than anything else. I couldn’t afford to press another thousand copies of a CD that we’d have to tour constantly to promote. We released it online to pretty much the same result and I started to notice a trend. It was actually costing us more to sell music than it was to give it away!

The obvious answer? Rainsoaked Records: The Free-Digital Record Label.

The people and artists I had been talking to adored the idea. I did too. Think of it: A label where artists get to concentrate more on making excellent music instead of spending most of their time worrying about recovering the cost of its release. I mean, obviously with your huge acts that are backed with huge checkbooks, pressing several million copies of a CD isn’t a huge ordeal. But some of the best music I’ve heard in my life is by people who are working full-time jobs without agents, promoters, hair stylists, image consultants, etc. They’re not rock stars and they can’t afford the time away from their lives to tour the country just to break even, at best.

The best part of the whole thing is the simple fact that because we are able to put out the music at a dramatically lower cost, we don’t have to worry about “selling product.” I mean, heck, our first EP cost us $6000 to make, and our second cost $270 to record our drum tracks at a full-service studio. When you consider the economical and environmental waste involved, plus the fact that CD sales have been going down the tubes for years and everything is digital now anyway, it was just the perfect idea at the perfect time.

Today we’re essentially a fully functioning indie record label. We sign artists, do promotional events, and put out releases regularly. The only difference is that we don’t waste our resources with CDs, and, since we don’t, it’s all free to the people. After all, music was meant to be enjoyed, not counted.