Cooking Vinyl is a British independent record label, based in Acton, London, England, founded in 1986 by former manager and booking agent Martin Goldschmidt and business partner Pete Lawrence. Goldschmidt remains the current owner and chairman, while Rob Collins is managing director. The company focuses on artist service-based deals where the artist retains ownership of their copyrights. History 1986–1992 Cooking Vinyl was set up in 1986 by former manager and booking agent Martin Goldschmidt and distribution manager Pete Lawrence, who initially ran the business as a part-time venture out of a spare room in Goldschmidt's council house in Stockwell, South London. In 1986 Cooking Vinyl recorded an impromptu live performance around a campfire at a folk festival by the singer Michelle Shocked, on a Sony Walkman with fading batteries. One of its first releases, Cooking Vinyl released the recording as The Campfire Tapes, and it sold 250,000 copies worldwide. In 1989, the company was close to bankruptcy when their distributors, Rough Trade, went into receivership. Pete Lawrence sold his stake in the business to Martin Goldschmidt who continued the business while servicing the debt of the company of a period of five years. 1993–1999 Besides traditional royalty agreements, Cooking Vinyl developed ‘artist services’ deals in the 1990s, where the artist retains ownership of the copyright of their recorded material. The first of these contracts was done in 1993 for the reissue of Billy Bragg's Back To Basics compilation. Since then, Bragg has re-engaged with Cooking Vinyl a total of six times, most recently in 2013 for the release of studio album Tooth And Nail. Cooking Vinyl has provided similar services for Alison Moyet, Black Spiders, Gary Numan, James Skelly & The Intenders, Madness, Pigeon Detectives, Reverend and The Makers, Ron Sexsmith, and The View. 2000–2010 In 2009, Cooking Vinyl partnered on the release of The Prodigy's fifth studio album Invaders Must Die, which went on to sell 1.2 million units worldwide and was the biggest-selling independent record of the year in Europe. In 2012, Amanda Palmer, an advocate of the DIY approach, announced that she was partnering with Cooking Vinyl in a distribution and label services deal for the European release of her studio album Theatre Is Evil. The album was funded through a high-profile Kickstarter campaign that raised over $1.2 million in 30 days. Also released in 2012 was Marilyn Manson's Born Villain under a joint-venture partnership between Manson's