PIAS Resumes Shipping After London Warehouse Fire

The ruins of the Sony Distribution warehouse in London.

LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images

PIAS, the largest distributor of independent labels in the United Kingdom, has announced plans to resume shipping orders following the destruction of their warehouse in North London in a fire set by rioters. "We are bringing stock in from Europe and it is our top priority to get releases out," PIAS COO Nick Hartley told Music Week, adding that the company is hoping to remanufacture the stock of around 40 of the small labels it also distributes.

Though over 3.2 million items were lost in the Sony DADC warehouse fire, key parts of PIAS and Sony's respective infrastructures were not harmed. The companies' IT systems, which are mostly run from Austria, is entirely intact.

Photos: Random Notes
"The PIAS team has been working around the clock to limit the damage," says PIAS founder and CEO Kenny Gates. "We know that the livelihood of many talented, passionate and hard working music people, artists and small and bigger labels is at stake and depend on our actions and those of Sony DADC."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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