Mordam Records
American record distribution company
Mordam Records was a California record distribution company for independent record labels. It was founded in San Francisco in 1983 as an independent punk distribution company by Ruth Schwartz (one of the original co-editors of Maximum RocknRoll). Mordam was the exclusive distributor for dozens of punk rock and independent record labels throughout the 1980s and 90s, gaining a reputation as one of the few "distros" that paid their labels on time.
Following the departure of Lookout! Records and Man's Ruin from its distribution network in 2000, Schwartz moved the company to Sacramento. She subsequently sold Mordam outright to Lumberjack Distribution in 2005. It continued as a part of the Lumberjack Mordam Music Group. With record sales in decline throughout the industry, the company went out of business in 2009.
History
Background
Independent record companies are frequently started by music fans, for many of whom commerce is secondary and financial skills are minimal. Customarily such record labels send their finished products to intermediaries known as "distributors" on consignment, with these middlemen adding an additional markup and selling these goods in bulk to retail outlets.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 14, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3862861. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983, 2000, 2005 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mordam Records” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.