Dance music labels, vinyl lovers, and record shops are today mourning the death of one of the world's biggest dance music distributors.

Intergroove UK, a distribution company that specialised in dance music vinyl and CD distribution, has gone bust.

The distributor, based in north-west London, supplied record shops around the world with tunes from a massive plethora of dance labels including Finger Lickin', TCR, Adrift, Baroque, Four Twenty, Cocoon, Get Physical, Sex On Wax and Silver Planet.

Major Cog

It was, by all accounts, a major cog in the dance music distribution wheel, especially for the genres of house, techno and breakbeat.

An industry source said: "This is a major blow for the dance music industry, especially for small independent record labels, which relied on the company to distribute their tunes. Intergroove going bust has left a lot of labels out in the cold."

Some have suggested that Intergroove going bust is the final nail in the coffin for vinyl, with 12in sales having slumped due to the onset of digital downloading.

With Intergroove gone, the only major dance music distributors left in the UK are Amato and Unique who merged earlier this year.

Knock-on Effect

Intergroove Goes Bust What do you think of this?

Abel Reynolds from Finger Lickin', a major breakbeat label formerly distributed by Intergroove, said the closure of the company would have a knock-on effect.

"Intergroove has been very honourable in upholding their payments to labels," said Abel.

"But as a result of the company closing, quite a few labels will go bust too, because they won't receive payment for records distributed by Intergroove in the last couple of months."

Breaks Labels

For example, Finger Lickin' won't receive any money for physical sales of their biggest record of the year – the D Ramirez remix of Plump DJs 'Electric Disco' - because Intergroove went bust before they could pay Finger Lickin'.

"The breakbeat scene will especially suffer, because lots of small breaks labels will go bust," said Abel.