Last week, Los Campesinos! made a grand return with their excellent new album All Hell. It’s the first Los Campesinos! LP in seven years, and it’s a full-on DIY release. These days, Los Campesinos! are managing themselves. They produced, released, and funded All Hell on their own. This week, All Hell makes its debut at #14 on the UK album chart. Los Campesinos! had never charted in the Top 40 before, so this is a real triumph of the little guy.

On Twitter, Los Campesinos! Talk about the success of All Hell as a rejection of “music biz hegemony” and a “people’s movement,” and I can’t argue with either of those lines. They also note that All Hell is the #1 most downloaded album in the UK, largely thanks to all the people who bought the deluxe edition that came out earlier this week.

Albums currently in the UK Top 40, by label:

Universal x 22
Sony x 8
Warner x 7
A Deep Purple album
An Arctic Monkeys album released in 2013

All Hell by LC!
Self-funded/released/managed.

Help us reject the music biz hegemony. There’s another way!

🌝 https://t.co/TZD0nUeHxh pic.twitter.com/ZsoplHNduN

— Los Campesinos! – All Hell OUT NOW (@LosCampesinos) July 25, 2024

Amidst all that fully justified fist-pumping, Los Campesinos! also offer some insight into how they were able to do this on their own, sharing the spreadsheet that notes their UK marketing expenses. Those expenses are not very high. To get All Hell out to the masses, the band spent a total of £190.86, or about $246. That money went entirely to alert fans of the album’s release on Spotify and Meta. They note that they paid nothing for online and print press PR, contacting writers on their own rather than hiring a publicist. They also paid nothing for pitching the album to radio, figuring that they’ve never gotten radio play anyway. Check out their thread below.

Top 40 felt like a pipe-dream, but your love for All Hell, and enthusiasm for us to achieve this is what made it possible.

Our first charting release, 7 albums and 18 years in.

The community and comradeship we all share is what makes LC! what it is. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/VdbFWKrk0W

— Los Campesinos! – All Hell OUT NOW (@LosCampesinos) July 26, 2024

For transparency, and to prove another way is possible, here is our UK marketing spend for this release.

£190.86 pic.twitter.com/3VQi1K0iwz

— Los Campesinos! – All Hell OUT NOW (@LosCampesinos) July 26, 2024

There’s no doubt that it’s easier to pull all this off if you’ve got years of accumulated goodwill working for you, as well as the excitement that naturally comes with a comeback record. It also helps if you make really good music. None of that makes this result any less impressive.

UPDATE: Los Campesinos! responded after someone questioned the accomplishment in Stereogum’s Instagram comments. User jdhiler wrote:

Again, it’s important to understand that these legacy bands touting the success of their DIY releases are doing so on the backs of their fandom built up by being signed to labels in the past. LC! were signed to Wichita and then Arts & Crafts, given an opening slot with Broken Social Scene, given a huge Budweiser campaign, and were booked appearances on late-night TV. This was the result of efforts by many record label and management professionals over 15 years, building up the band and the following. That is the singular reason a band even had a fan base in the first place that they can activate for a new release. They would never be able to do anything close to this without all those people they are standing on. To tout this as a victory for DIY releases is incredibly ignorant of how it all actually works.

Los Campesinos! responded:

@jdhiler you’re partly right, but you’re also claiming to know a lot more than you actually do.
Of course, we’re not suggesting that a new,young band would have the same privilege to do this as us. We’ve built a platform over many years that means we are able to reject a number of elements of the industry. Those financial numbers don’t give the full context, but everyone here is smart enough to realise that without you explaining it to them. Still, we have made the choice to take this
approach, to refuse money for this album from external sources, when 90% of bands in a similar situation to us do not, and continue to operate in the same ways they always have, to diminishing returns.
The BSS rub (we opened for them twice. Once in 2006 when we were very much “local opener” and once in Montreal in 2008), Budweiser ad (~2009) and Letterman (2011) were great fun at the time, and were grateful for those opportunities. But they were well over a decade ago and have little relevance to where we’re at now.
We’ve worked with some brilliant people in the past (and still do) but to state “this was the result of efforts by many etc”) claims to know way more than you do. In many instances the music industry professionals we’ve worked with (not either of the labels you mention) have actively sought to sabotage our success. The “singular reason [we] have a fanbase” is because we have built something special as a band and with the beautiful people who call themselves our fans.