News that the big distributor Amato is going bust is hanging like dark cloud above the dance music industry in the UK today. And the knock on effects could be really nasty.

Amato handled the distribution of vinyl and CDs for labels across the board of dance including such wide ranging names as 2020 Vision, Tidy Trax, Border Community, Mn2S, GoodLooking, Underwater, Rekid, Anjuna Beats, Soul Heaven and Cr2.

With the continuing decline in vinyl sales, many labels only make modest profits these days, so if they take a big knock by losing either money or stock owed to them by Amato, we could see some familiar names go under.

As one of the few companies providing physical distribution services following the messy collapse of InterGroove last year, the effects of Amato’s demise will be felt hard at record shops and obviously by more than 50 dance loving employees at the company, who are suddenly without jobs and could lose wages too.

While DJs today increasingly use digital stores like DJdownload to buy their music, most still hold a real passion for vinyl, and this news is a seriously big setback for the future of the format. Nobody wants vinyl to die, but it may become almost impossibly expensive to make and distribute it widely in the near future.

The labels available in the store that need your support are