It all started when a friend of Arthur Herman, who had a small record label in Colorado, gave him a CD of the group Merry Makers from Piteå in Sweden. He listened to the CD over and over again, and on a business trip to Tokyo he met the band by coincidence while they were all staying at the same hotel. A small world led to a big change in Herman’s life and he decided to quit his job as a lawyer and start his own record label.

From the get-go Herman focused on Swedish music, which was huge in the late 1990s, as well as guitar pop music. The first album he produced was for the band Dorian Gray, which is still with Zip Records. He traveled to Stockholm once a year, visiting the Vibraphone music studio. At the same time he was studying Swedish music and chose which artists he wanted to work with.

'Fire In The Hole'
One of the latest artists to sign with Zip Records is Swedish singer, Rebecka Törnqvist, whom many Swedes know not only for her beautiful jazz voice, but also for the '90s mega hit, "Good Thing."
Herman first heard of Rebecka Törnqvist a few years ago and received a CD he thought was her music, but he felt it was dreadful and tried to forget about it. One year later, a friend told him Törnqvist was in San Francisco for reasons other than music, and although he felt uncomfortable, he thought he should meet her and give her music one more chance. Thanks to Google, he found the real music by Rebecka Törnqvist and it was love at first listen! He spent hours listening to her music and they signed the contract when they met. Now he's releasing her latest album, "Fire In The Hole," in the U.S., Canada and also in the Benelux countries, where he does a lot of business. The Zip Records headquarters is in San Francisco although Herman also works a lot in the Netherlands.
Herman is an extremely passionate, happy and giving person who shares his love for music and balances his work between the serious side and the “having fun” side. In the future he hopes to visit Stockholm a lot more to discover new Swedish bands that he can take with him to the U.S. and make more familiar to American music enthusiasts!
For more info, see: http://ziprecords.com/