Day In The Life: Julie Weir, founder and director of Visible Noise

8am

I get up to check the e-mails on my Blackberry. In the mornings I listen to Radio 1 and watch Kerrang! music television. Rock and roll TV is good at covering smaller bands now. They film live gigs so groups that have no budget to make videos can still be seen. It's great exposure.

Today I'm having a breakfast meeting at Balans on Old Compton Street with the parents of Oli, from Bring Me The Horizon. BMTH, who won Best British Newcomer at the Kerrang! Awards last year, are one of the bands signed to my label, Visible Noise, and they're all 18 or 19 years old, so their parents are involved in the financial aspects.

Visible Noise started in 1998. I was a merchandise manager and then label manager at Cacophonous Records and working with death metal bands on a daily basis was taking its toll. My boss asked me what I wanted to do and I said deal with English rock, so I started up Visible Noise with investment from him.

10.30am

After getting behind with demo tapes and having to listen to 200 in one morning last week, I've pledged to listen to five a day. There's nothing in today's selection that grabs my attention. I've never found a band purely from a demo. It's about more than that. I signed Lostprophets, our most commercially successful band, after seeing them play at Barfly.

A lot of the tapes I get are from people who have just emulated the bands on our label. What's the point of offering us something we already have? I urge young artists to think outside the box! In the UK, compared to the US, everyone seems scared of standing on their own. Maybe it's British conservatism.

12pm

I have a meeting with the merchandising company Firebrand Promotions about producing T-shirts and keyrings for our bands. They have just produced a Visible Noise T-shirt for the label.

Fashion and music are becoming increasingly intertwined. Oli from Bring Me The Horizon has a fashion company called Drop Dead Clothing and I'm sure he's going to be a millionaire from it!

As a rule, I have lunch at my desk unless I have a meeting. Today I'm having chicken and mushroom soup and noodles from Tesco.

3pm

I make a couple of phone calls to check in with The Legacy and Miss Conduct. The Legacy are from Sheffield and produce melodic hardcore music, while Miss Conduct are a Welsh, poppy rocky goodtime music band.

I think we give a lot more than other labels do. We do everything from legal work to commissions, endorsements and booking tour venues. I want to keep Visible Noise small so we can continue to do that.

All seems to be ticking over fine. The last problem phone call I had was when BMTH had to cancel a Brixton Academy show. I told them to come over to mine. I had the whole band in my living room watching Hollyoaks and eating bolognese while I was doing my kitchen floor with the tile cutter!

4pm

I e-mail Dan Mumford who's doing some artwork for The Legacy and Miss Conduct. We have an in-house team, but Dan's a really talented student studying Fine Art at Brighton and I like to give passionate people a chance.

I chat to Metal Hammer and Kerrang! magazines. We're lucky to have great relationships with them as you can't bribe that sort of publication into liking music they don't. Coverage is imperative for us, especially with band tours coming up in April.

I got into music as a way out of my small town in Cumbria. I was a bit of a loner and would spend time listening to records in my room, so going to gigs seemed like a sociable way of doing that. When I got to college in Manchester, I started writing and taking photos as a way of meeting bands. I was a screaming Goth at the time. Who knows what the bands thought as they saw a demonic northern midget in a black wedding dress running towards them!

5pm

Trinity St, a company that deal with website programming, come over to the office for a meeting about ways to improve our technology and merchandise distribution. Online is so important now. MySpace has totally changed the demographic of our listener. A few years ago it was male, 18-35 years old, only interested in music and computer games. Now it's 16- and 17-year-olds, girls and boys.

8pm

Four nights a week I go to gigs and on Sunday nights we have our under-18s night Subverse, at The Underworld in Camden. That started about six years ago as it seemed ridiculous that younger fans couldn't see bands because of venue restrictions.

Today, however, I head home about 8pm, which is early for me. When the Lostprophets album, Liberation Transmission, came out I wasn't leaving until 11pm at the earliest.

My boyfriend understands as he works as a press officer in the music industry. We met at a gig. I absolutely loved the band he was in at the time and my friend shoved me in his direction to ask him for dinner. It's the only time I've ever asked anyone out so it's not a bad success rate!

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