Some people make music in the hope of finding fame and fortune, while for others it's a means of self-expression. But whatever your reasons for making music, you should always be having fun, say producers Dave Clayton and Marco Perry. Here they explain why the need to get creative has pushed them into setting up their own record label.

We met five years ago when we were working together as the engineer and programmer on someone else's session. Everyone else got bored and fell asleep, but not us — at 6am we had finished off the track for the producer, and even though he erased it the next day, we retained this enthusiasm for working together and having a bit of creative fun.

The next time we worked together was when we did a cover of 'Backstabbers' for Tam Tam. We took the track, stripped it down, remixed it and came up with something totally different — 'Pressure Zone' — which was a huge success even though it only had the support of a very small indie label. For us that was the turning point. We saw how simple the Tam Tam system was and thought 'Wow, wouldn't it be great if we could put records out like this'. We got such a buzz hearing 'Pressure Zone' played in the clubs we were going to, so we decided to set up a production partnership which we have called Pressure Zone and release our work through our own label, Beatfarm Recordings.

The great thing about working together is that we come at the music business from different directions, a combination of the corporate man working for big groups signed to big labels and the independent man running his own-studio. Between us we have a lot of experience and a lot of friends in the music business who share our view that creating music should primarily be fun. Many of our friends have been happy to keep the co-operative spirit alive by working on our sessions in exchange for free studio time and help with their own projects.

The reason the partnership works is because we both share the same philosophy — a feeling that we are in this business for the love of it. We both feel that freedom of expression in music is more important than conforming in order to climb a career ladder. The Pressure Zone partnership and the Beatfarm Recordings label is about getting back to the things that inspired us to make music in the first place. It's about keeping the creative dream alive and not having to churn out product just to suit the existing marketplace.

Beatfarm Recordings is still in its infancy — to date we have put out seven 12-inch singles, four EPs and two CDs — but we feel that our method of working is a viable alternative to the expensive corporate route put forward by the major record labels. We don't feel that you have to throw masses of money at a project in order to be creative — in fact, we can be far more creative by keeping things simple.

Indie labels are often seen as A&R departments for the majors, and perhaps that's what we are doing. But at the moment the label is really just for our work. We are not looking to sign other artists. We feel we have plenty of work of our own to do first. We have something creative inside us that wants to get out, and although it may sound a bit self-indulgent, we are having a lot of fun.

It would be wrong to give the impression that there are huge profits to be made from working the way we do. That certainly isn't the case at the moment, but by keeping the label small we can make it pay its own way. Our sales may not be huge, but we don't need to sell in huge quantities in order to break even, because our overheads are so low. To make the label profitable we have found a way of pre-selling our product by sending demos round to clubs and shops all over the world with the help of friends in distribution. We create a market before we even press the product so there is absolutely no waste. When we put out our 12-inch singles people wrote to us from all over the world asking for more information, so we told everyone the singles were taken from an album — even though at that stage the album didn't exist. Putting it together was our dream and we never thought we would realise it, but we have. The album — Unitone Rockers — has just been released, and every copy we have pressed has already been sold. By keeping things small and doing everything ourselves we have not had to compromise in any way on quality or creativity. The product is exactly how we wanted it and we only had to sell 2,000 to be in profit.

People have often told us we are lucky because we were well placed to set up our own label, having already got a recording studio (Beatfarm in London) and with plenty of friends who were prepared to lend a hand. But provided you are prepared to work hard and provided you have a certain amount of creativity, there is no reason why everyone shouldn't do the same thing.

In our view, there is a huge market out there, but to crack it you have to look further than the UK. There are so many creative people in this country whose work never sees the light of day, because they are put off by a stunted attitude which says that the UK is where you have to prove yourself. We feel that there is a need to break free from this attitude. There is a huge world market out there ready to be tapped by anyone who has the energy to exploit it.

We have invested a lot of time and money in getting this label off the ground. We have made mistakes — some of them very costly — and have learned the hard way. But we still believe in keeping things simple, and it's surprising the amount of people we meet these days who agree that simplicity is the key. The success of our Pressure Zone partnership and the Beatfarm Recordings label is to do with maintaining a balance between creative freedom and financial gain. We are not just surviving — we are enjoying life. And after all, isn't that what making music should be about?

Famous names which Dave and Marco have separately worked with run to a long list, including Marc Almond, George Michael, U2, Gary Numan, Dead Kennedys and Bomb The Bass.