You can't talk about an independent label that is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary (in 2025) without mentioning the city. When Lovers & Lollypops was founded, Porto's tourist apparatus was still in its larval stage, and the city centre was bleeding attention to small peripheral entertainment centres. "It was only 19 years ago, but it seems like 60 years ago," summarises Joaquim Durães. The co-founder of the label recalls how "you didn't have concert halls where the most emerging or experimental bands could perform, there were very few record companies, and there was no space on stage for a certain type of music".

The do-it-yourself spirit struck and CD-Roms began to be recorded and concerts scheduled in every garage that would accept them. The first recruits on the long march were bands like Green Machine from Barcelos, Veados com Fome from Santo Tirso and Lobster from Lisbon. "The editorial side was a founding element, and everything else came a bit by drag."

This long haul saw a change in the paradigm of "going out at night" in the city: it was now in the city centre, and the first thing you had to do was find out who was playing, and where - the rest would soon follow. The first axes of a movement were punctuated by bars with a soundproof basement or complacent neighbours. It was only a short leap from there to bringing all the bands together in an ensemble festival. After a prototype party in Lisbon, the first Milhões de Festa took place in Uptown in 2006. Since then, it has secured five editions as a large open-air festival in Barcelos, the spiritual home of many people and bands associated with Lovers.

We met up with Joaquim Durães, Márcio Laranjeira, Ângela Silva and José Roberto Gomes in their space on Rua de São Vítor, in the heart of creative Bonfim. Still in the (good) afterglow of another edition of the Tremor festival in the Azores, which they produce, we wondered what it would be like to have started Lovers today. Márcio Laranjeira summarises how "different it would certainly be". "The panorama has changed in the sense that it's increasingly common, fortunately, for a structure like ours to be able to professionalise itself and support employees." Professionalisation means more than no longer using your own home as accommodation for guest musicians, or borrowing vans to take instruments. A professionalisation that allows for a more stable and fairer relationship with those who collaborate.

Márcio adds that "the city has changed, and we're not the same people we were then either". So who are the people now, and who is this Lovers? What most defines the new direction is the new space (in operation for just over a year) where they organise concerts, listening sessions and workshops. Ângela Silva talks about the alchemy that is only possible in a live show, because "even if they cohabit in one place, everyone has a different perception. And that's what brings growth - for us, and for those who come here."

An example of this are the listening sessions, in which a band talks a little about an album and then listens to it together with the audience. "It naturally happens that the audience and the guests [share] various ideas about the disc, or ideas that each one finds in the music it contains," says Ângela, adding that they also always have "our ex-libris, which are Zé Roberto's soups".

This low-frequency wavelength is also home to a label called Planalto Records, but which could also be called Diogo Alves Pinto. Planalto has been a one-man show for almost ten years and is home to artists with intimate and serene records. "There's a logic of solitude in everything I do, but it's not deliberate." Always measuring his words and giving his answers time to form before they are played, Diogo recalls the founding moment: "Artists tend not to be interested in the other side of music, distribution and production. But even when I was playing as Gobi Bear, I was always very curious about that side."

Gobi Bear's loops and pedals are at the beginning of everything, even on that solo record. At the beginning of the 2010s, with around 90 gigs a year and a master's degree in Sound Engineering running concurrently, Diogo felt bad about turning down more gigs in his own name. Hence a convenient and clinical mask: the Planalto Records label and signature. This role of virtual assistant evolved very quickly: a friend, Gabriel, insisted on not recording or releasing the music he was composing on the guitar.

Planalto took the lead here, and the Ana project was born — the first of several to be published under the mask that was originally only used to keep people away. "At that early stage, I was running the label for author editions, and I was in charge of the agency and management side of things. I began to realise that there was a common pain - the guys didn't love the idea of doing all that part of the process, but I did." From there, Planalto evolved into a record label, always with two essential criteria for bringing in new artists: "Firstly, I have to really like what's being done, because otherwise I'll quit. But the second point, which is just as important as the first, is that I have to be able to add some value to the musical project in question. And so, in this scenario, I end up making projects that are very similar in terms of aesthetics to what I've always been designing."

Not that this implies a monoculture in the catalogue: Planalto has played concerts with synthesisers and oscillators, and indie pop on acoustic guitar, without any electronics. Even Planalto's actions are not monolithic: for long periods, a 360 label that does everything from sound production to agency - for other periods, with efforts contained and reserved for creation. After all, it makes sense for a label as personal as Planalto to follow the rhythms of its founders. The current period promises to be one of expansion: when we meet Diogo at the Apuro bar (where Planalto curates monthly concerts), it's during the preparations for the concert with Vitória Vermelho, someone who isn't officially in the catalogue yet - but who is already clearly in tune with the other artists.

João Pimenta was present at the creation of Lovers & Lollypops, and after founding the label with Joaquim Durães, he hit the roads all over the world with the frenetic tours of 10,000 Russos - a band that over the course of 10 years averaged almost one concert a week. Along the way, there was time to become a history teacher, but his main project is now the Socorro record shop.

Anyone who enters is immediately drawn to the long vinyl record displays, but the large space has an upper mezzanine with a library entirely dedicated to music, and for those who choose the right date, there is the opportunity to go down to the basement, where a stage and bar host concerts at a rate of around a dozen a month. "At the time, I was sleeping more with the guitarist than with my wife," João laments.

The idea would now be to have a less frenetic project, but in truth Socorro doesn't seem to be slowing down: not least because the publishing side continues to grow. They've already released an album by Os Overdoses, and the plan is to increase their catalogue - not just with bands, but also reissues of classic albums. They receive proposals from bands to be published by Socorro, but they curate the projects they accept straight away. "We only release things that we ourselves would like to hear; it has to be something with guitars!"

When it comes to concerts, it's all gravy: "We can just as easily have experimental music here as black metal." A diversity that ends up generating a specific gravitational force. "The thing I've enjoyed the most is seeing fifteen or sixteen year olds down there [in the concert hall]. Most of the audience is still in high school, and, damn it, it's giving them a stage they wouldn't be able to get otherwise. We've had bands here who have played their first gig ever."

They're not lawyers, but right from its manifesto Saliva Diva says what it's all about: "Giving common space to artists who walk in isolation" because "we want to laugh, cry, think, calf and dance". This common space is sacrosanct: the label is run as a collective, and no decision is taken without total unanimity. It may be the most difficult method of management, but the truth is that if unanimity isn't there to welcome a new artist, that's also a sign, because "we don't have an infinite capacity to edit records, and since we all work for the label without being paid, it's good that people feel some connection with what they're doing," says Ricardo Cabral, from Baleia Baleia Baleia.

The capacity may not be infinite, but it seems so. They've already released 19 albums by 18 artists in the four years they've been in existence, and have organised concerts from the north to the south of Portugal: from Odemira to Braga, from Coimbra to Funchal. But this lightning-fast activity actually began in the dark. The Dark Room, the name given to a small rented flat in Rua de Cedofeita, was a hotbed of creative freedom. Conceived as a cheaper option for a studio, far from the prices of rental studios and without the hassle of dismantling the equipment every time a session ended, this small floor ended up having its own gravitational pull.

"Very often groups of people, friends of ours, would end up in the studio, many of them who had never played before, and they'd come in, pick up a bass, or go to the drums and we'd stay there for hours just having fun," Ricardo recalls. These jams eventually led the musician to start producing some albums right there, because "nobody was getting much response from the big labels".

From there to Saliva it was a leap: "We realised that we had a lot of people in the middle of this circuit who were at the same point as us and that, if we brought these people together, then we could do something that represented us all." It's Daniel Catarino who reminds us, meanwhile, already with two releases on Saliva. Again, two central themes at the label: plurality and fun.

This May, Saliva is taking on the role of event producer in a co-production with the Faculty of Architecture at FAUP Fest. And speaking of plurality and fun, when the challenge is put to them as to whether we will see a festival with only Saliva Diva bands, they admit that this "is more than a joke, it ends up being almost a guideline". "We look at our catalogue and feel that it makes a lot of sense in terms of the line-up - and it's something that also helps us to see if each new artist we welcome makes sense or is a little out of line with what we have," says Luís Contrário. On this side, we're just waiting for the dates.