Tomohiro Konuta sometimes imagines an alternate world where he's not running a music label.

"In high school, I enjoyed studying philosophy and modern thinking, and focused on that in university," he says. "There was a time I thought I could become a philosopher."

Instead, Konuta (better known by his online moniker "Tomad") put all of his energy into Maltine Records, an online music imprint he and a high school classmate started as an experiment.