musicLABEL relevance ERA(sed)?
You can’t open a webbrowser nowadays or you get bombed by audio services going from releasing services to mastering to mixdown to AI one stop music ‘creation’ platforms. The digital highway continues at an unseen speed. The question might be: are we better off, compared to an era where we were physically networking at record stores, clubs, music venues overall?
I agree 100% on progress when we talk about the ease of use. From a producers perspective I think times might have changed and the once so obvious path to follow might seem not that obvious anymore..
Studio? Fullblown studios, in most cases have evolved to laptops and headphones due to the power and ease of use, these little powerhouses provide. That being said, on that same computer most creative species make their tunes, sculpt some homebrew artwork and they can share their art with the world in a few clicks. Isn’t that great? Of course it is. So why do we still need record labels or have they become more and more obsolete over the last years?
I don’t know for sure but my stomach tells me, for me personally it’s become of little use to keep on pushing music thru towards recordlabels. Exposure: some labels still have a great exposure, yes. Where do they expose this music? Most good running labels show off their artists at the most popular electronic beat-selling platform: Beatport. Well, that’s become a no go platform for me. The ratrace that they’re running overthere isn’t for me. The genre-filters have become one big commercial joke. Not going into further detail on this. So, besides maybe wanting to run along with the race, what more can a label offer for producers/musicians?
There’s hardly any quality control, there’s no mixing services, there’s almost never a decent mastering service and the most important case: there’s 85% (ymmv) of the time no money involved. Some labels tend to forward some dollars once in a while, and that’s cool of course. So sending in music towards a gazillion online digital recordlabels to have a yes or a no isn’t an exactly motivational step in your career. You can send to labels where you often purchase music but that doesn’t necessarily mean, your own music might fit there. I think musicians and producers have some vision about what they actually want to achieve with their craft. When they think one or more of their tracks can stand up against the majority ( I’m talking about mix-quality and sound level here ), why would they make the effort of sending their craft out, to some label? First you have the annoying search to actually find the right contact credentials. It happens so often, people send out music to the wrong mailadress and wait for like months to never hear something baconfrom it. Yes, it’s silly but this does happen too often. IF they actually receive the music, you’ll often not be notified if they actually do something with ( there’s this group of people paying for Soundcloud, to meticulously follow up the path their demotracks follow… ) your precious tracks. When they took the time to listen and they’re so polite to give feedback and have an opinion, you’ve been lucky. And that’s when you finally get to know if it’s a yes or a no. We’re talking months of time wasted for what? For your Beatport chart? You'r nr1 spot in a chart where people have downloaded your track maybe 200 times? Sorry, that’s a total waste imo.
BANDCAMP:
With Bandcamp I always had this great feeling. It’s not perfect but it’s close. The absolute freedom of putting your own work on that platform is just great. The brilliant idea of not working with charts where ( in contrary to Beatport where artists/labels buy their arses up to get seen ) there’s no TOP this or TOP that bullshit going on, is near to perfect. What about filtering Skov? True, tracks that are not mixed, not mastered in decent ways, can be uploaded freely without any quantity/quality control. All producers make the mistake of letting their mind being controlled by their dopamines, and post music too quickly online. That’s defo a FACT. But on the other hand, most self-respected artists will make their own quality check by sharing their music with friends they know and can trust when it comes down to objective opinions about their work. It’s obvious that Bandcamp is being seen as an old fashioned record store. You go to the store, search around, discover new genres or artists. Very smooth if you’ld ask me, compared to a forced mechanism as Beatport.
Promotional perspective. It’s great to have your music played out by some ‘hotshot think they’re god Dj’s’. Very cool. Honestly, this promo thing that’s been going on with labels sharing their artists’s music for free to a lists of dj gods is getting bored. I have tons more respect for crate diggers, stumbling upon new material and have your music played out in this way. That’s just my two cents and I know there will always be these kind of promotional systems in the loop.
So, are labels becoming more and more obsolete? If you aim for some level in the industry: no, you’ll probably need some backup to get your career launched. However I highly doubt if music is still the trigger in this beauty contest minded music industry. Plastics and make-up can do wonders once again. That’s not vinyl I’m talking about. In all other cases, I’ld go for a healthy ‘diy’ approach, fuck those labels, ignore the ratrace and build your homebase platform of your own.
If you know your game. If you can deliver solid sounding music and you’re not aiming for a higher level up the musical ladder, you’ll be just fine to just use platforms as Bandcamp. If you want to get your music heard by the streaming community, there’s companies as LandR where you can subscribe for a low yearly amount, to get your music on all platforms, worldwide.
#bittorrent ( The bitter end ) 😉
