Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Cream Start Your Own Record Label, Part 1
Posted by Steve Haruch on Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 6:06 AM
I recently received a copy of Daylle Deanna Schwartz's Start & Run Your Own Record Label (3rd Edition). This quote on the back cover caught my eye:
"For everyone interested in starting a record label--to market new talent or to release and promote their own music--there has never been a better time to do it!"
My first thought was: Are you kidding? This has got to be exactly the worst time, possibly ever, to start your own record label. All of you can surely cite your own list of casualties, so no need to get into that here. (Incidentally, U.S. album sales are down 37% between 2005-2008.) At the same time, I had another thought, which was that this is the best time, possibly ever, to release music and actually have a chance of reaching an audience larger than your family. Not being a fan of cognitive dissonance, I set out in search of some answers.
Pretty much everyone I sent the quote to was, like me, of two minds. Is it a great time to release albums? "Yeah, but...." Here's the first part of that.
Glenn Peoples, Coolfer:
On one hand, DIY musicians face far lower barriers to entry than they ever have. The cost of starting a label, recording music, digitally distributing that music and marketing the band are all very low, historically speaking. Online marketing can consist of a MySpace page and an email list. Digital distribution can be done cheaply through the likes of TuneCore or RouteNote. Cheap videos can be uploaded to YouTube. Or a band can just give away its music. There are a lot of options.
Aaron Hartley, Theory 8 Records:
I think this quote is somewhat accurate. The internet is making the distance between fan and musician smaller. Of course it is also making things much more crowded and more complicated to cut through the general noise to promote an artist. It does allow a person to start a record label easier; just buy a web domain, design a website, find a band, "release" an album, email a press release to blogs, sign up with Tunecore to get on iTunes and you have yourself a record label. Right?
Michael Eades, YK Records:
Absolutely now is a great time to release records. The amount of online tools that are available, with more popping up all the time, make it possible to get an artists name out to a much wider audience than ever possible before with just a remedial amount of leg work. MySpace and Facebook are a good examples of promotional tools that simply did not exist effectively five years ago and more contemporary sites like Amie Street, Bandcamp or CD Baby allow an artist to digital distribute / sell their music without a massive cut being taken from the purchases. The only snafu in the works comes when considering end goal--artists have to shift their mindset from being solely focused on profit from CD sales to a new way of thinking that is focused more squarely on crunching statistics on the number of people they are reaching and hearing their music.
So, that's the "yeah" part. Look for a big ol' "but" tomorrow.
Comments (5)
Showing 1-5 of 5
"yeah", "but"....
If you're strictly talking about a new model where bands are releasing their records online and using the web to market their music, why would they even need a record label? Record labels used to provide marketing budgets, recording budgets, duplication/distribution costs, and tour support because bands couldn't afford those things. If a record label can't provide those, or those services aren't wanted and/or needed by a band, why would said band want to split any potential profit with another entity when they can do all the things they need done by themselves?
Now, if by starting a record label you mean pouring money into a bunch of band in hopes that one of those bands will give you a return on your investment.....not sure that was ever a good idea.
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I think the role of a record label will shift as well. Obviously for a larger scale project you're going to have traditional marketing / tour support / manufacturing costs but even with the wide availability of all these great online tools, a lot of bands simply don't have the know how to put them to good use. A record label can / will provide their bands with informative and comprehensive websites, a presence on social networks that is up to date and doesn't look god awful and use of their contacts to spread the word about an act.
The ability to get your name out there with Internet tools really does make things a lot easier but 1) bands simply don't advantage of those tools and 2) labels spend time building relationships with people that get the word out to an even wider range of people (journalists, radio stations, bloggers, etc) and, thus, make them a benefit to the artist.
First off that book is years old and simply another offshoot of her other dumb old books. I don't want to hear about starting anything in music successfully from an old fat society lady in New York who made one really bad Rap record 20 years ago and calls that a label and a credentials. I fail to understand how these people build credibility and sell books based on failure. She floated in with one bad book and we never got rid of her thanks to her publisher. Nothing she states whether true or false has any credibility, she's a non music person with a big fat mouth and a huge rack. She openly discourages women over 35 from even making music at all, (although she herself is well into her 50s) along with other "sub groups" she deems unworthy of her regal knowledge of zero.
Anytime is a good time to create independent Recordings but a full fledged Indie label? It's a great time anytime to do anything if you've got Daddys money to back it up.
So much depends on what "label" means: the definition is fluid these days. We invite our artists to make themselves a label, or to "sign themselves."
I go a step further: what does "success" mean, both for the artist and for the label? Is it just money? Is it playing live? Is it "units" sold (what's a "unit" these days, with streaming and downloads and CDs and singles and albums and more clouding the equation)? Is it fanbase (is that size of venue filled, friends on MySpace, fan emails or what)? These days, a label can offer things like "a webpage with 2 million views per month!"--a label ten years ago wouldn't even know what that sentence meant!
So is it a good time? Yes, if you know what you want.
Thanks for the mention. Happy to answer questions about TuneCore or the industry, if you want.
--Peter
peter@tunecore.com
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