We decided to place several blocks from our book on music labels (the full book will be available to blog subscribers). In this article we will analyze what labels are and the benefits of working with them.
There are several options for decoding the concept of a label.
- The label at the level of companies (not related to the music industry) is a label, tag, sticker.
- Brand label on clothes, shoes, accessories with the name of the manufacturer.
- Trademark, brand name of the brand, manufacturer, designer. Such a label is either sewn or pasted. There are labels in the form of embroidery.
There is also the concept of a “private label”, which means a trademark of an enterprise (usually a large retail chain), and not a manufacturer.
II. A record label (from Recordlabel, a trademark of a record company) is a brand created by companies engaged in the production, distribution and promotion of audio and sometimes video recordings (mainly music videos and concert videos) on media of various relevant formats, including vinyl records, compact -cassettes, CDs, mini-disks, SACD, DVD.
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III. Net label (aka netlabel, network label, internet label) is a record label that distributes and sells its own music products in the form of digital audio files (such as MP3, Wave, OggVorbis, FLAC). Network labels are similar to traditional labels that distribute CDs or records; the difference is that the music of the web label does not have a physical medium.
Some network labels also send for a fee (for example, subscribers) and discs.
Typically, an Internet label is a non-profit organization that provides an opportunity to get acquainted with music that is not well represented or not represented at all in the traditional music market: in stores, on radio stations, television shows, etc. Since an Internet label does not require significant expenses and time for support , often they are organized and operate under the direction of a small group of individuals, or even one person, which, however, does not imply the presence of weak musical material. Recently, new ways of distributing music have become increasingly popular, because no-labels are more accessible to beginner musicians. They provide cover art, posting materials on all popular venues, and full-fledged promotional ads. This is a good start.
Net labels have become a new step in the implementation of music. With the advent of compressed MP3 music format, which has a much smaller volume and suitable for transmission over computer networks, and the growth of the popularity of the Internet, a large amount of music distributed free and free appeared, sites began to appear engaged in the search and publication of such music. Having copied the record label approach, and applying it to the distribution of digital copies of music recordings, the first Internet labels appeared, first in the USA, then in other countries, including Russia and Ukraine.
Since historically a large amount of music distributed freely was related to electronic genres, the first Internet labels were mainly engaged in the distribution of electronic music. At the moment, labels dealing with alternative and indie music are also quite common, that is, labels for which large investments are not necessary.
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Misconceptions of novice artists
– If I sign up for a label, I will become popular.
A label is primarily the support / sale of your material, its distribution. Work on the image and popularity of an artist can take years.
– If I sign up for a label, I’ll start making money on my music.
Lately, label sales have been falling. This is due to the fact that there are many resources that allow you to download music for free. You should not consider the label as the main income in this area. You can make money on music in other ways (for example, write it to order).
– The label is hard (impossible) to get.
This is not true. Nowadays, there are hundreds of thousands of labels who need new promising musicians, and who are happy to listen to your demo.
Even if something does not suit them in your material – they can write comments, correcting which you can subscribe. Of course, if you are a beginner DJ and want to go straight to the world label with a large list of famous names, then this will be impossible.
