So many artists are signed to different labels, but they are extremely popular. How does a label work and why would an artist even want to sign to one since labels typically get a percent of money. Also, I thought independent or indie artists were not signed to a label but if you go to Spotify and look up indie music half of them are signed to a label.
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A lot of negative stuff about labels here. Sure, there are negatives, BUT…
Labels don’t just loan an artist money, they also do…EVERYTHING.
Like, say you are an artist at the beginning of your career, like, I dunno, a young Ed Sheeran or some shit. You write well. You play well. You perform well…but you don’t know anything about recording, pressing records, distribution, promo, touring etc. You have an acoustic guitar and play for tips at coffee shops.
So a label signs you based on your talent. They find a producer, book a studio, find a pressing plant, find a printing plant. Typically, it is the label’s art department that does your design, hiring artists and photographers and copy writers. Depending on who you are, they may create an image or persona for you. Then once you have a product, the label’s promo people got to work with print, radio, video and internet. The radio guys work your record at radio, getting you plays. The print guys place print media ads and maybe do posters and billboards. The video guys find you a director and allocate a budget for videos. The internet people send out press releases and get you interviews and stuff, so when your record comes out, all of a sudden there are articles about it/you all over the place.
The label also distributes your product, both physical and digital. It pops up on all of the streaming services, and the records go out to shops.
Then you need to go on tour. The label fronts money for tour support, buys you gear, and finds you touring personnel. You get a production manager…he brings in a lighting designer, and sound company (sometimes management does some of these functions).
At the end of the day, you are still just that schlub with the guitar.
Did the labels rip people off? Yeah, more or less depending on how big you were and how savvy your management…but they also took dumbfuck kids playing in bands and built lasting careers. I have a whole bunch of friends who had major record deals when they were very young, and still tour and make money because of the careers the labels built for them 30 years ago.
Can people do this themselves? Yeah, but it requires such a colossal fuckton of work that I don’t know how modern musicians ever find the time to just be musicians, which might be why we don’t have giant bands anymore. Like, all Led Zeppelin had to do was write, record and tour. A record label is you TEAM, and the big labels are STILL effective as fuck at breaking artists.
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