What is the point of a music label? Is it just: “Promote music and share profit”?
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There are lots of up-front costs to creating an album… studio time, engineering/mixing, perhaps session musicians, etc. and the studios pay for that. There may be licensing songs written by others or even helping find songs to perform on the album. Once the album is created, there is the marketing, distribution (physical and electronic), licensing/rights, tracking sales and paying out commissions, etc. Some of the big costs are less today — you no longer need a label to front the production and physical distribution of so many records/cassettes/CDs as in the past, but there are still phyical copies to produce and distribute, as well as getting copies out to radio stations, streaming services. Labels are also a source of networking/connections, to help connect up and coming acts as openers for bigger bands, connections with venues, cross-promotion on TV and radio.
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