Hello fellow producers!
TÂCHES here, and I wanted to write up a little piece on record labels, and how and why you should have a think about starting your own. I've had a few discussions with some users on this community over the past couple of days that made me realise that there are quite a few misconceptions around this topic that may mean that people don't quite realise the freedom that they could have these days when it comes to self-releasing their music and getting properly paid (as best as allowed by the current industry climate). This is going to be a pretty long post so grab a cup of tea or a beer and dig in!
NB: If you are not willing to put in the proper work needed to do this, you will fail. Simple as. If you are ready to undertake the next chapter in owning your existence, however, go forth reap the benefits! You are only as successful as you decide to be. You choose your limits.
First and foremost, let's clear up something that I feel may cause a bit of controversy. What is a label?
A record label is a 'brand or trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos.' For the sake of keeping this simple, let's exclude music videos for now and focus solely on the 'marketing of music recordings'. Let's further break this down into what marketing is.
Marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. To keep it simple again, let's focus on the 'business of promoting and selling products'.
Ok, so what is a record label? A record label is, therefore, a brand or trademark associated with the promoting and selling of music recordings. In the most basic format, that's it!
Now that we know what a label is, let's define what it isn't necessarily.
A record label doesn't necessarily need to release any more than one artist's music.
A record label doesn't necessarily need to give artists an advance.
A record label doesn't necessarily need to produce CDs, vinyl or cassettes.
A record label doesn't necessarily need to be a massive company with multiple departments and employees.
A record label doesn't necessarily need to cost large sums of money to operate.
Cool! So we've got a pretty solid understanding now of what is necessary and not necessary in terms of the operation of a record label. But why are you telling me this, you may ask?
Well, a lot of small artists believe that in order for them to progress in their careers they have to appeal to larger labels, often seeing them as the only real stepping stone to 'success'. This can be a really frustrating reality to live in, making them feel that their music isn't worth anything really until they have the validation of a label. What I'm here to tell you is that your music IS worth something and probably to more people than you think! Any sized artist nowadays can get their music onto iTunes, Spotify etc and actually see at least some sort of income from their hard work.
OK, so why should you start your own label?
You will have total creative control over the look and image of the brand that is releasing your music that you've worked so hard on.
You will have total logistical control over the release dates and strategy of the music you've worked so hard on.
You will not be having to give up 50% (or god knows what other awful offers some smaller labels will pressure you into) on the rights of your track(s) to a third party that will, more than likely, not care nearly as much about your music as you do.
You will be able to see in-depth statistics and demographics of the sales and streams of your music. This is then hugely beneficial for working out where to target your promotion and ads when you release new music or are working to build a tour.
You will have a unified platform where all of your music will exist.
No one, but yourself, will be able to stand in the way of you regularly releasing music and building your brand and dedicated fanbase.
You will feel proud and excited about really working a release, knowing that every drop of effort you put into it will be going directly into building your future.
You are regularly releasing music on Soundcloud and YouTube, especially EPs, mini albums or full albums that you have worked hard on but want to get your music on sales and streaming platforms.
Now that we understand why, why should you not start a label?
You are the kind of person who believes that success if for a few, and you are not one of those few.
You are afraid of throwing yourself into something that you may not know too much about in the beginning.
You are lazy and shy away from hard work - even if that hard work could benefit you hugely.
You are the kind of person who likes to sit on the sidelines and come up with reasons why not to do something and shoot down other peoples efforts to create something for themselves.
You are driven to release on a particular label. If this is the case for you, rock on and best of luck! Keep working and never stop until you reach your goal. Then set a new goal, rinse and repeat.
Your music is primarily sample based or remixes/edits of protected material. If this is the case, keep up the Soundcloud game - that's the best market out there for it.
Awesome! So we understand the basics. Now, how do I start a label?
STEP 1: COME UP WITH A NAME
This can be anything, but I would always suggest that you steer away from calling your label something that pigeonholes you from the get-go. You may want to grow, change direction and try something different down the line. Therefore, try not to go for a name like Deep Tech House Banger Records. Also, VERY important, for christ sake look to see if the name you come up with is already a label - even if it's not exact but pretty similar.
STEP 2: DECIDE UPON THE LOOK, FEEL AND ETHOS OF YOUR LABEL
Look
If you are graphically inclined you can design it all yourself, if not you can pay someone else to do this for you. I would always suggest you attempt to learn how to do something for yourself, but some people may not wish to. It's up to you. To begin, you could create a Pinterest board of images that inspire you and fit with the look you wish to portray. This will give you a nice overview of where your look is tending towards. Try not to outright copy other labels, but you can for sure take inspiration!
Feel
Close your eyes! Now imagine yourself 10 years in the future. Your label has put out 50+ releases; comprising of a combination of your own music and that of other artists that are in line with your vision. What does this label feel like?
Is it beautiful? Is it angry? Is it chill? Is it heartbreakingly sad? Is it reminiscent of Beerfest in Munich?
Ethos
What do I mean by ethos? I mean the motivation behind your label.
My label GLITTER COWBOY, for example, I defined as "a home for unusual and melodic music that pushes the boundaries of the zeitgeist. Think a dreamy blend of electronic and organic that’ll keep you dancing, all the while pulling away at your heartstrings. Glitter Cowboy seeks to embody self-awareness and optimism, along with finding inner peace through nature, artistic expression and simplicity of living."
I came up with this long before the first release came out and ensures that whatever I do musically fits within the realms of why I started the label. This is very important if you are to stand out from everyone else and create a feeling of direction as your grow your brand.
STEP 3: DECIDE UPON YOUR DISTRIBUTOR
In order for your label to actually be a label, you will need to get your music onto sales and streaming platforms. There a variety of services you can use for this, each with their own pros and cons. It should also be noted that none of these companies will, in any capacity, own any of the rights to your music. I'll list three options of distributors I've used and can speak from experience on. If you'd like to read a more in-depth comparison of a broader spectrum of distributors have a read of this or this. There is plenty of information on the Internet about this and ultimately it is up to you to decide which service is best for your needs.
DistroKid
DistroKid is known for being the best way for musicians to get music into streaming services (and get 100% of earnings 💰)
But that’s just the start.
Today, we’re announcing 21 (and counting) services we’ve custom made for artists that we hope you love.
They are all free for DistroKid members.
To access everything, sign into DistroKid and click the “Goodies” menu at the top.
Some of these have been around for a while, some are new — but all are updated regularly, and more are launching all the time.
CD Baby
CD Baby is what I used when I first started Glitter Cowboy. It was a great intro to the freedom provided by starting your own label. As far as I know, anyone can release through them and their website, customer support and infrastructure are tight. There is no annual fee to use their service, but you pay $49 per release and then 9% commission on digital sales.
Sync licensing, although quite unlikely to happen (but not impossible) is free on every release and they offer CD and vinyl pressing if that floats your boat. They have a whopping 150+ retail partners (albeit not Beatport). CD Baby distributes all genres of music, which in my opinion isn't necessarily the best if you are specifically a dance label, but this isn't too much of an issue.
Proton
This is a smaller company that focuses specifically on electronic music run by a great guy Jason Wohlstadter who is always down to personally help out with any issues. Releases are free but they take a 30% commission which is quite steep. They offer Beatport Exclusive deals which allow you to earn a little extra through Beatport sales and mechanical royalties plus more exposure from Beatport themselves.
Also, if Beatport ends up liking your label, you may be featured on the website - I've been on the front page a couple of times and I didn't have to do anything but make music I loved and put it out. Proton has an incredible system for online contract creation so that you can keep track of things legally speaking and this makes it really easy to give percentages of royalties to any vocalists/musicians you may feature on your tracks. Royalties are paid to you (and any featured artists) directly via Paypal which is really nice and simple.
LabelWorx
These guys are the biggest distributor of dance music out there with really great back-end technology and modular deals that could include mix/master services, 100$ per month label management, in-depth worldwide royalty tracking and promos among other things. They are responsible for distributing and helping to build the profiles of labels like Dirtybird, LocalTalk, Elrow, Minus... The list goes on.
STEP 4: CREATE SOCIALS FOR YOUR LABEL
Go ahead and create a Facebook, Soundcloud and Instagram account for your label with the unified design you decided upon. While I find myself regularly complaining about social media, it is, unfortunately, just something that you must do if you wish to ensure maximum visibility for your new label. You needn't post every day, but a few teasers of upcoming releases and links for buying/streaming can go a long way with a bit of time and faith.
STEP 5: PUT OUT A RELEASE
Now that you've got the foundations in place, it's time to put out your first release. Depending on which distributor you decide to use, the process will be a little different but is always simple enough. Get your masters, meta-data and artwork uploaded, set a release date and ship it. You have now taken your first step along the path of running your own label.
(STEP 6: PROMOTE YOUR RELEASE)
This step warrants its own post at a later date but doesn't have to cost you much or any money at all. There is plenty of great literature on this topic out there if you're interested to find out more. For Spotify, I suggest claiming access to your Spotify for Artists account so that you can easily submit your music to their editorial and curation teams. u/Petec4llaghans wrote a great article today about Spotify playlists that I recommend you read. If you are to set aside a little money for a small PR campaign, this can be a great way to kickstart your label into the world.
Okay, so this may all seem deceptively simple, but starting your own label really is easy this easy.
A couple of notes on the reality of life. The understanding and taking on board of these points will be a key element in whether or not your efforts will be fruitful in this lifetime. This process will not work for everyone and the reason for this is that not everyone will end up putting in the work to grow, learn and become a person who takes and makes what they want. You cannot expect your label to be turning over thousands of dollars of revenue from the get-go, but this is the first step in securing your financial and creative freedom. If there is interest in this post, I'll happily expand on any topics you may have questions about.
Freedom is yours if you choose it. Best of luck!
EDIT: I had a great question from Nycderp that I thought would do well to add into the body of this post.
Q: As an independent artist, what is the benefit of creating a separate label (that you run) to promote the music that you make, as opposed to just doing the same work but without creating a separate entity?
A: I guess what this boils down to is your intent as an artist. You can of course simply release music under your artist name and achieve similar results. The main difference however is that with starting your own label affords you the option to grow your music career ‘sideways’.
What do I mean by this?
Perhaps in the future you have grown your name to have a certain credibility that attracts other musicians with whom you have an affinity. Say they don’t have and don’t want to start their own label, you now have a platform that you can share with them, ultimately building a family.
Perhaps you’d like to take control of your booking situations and want to start organizing your own events - it’ll make a lot more sense for an umbrella company, of which a branch is the label, to put on these events. Again, now musicians with whom you have an affinity also have a platform to join you in playing your branded party.
Perhaps you find in the future a couple of young artists who you really believe in, you could start then managing them through the management branch of your company, again building a family.
In short, starting your own label allows you even bigger picture control of your career and that of others you wish to help grow.
The way I like to see it is that as an artist you simply exist within the ‘universe’ of the music industry.
By starting your own label, you are effecting colonizing, at first, a small portion of land and declaring it your own village. As time goes on, you can grow your village into a town and your town into a city. If you build a great city, with awesome infrastructure and way of thinking, people will want to come and join you in your city to help further expand out. All the while this is happening, you are the president of your city, which you ALSO happen to live in and reap the benefits of.
CREDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/a8enyp/how_to_start_your_own_label/
