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> Not of that matters unless you can get people to discover your music. That's where labels come in. No, that's where curation comes in. Labels are just curat
by brandonmenc 11y ago
> Not of that matters unless you can get people to discover your music. That's where labels come in.
No, that's where curation comes in.
Labels are just curators. That role has been taken over by Tumblr, Facebook, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, etc. I've discovered orders of magnitude more bands just by rabbit-holing on Tumblr than I ever did reading an Alternative Tentacles catalog.
- k-mcgrady 11y agoLabels are also marketers. You can pass the curation role off to other people (bloggers for example) but they need to have a way to discover the music in the first place and that is usually pushed to them by labels.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoLabels were promoters. There used to be serious shenanigans involved in getting records into the charts - when charts still mattered. DJs would be - let's say - "encouraged in creative ways" to promote music. (I know one band who got airplay after delivering a lawn mower to a DJ. Because he needed one. That was one of the more legal things that happened.) The top DJs could make or break careers. Everyone understood this. I'm not sure how many people realise that labels still exist, and they still do a lot of PR. In fact A&R spending has increased over the last few years. But it's a lot more diffuse than it used to be, and it's no longer as easy to influence the market as it was. So labels take far fewer risks, and they do what book publishers do - wait until they find an artist with a buzz and a following, and then try to hype them.
- pjlegato 11y agoWhy the faux-demure attitude, with the "let's say"? Call it what it was -- outright bribery, known as "payola" in the music industry. It's been widely documented -- Google it.