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The self-congratulatory nature of the article and quotes actually betray a self-reassurance, because in reality, record labels are rapidly becoming irrelevant.

by bryans 5y ago

The self-congratulatory nature of the article and quotes actually betray a self-reassurance, because in reality, record labels are rapidly becoming irrelevant. They're scrambling to figure out how they fit into the TikTok era, where artists no longer require years of financial incubation to succeed. The music industry is growing because independent musicians are finally figuring out how to navigate it without any need for those traditional industry services. They deserve the credit for (most of) this, because they are working their asses off (including bringing new streaming users to the fold) and getting no recognition whatsoever from industry reporting. Sometime in the next year or two, we will see the first truly independent music superstars achieve household-name status. Once that veil is broken, then the jig is up and labels are going to be panicking -- if they're not already.

basisword 5y ago
Do you have any evidence of this? People have been saying labels are irrelevant for a decade or two at least now. It's never true. To succeed you need to get noticed and for that you need a marketing budget and the labels provide that. Artists can get much further than before but going viral on TikTok is not a viable career strategy for most artists.
- bryans 5y ago
  Yes, I have tons of evidence for this, and for why all of your claims have no foundation. Allow me to provide one example of the hundreds that I personally know of or worked with (which is a tiny fraction of the numbers finding success independently). In late 2020, a band called Sub-Radio had a couple thousand followers on each social media platform and around ~15k monthly listeners on Spotify, and this was after many years of working extremely hard and even touring the US. Among many things, my primary advice to them was to start live streaming, particularly on Reddit. By the time 2021 arrived, they had more than tripled their social media presence and doubled their listener count. The continued to stream on Reddit throughout the year before recently switching to TikTok, and in the process garnered over 1 million new followers, 150k monthly listeners, sold out an entire US tour and their music is being licensed left and right. That's just one example of countless many, and it's the way the entire industry is moving. If you're not on board with that, then you're behind the times, because you don't need a million dollar music video budget to become famous and you never did. Financial support has always been a very well-understood con by the record labels, as it allows them to assume ownership over music rights under the guise of "necessary promotional activities."
  - alfiedotwtf 5y ago
    > Financial support has always been a very well-understood con by the record labels, as it allows them to assume ownership over music rights under the guise of "necessary promotional activities." This. Just look at TLC, one of the biggest R&B groups of their time, and yet they were personally broke.
  - b20000 5y ago
    marketing is not free and “it just went viral” is bullshit. yes, the internet is available to anyone. buying visibility is not though. that is the main problem for anyone who creates anything, and not something you can solve by working hard.
  - KaoruAoiShiho 5y ago
    Same with software, books and manga and video games I think. The only digitalized industry where indies still don't really have a place is tv/movies
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      There are loads of people making indie movies/docs out there, I think, it's more a question of exposure— there's a long tail of them that get uploaded to Vimeo or YouTube and then just die there. There's some limited curation going on with aggregator channels (eg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7sDT8jZ76VLV1u__krUutA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7sDT8jZ76VLV1u__krUutA), but it's not mass-market in the way that a Netflix series is. Which definitely does seem like a missed opportunity for the streaming platforms. Maybe one of them needs to step up with the equivalent of Stream's Greenlight programme— an opportunity to temporarily have your stuff listed alongside the AAA content, and if it hits whatever the numbers are, they'll buy it from you?
    - finiteseries 5y ago
      Outside narrative driven / sports / blue planet level stuff, isn’t a huge part of TV just YouTube/Podcasts/etc now? Curation and everything built in. I was led to a oddly human travel show and watched it go from a few thousand to millions of subscribers over the past couple years, they were recently on the Ukrainian / Russian border the day before the invasion talking to locals and ended up leaving on a refugee train in 1080p60, 3+ million views. Questionable character I don’t want to promote and some of the episodes I don’t want to be associated with, but that’s tvesque isn’t it? Repeat for true crime, history, cooking, children, educational, political commentary, informercials…
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  Tessa Violet is example of an artist who has blown up on TikTok and I believe has parlay that into real world success in terms of shows, merch, etc. First 2 Eleven is a YouTube cover band who I believe are still fully independent and On the streaming side, musicians like Danielle Allard are killing it, though sometimes in a scenario like this it's unclear if it's even the goal of the person to "go mainstream" vs just carving out a cozy and sufficiently monetized space to achieve financial stability and practice their craft.
  - basisword 5y ago
    I'm not saying it's impossible, it happens for sure. But the death of labels has been predicted for the last 20 years and somehow they've managed to continue to make themselves relevant.
  - CharlesW 5y ago
    > Tessa Violet is example of an artist who has blown up on TikTok and I believe has parlay that into real world success in terms of shows, merch, etc. I've not heard of the others, but Tessa is on a label, T∆G Music, which has a global distribution deal with a subsidiary of Sony. She launched her career on the Make Music label as well.
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      I stand corrected!
      - CharlesW 5y ago
        There's still great examples out there but I wonder if they're "exceptions that prove the rule". I think Chance The Rapper is still independent?
- xmprt 5y ago
  I think that while it's been "technically" possible to have an audience without labels for at least a decade, it's been incredibly difficult because of all the barriers to entry that labels have put on the industry. YouTube has Vevo. Labels have deals with companies like Spotify and Apple that indie artists can't make. Your options have either been to fight and more than likely fail (or succeed with one viral song and then fail) or give in a join them. However recently, the tide has been turning because labels haven't figured out how to gatekeep things like TikTok (yet).
  - CharlesW 5y ago
    > Labels have deals with companies like Spotify and Apple that indie artists can't make. You don't need a label to distribute your music on major music services. https://www.tunecore.com/ https://www.tunecore.com/
    - mjr00 5y ago
      Yep. I'm a verified artist on YouTube, TikTok, Bilibili, Spotify, etc. and all it took was a $15/year Distrokid subscription. That being said, the real challenge for independent artists is getting "blessed by the algorithm," so to speak, where they actually start showing up in Song Radio and Discover Weekly algorithmic playlists. I'm not keen on the details of the Spotify algorithm, but I imagine labels do help with this, and being on the same label as a popular artist would increase your chances of showing up on that artists' song radio.
      - bryans 5y ago
        > That being said, the real challenge for independent artists is getting "blessed by the algorithm," so to speak, where they actually start showing up in Song Radio and Discover Weekly algorithmic playlists. This mindset is unfortunately why most musicians fail to gain traction. Relying on an algorithm for success is fallacy, because all of these algorithms are based on input, not random chance. If you're not steadily supplying new listeners through your own direct efforts, then the algorithm isn't going to perceive value and you won't get any benefits from it. Playlisting represents approximately 1% of the independent music industry puzzle.
- karmasimida 5y ago
  Most artists don't have a career. How many self sustained artists in the music industry are there, comparing against the self-claimed ones?
  - alar44 5y ago
    Idk, millions? You can be self sustained without being an international rock star. I lived off of my musicianship for just over 10 years.
- blackearl 5y ago
  Chance the Rapper won 3 Grammys without ever working with a major label
- priddypixels 5y ago
  Check out how Frank Ocean released 2 albums at a time to A) get out of his Def Jam contract then B) release another album (same week?) in a deal with Apple Music. He was black-balled by the industry after. Not another Apple Music partnership since afaik
- jstummbillig 5y ago
  > It's never true. It is, and increasingly, but not obviously. Labels have money and power. If you have enough money and/or power, you can always be some form of gatekeeper. It used to be studio access. Nowadays that's increasingly a commodity. What is increasingly more expensive is attention, so the labels shifted towards being publishers, building their own channels of distribution, to provide ears and eyes to artists in need. If an artist has already broken through the wall, and has the attention, labels are in a very awkward position, in terms of their value proposition. > Artists can get much further than before but going viral on TikTok is not a viable career strategy for most artists. Which bring us to this part: There is no viable career strategy for most artists, period. Artists obviously don't wanna believe that, so they think of labels as the solution to their issues (they are not). Labels on the other hand only need artists that they think do maybe have a viable career strategy. The bigger the label, the more able and willing they are to take high risk/high reward bets, but relatively a lot less so than they did years ago, simply because it's not necessary anymore because of the dramatic democratisation of access to music production quality. Put simply: Labels want artist that don't need them, but also don't realise, that they don't need them. In 2022, if you are an artist, and labels are getting terribly interested, you are probably a lot closer to not needing them than you think.
davtbaum 5y ago
Disagree hard - every major label I follow is embracing TikTok and encouraging their artists to leverage the platform for growth. Also, labels have so much infrastructure for marketing, merch, booking shows etc. The need for this support doesn’t magically go away with new distribution channels. It just helps newer artists get signed quicker :p
- bryans 5y ago
  I didn't say that labels don't use TikTok, so you're disagreeing with nothing. What I said, was that labels don't have any legitimate value in a TikTok era, because there's nothing that they can do which an independent artist can't do on their own. > Also, labels have so much infrastructure for marketing, merch, booking shows etc. No, they actually really, genuinely don't. They use the exact same channels that independent musicians do. Booking agencies, merch providers, publicists -- all of them are hirable by anyone, not just labels. Everything you think that labels do, they hire someone else to do that, and then tell you that they need to keep ownership of your music to recoup those costs. That is how the music industry has worked for a hundred years, and if you disagree with that, then go read literally any book on the subject.
nemothekid 5y ago
>They're scrambling to figure out how they fit into the TikTok era, where artists no longer require years of financial incubation to succeed Before this was the Napster era, then the MySpace era, then the SoundCloud era, and now the TikTok era. Somehow those damned labels keep figuring out.
- bryans 5y ago
  You're giving them far too much credit. They're still very much trying to figure out the Napster era, as to this day they are suing pirates left and right because they genuinely see that 0.01% of the market as a threat to their security.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    What do you mean by pirates? RIAA is suing the distributors and creators of pirated content. They are not suing individual pirates much at all. You said “to this day…left and right” which indicates your average person as that was the most know thing they were doing before in the 00s. That’s not true any more.[0] 0. https://jolt.richmond.edu/2018/03/15/has-the-riaa-given-up-on-combating-end-user-internet-piracy/ https://jolt.richmond.edu/2018/03/15/has-the-riaa-given-up-o...
    - gen220 5y ago
      They sue pirates where the LTV of the litigation is greater than the CAC. So, they tend to go after businesses with predictable and large incomes, that are dependent on music, to varying degrees, for generating that income. Peloton, for example, were sued into a royalty contract with the major labels [1]. It's a fun coincidence that their new CEO is the former Netflix and Spotify CFO. Spotify wasn't sued, because their predecessors were sued into a merger [2][3]. Instead, they acquiesced [4]. The LTV:CAC ratio on this customer was super high. [1]: https://exploration.io/exploration-weekly-peloton-and-nmpa-settle-copyright-infringement-dispute-2019-music-revenue-up-by-13-t-series-first-to-reach-100-billion-views/ https://exploration.io/exploration-weekly-peloton-and-nmpa-s... [2]: https://www.wired.com/2000/04/riaa-wins-suit-against-mp3-com/ https://www.wired.com/2000/04/riaa-wins-suit-against-mp3-com... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.com,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.co.... [4]: https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/19/8621581/sony-music-spotify-contract https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/19/8621581/sony-music-spotif...
phphphphp 5y ago
There’s lots of independent artists that are successful, you’re about 5 years late on the “…independent musicians will kill labels…” prediction which hasn’t been borne out. Musicians are actively choosing to sign to labels, even when they don’t have to… make of that what you will.
- bryans 5y ago
  You're trying to twist this into a scenario of absolutes, as if there's an on/off switch at which point independent artists make 100% of the money and labels don't exist anymore. That's clearly not what I said, and it's rather inflammatory of you to suggest that it is.
  - phphphphp 5y ago
    You said "record labels are rapidly becoming irrelevant" and "the jig is up and labels are going to be panicking". That's about as absolute as you can be. I contend that labels and independents will continue to co-exist, as they have done for many years, despite people proclaiming otherwise (to varying extremes).
    - bryans 5y ago
      "Irrelevant" and "non-existent" are two completely different concepts, and neither of those quoted phrases are even remotely absolutes. Unless you have an actual point to make based on actual knowledge of the subject at hand, please stop with your false pedantry. It's entirely unwelcome and not adding anything to the conversation.
      - phphphphp 5y ago
        Music labels are in the business of cultural relevancy, a label does not make money if they're not relevant, certainly Warner, UMG, Sony etc. wouldn't be generating multi-billions of revenue each year if they were not relevant. I have a point, I am not being pedantic. The message of your post, or at least, the message I took away from your post, was that the tides are turning against labels and independent musicians are the future... ...but that's been the claim made for at least the last decade, and it's proven again and again to be untrue. Yes, independent artists can reach huge levels of success without a label, and certainly it's becoming easier and easier to achieve success without a label, however, that doesn't have any logical through line to music labels becoming irrelevant. Artists like Macklemore are great examples of independent artists who reached great success but still chose to work with labels, because labels provide value. Likewise, there are many successful independent artists who sign with major labels, even some of the artists people pointed to as independent examples in this thread have gone on to sign with labels. I will happily make a bet with you, and you can choose the metric: in 5 years, major record labels will be doing better than they are today. My metric of choice would be total revenue as measured by the IFPI, but I'm open to other metrics if you think total revenue as measured by the IFPI isn't a fair representation. Although I don't work in the music industry, I have participated in this discussion many times over the years, including conversations with major label artists. Historically, record labels were gatekeepers and it's fantastic to see the shifts in consumer habits that have enabled independent artists to succeed, I would not dispute that for one second, and I will happily celebrate it alongside you, but the last decade has disproven the anti-label thesis again and again. Labels and independents will co-exist, they will grow together. If your comment was focused entirely on the success of independents, I wouldn't have had anything to say. I would have just given an upvote, because I agree wholeheartedly.
shadowgovt 5y ago
The dark side to this is that artists are learning that the things labels did for them are things someone really does have to do, and some hate it. I've seen a couple artists talk about what a pain it is to maintain a social media presence (especially on platforms they hate) because the alternative is obscurity. My prediction is that there's a pendulum back-swing in progress as people figure out how to offer brand-management-as-a-service without just becoming a label.
- bryans 5y ago
  You're absolutely correct about the dark side, and I would never want to minimize the complexity or sheer effort required to self-manage a music project. Like any startup, it is not easy and you are wholly responsible for everything that happens -- including any mistakes, of which they will likely be many. This is far too daunting for some people, and understandably so, particularly when they just want to "make some rad music with my friends, man." That said, all of those professional services are directly hirable by any musician, without the need for a label middleman. The best move a band can make, is hire someone to handle the thing they least want to do. As you mentioned, posting on social media is the most hated of all tasks for a lot of folks, and in that situation your first hire should be a publicist (aka social media manager). It gets the largest monkey off your back, and frees up that time for all of the other business stuff that still needs to get done. That said, you could also hire a publicist for a day, and they could assemble a social media schedule for you, and provide a bunch of templates to use, and take all of the mystery out of what to post and when and how and why. And now instead of paying a retainer or sharing gross, you're paying someone in the band to do it, and all of the money stays with the group. As for your prediction, you're correct about that, as well, because it's already starting to happen. Many people, like myself, offer a sort of label/manager on-demand service, where for a very small consultation fee, the band gets a monthly analysis of where they're at and what steps they need to be taking, along with all of the granular instructions on how to accomplish those tasks. If I had to guess, there are currently about 1,000 people doing this around the world, but that number is growing rapidly. There are also a lot of tools springing up to help simplify those tasks.
  - deleted 5y ago
Melatonic 5y ago
Until the Ticketmaster monopoly goes away I think independent music superstars are gonna be in for a hard time.
- bryans 5y ago
  That is a fair point on the touring side of things, but every city still has theaters and large clubs which are not beholden to Ticketmaster. So, while an independent artist may not have access to a Beyonce-level stadium production, they can still be extremely successful in literally every other capacity.
  - Melatonic 5y ago
    There was an article recently I read that basically posited that was actually no longer the case - Ticketmaster has bought up the companies that own or have exclusive contracts with most venues and now most venues are fairly locked in. I am sure there are some in any big city that are not but not nearly enough.
IMTDb 5y ago
I think labels are more relevant than ever. In a world where it's easier and easier to create music, and distribute it, how do you discover music ? Through curators, podcasts etc. And those are managed by - you guessed it - labels. Thing is that - in order to be relevant, and play that role - labels need to actually develop a style and expertise in the specific genre/type they want to operate in.
- bryans 5y ago
  > In a world where it's easier and easier to create music, and distribute it, how do you discover music ? Through curators, podcasts etc. And those are managed by - you guessed it - labels. That's simply untrue. The vast majority of curating and playlisting is through bloggers or social media personalities and not through labels, so I'm not sure where you got that from.
  - basisword 5y ago
    Who has access to those bloggers and social media personalities? Labels. Otherwise you're just sending your demo to a blog and hoping it might get listened to in the same way you would have sent it to a college radio staton 30 years ago.
    - bryans 5y ago
      That's a conspiratorial and untrue claim. The most popular curated playlists (i.e. ones that aren't algorithmically produced by Spotify under the guise of curation) don't actually have label influence. Anyone can contact those curators directly, and if presented with something palatable, they will most likely put it in rotation. > Otherwise you're just sending your demo to a blog and hoping it might get listened to in the same way you would have sent it to a college radio staton 30 years ago. What do you think the record label is doing when they contact a curator or radio station? It's the exact same as if a musician had contact them. It's an email to a person, who makes a decision based on the content.
      - 5y ago
EMIRELADERO 5y ago
Do you think this could have an effect on copyright in popular culture?
conradfr 5y ago
There's great labels still, like Sargent House. Social platforms and digitalization can helped being truly independent but there's still non-music work that a label would do for you that you now have to manage. And even if the stories about the struggling musicians becoming rock stars has always been embellished, it seems nowadays most of the current ones had financial security before pursuing their music career because of the low budgets available to develop new artists.
- bryans 5y ago
  > Social platforms and digitalization can helped being truly independent but there's still non-music work that a label would do for you that you now have to manage. Except that is rapidly becoming untrue, which is the entire point. Self-management in the music industry is actually quite simple if you have the tools and knowledge, and both of those are now widely available to everyone.
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  >There's great labels still, like Sargent House. True, but the only OmarRodriguezLopez (for example) that I actually listen to is available on Apple Music. Every once in a while I'll pull up something on YouTube that isn't on Apple Music, but my 99% of the time music player is Apple Music, and if I buy something that's not on there it is a PITA to deal with and costs as much as a month sub to all the things on streaming. The only reason that a label like Sargent House is relevant is as a discovery aid.
milesward 5y ago
Macklemore did that already.
52-6F-62 5y ago
Maybe, maybe not. There's a larger variety of business model behind record labels than what people usually mean when they refer to record labels. They're not all middlemen trying to take a cut out of artists. Those exist, and artists have always railed against the model... and then start their own label. Labels are mainly a house for all of the logistics behind an artist. No artist wants to spend 90% of their time marketing, merchandizing, booking, etc, etc, etc. They want to create and perform. The label is supposed to enable that. As long as the label does so, then it's worth it. Plus it's a great way to work with your less musical friends. Corporate isn't the only option.
- bryans 5y ago
  > Maybe, maybe not. There's a larger variety of business model behind record labels than what people usually mean when they refer to record labels. They're not all middlemen trying to take a cut out of artists. Those exist, and artists have always railed against the model... and then start their own label. It's a nice theory, but it doesn't really play out like that. For example, back in the 90s and 00s, indie record labels were all the rage, particularly in the metal world. You had all of these companies like Relapse, Metal Blade and Century Media operating "outside" of the major label system, and you'd think that would protect the artists from middlemen, but it didn't. Those companies absorbed massive amounts of money with relatively small staffs, and much to the detriment of the artists who would often go home with nothing after a tour. I watched it happen so many times that it became pointless to keep count. And don't even get me started on how little they actually supported the artists in any capacity -- they wouldn't even send singles to radio stations when the stations themselves were asking in order to put them into rotation. There are certainly "good" independent labels, as well as good people working at "bad" major labels. I think almost everyone gets into the business because they love music and want to participate in finding and producing the best talent. However, much like every industry, once the revenue reaches some threshold and the employee counts grow, those altruistic motivations become much more difficult to maintain. Unless the person at the top of the company is wholly dedicated to music and that attitude is able to trickle down to every employee, then labels have a proven tendency to devolve into middlemanning and nickle/diming and worse. > Labels are mainly a house for all of the logistics behind an artist. No artist wants to spend 90% of their time marketing, merchandizing, booking, etc, etc, etc. They want to create and perform. The label is supposed to enable that. As long as the label does so, then it's worth it. That's an oversimplification and the last bit is definitely not true. A label is not actually a manager or booking agent or publicist. Labels pay people to do all of those things, in the same way that any musician can. In fact, the biggest function that an indie label provides these days beyond some physical distribution (which is also a third party service), is maintain a list of those managers and booking agents who may be willing to take a meeting with a no-name startup band just because the label vouches for them. That's about it. More importantly, managers and booking agents still aren't going to do all of the work for you. One of the biggest shocks that bands face when getting signed, is just how much of the business and marketing work they need to do themselves. So at the end of the day, anyone is more than welcome to give away 80% of their gross to a label if they want, but they have to do so understanding that more than 50% of the effort is still going to fall on the band members' shoulders.
te_chris 5y ago
[citation needed] You’re not wrong, people can do more themselves now…but the labels can also do these things, while being globally networked. You sound like you know what you’re talking about, but probably worth spending more time knowing your enemy if you really want to destroy them.
gumby 5y ago
> Sometime in the next year or two, we will see the first truly independent music superstars achieve household-name status. Once that veil is broken, then the jig is up and labels are going to be panicking -- if they're not already. We are almost there but not quite. Justin Bieber famously got his start on YouTube, which is a step up from A&R scouts haunting the clubs -- he was 14 and in Canada so probably would never have been found. But a label signed him and increased his exposure by several orders of magnitude. That wasn't even 15 years ago. Moving from the opposite direction is live music revenues -- from the late 1980s The Grateful Dead made most of their money from touring, not albums, and were one of the top grossing acts for a few years despite a paucity of hit records (a phenomenon the music and financial press seemed to find incomprehensible). Like Bieber, they needed the labels to get there, but then again they started about 60 years ago. They were also pretty into investigating new technology and models despite playing somewhat "low tech" music. And some breakout stars now control their own finances and corpus, which is also new and really of the same vintage as the Bieber example. I think Ke$ha was a pioneer in this regard, but she built on a prior precedent of some label-developed megastars (e.g. Bowie, Beatles, and famously Prince) who managed to get to the point where the labels needed them more than they needed the labels. Ke$sha pulled it off before getting to that point and she's not the only one (interestingly the only ones I've heard of doing this are all women, but it's not like I follow the music business). The phase change I'm waiting for is when someone can really break out on their own without a Svengali like the labels. The influencer "infrastructure", such as it is, is too tenuous to pull this off today. But like you, I don't think it's far away, though next couple of years seems too soon. But within the decade. The fascinating thing about this is the whole debate about how fair the streaming payments are will go away. Instead the stars will likely prefer that the music not be paid for at all (that will magically increase its frequency in the mix); instead it will function as a kind of free advertising for alternative revenue streams. In this, the example of the Dead is illustrative.
canogat 5y ago
And 99.9% of artists still won’t get paid squat.
eezurr 5y ago
I would be interested to hear your non-editorialized argument without the symbolism. YouTube is a precursor to TikTok and for the most part offers the same functionality (organizing and distributing media to billions of people). YouTube has existed for 17 years and is not lacking in uploads by talented musicians, singers, and bands. Since the two companies are not that different and both serve billions of people, there's already 17 years of proof against your argument. Also, Justin Bieber would not exist without the record labels. He very likely would have faded out of the consciousness of the masses a few years after his e-fame. >The music industry is growing because independent musicians are finally figuring out how to navigate it without any need for those traditional industry services. Uploading music to YouTube or TikTok is not "navigating" the industry. As easy as it is to upload content, it's just as easy to be forgotten. There's countless other people competing for eyeballs on those platforms. The record labels provide administrative resources, recording/audio engineering, distribution/merchandise, legal, booking/touring, management, public relations, industry contacts, and probably more. Tackling that workload (if popular) without outside support does not seem possible. Also, the record labels exist to serve the masses. They always have, and always will. I don't see a huge demand for the style of music independent artists create. If there was such a demand, the record labels would capture it. They exist to make a profit, and aren't dumb. They don't hold the little guy back, it's the little guy who doesn't understand they are competing in a (wrong) market that isn't interested in their product. I grew up hating the RIAA. I used to spend time reading articles about how awful the RIAA was as a budding musician. Now that I'm older, I'm sad to see what they represent disappear. They were the foundation that the pinnacle of American culture was built off of in the 60s-90s. Their gate offered quality at the cost of quantity. What's happening now, IMO, is that the market is dividing more and more every year. More bands that fulfill the needs of fewer people. This trend is not sustainable in the long run, especially for the musicians.
wodenokoto 5y ago
On the flip side I want to say the fastest growing genre globally is kpop and it is extremely heavily label driven, with very long incubation periods.
dehrmann 5y ago
I'm less concerned with artists bypassing record labels because "artists already get enough promotional value out of social media" (and they actually might if they're full-time marketers and part-time artists). If I were a label, I'd be worried that the death of radio and rise of personalization kills the demand for professionally written, produced, and recorded tracks, eventually replacing them with ephemeral, low-value TikTok videos. How are you going to find out about that latest Dua Lipa single if you're not hearing it anywhere? And why would you care? Labels sell polished, high-value tracks to listeners, marketing services to artists, and to pay for this, they need a large market, broad appeal, and residual revenue. That's just not a match for TikTok. It's not that they're being disintermediated, it's that there isn't any value left for a middleman with short-lived, low-value niche products.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by bryans 5y ago

basisword 5y ago

Do you have any evidence of this? People have been saying labels are irrelevant for a decade or two at least now. It's never true. To succeed you need to get noticed and for that you need a marketing budget and the labels provide that. Artists can get much further than before but going viral on TikTok is not a viable career strategy for most artists.

bryans 5y ago
Yes, I have tons of evidence for this, and for why all of your claims have no foundation. Allow me to provide one example of the hundreds that I personally know of or worked with (which is a tiny fraction of the numbers finding success independently). In late 2020, a band called Sub-Radio had a couple thousand followers on each social media platform and around ~15k monthly listeners on Spotify, and this was after many years of working extremely hard and even touring the US. Among many things, my primary advice to them was to start live streaming, particularly on Reddit. By the time 2021 arrived, they had more than tripled their social media presence and doubled their listener count. The continued to stream on Reddit throughout the year before recently switching to TikTok, and in the process garnered over 1 million new followers, 150k monthly listeners, sold out an entire US tour and their music is being licensed left and right. That's just one example of countless many, and it's the way the entire industry is moving. If you're not on board with that, then you're behind the times, because you don't need a million dollar music video budget to become famous and you never did. Financial support has always been a very well-understood con by the record labels, as it allows them to assume ownership over music rights under the guise of "necessary promotional activities."
- alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  > Financial support has always been a very well-understood con by the record labels, as it allows them to assume ownership over music rights under the guise of "necessary promotional activities." This. Just look at TLC, one of the biggest R&B groups of their time, and yet they were personally broke.
- b20000 5y ago
  marketing is not free and “it just went viral” is bullshit. yes, the internet is available to anyone. buying visibility is not though. that is the main problem for anyone who creates anything, and not something you can solve by working hard.
- KaoruAoiShiho 5y ago
  Same with software, books and manga and video games I think. The only digitalized industry where indies still don't really have a place is tv/movies
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    There are loads of people making indie movies/docs out there, I think, it's more a question of exposure— there's a long tail of them that get uploaded to Vimeo or YouTube and then just die there. There's some limited curation going on with aggregator channels (eg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7sDT8jZ76VLV1u__krUutA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7sDT8jZ76VLV1u__krUutA), but it's not mass-market in the way that a Netflix series is. Which definitely does seem like a missed opportunity for the streaming platforms. Maybe one of them needs to step up with the equivalent of Stream's Greenlight programme— an opportunity to temporarily have your stuff listed alongside the AAA content, and if it hits whatever the numbers are, they'll buy it from you?
  - finiteseries 5y ago
    Outside narrative driven / sports / blue planet level stuff, isn’t a huge part of TV just YouTube/Podcasts/etc now? Curation and everything built in. I was led to a oddly human travel show and watched it go from a few thousand to millions of subscribers over the past couple years, they were recently on the Ukrainian / Russian border the day before the invasion talking to locals and ended up leaving on a refugee train in 1080p60, 3+ million views. Questionable character I don’t want to promote and some of the episodes I don’t want to be associated with, but that’s tvesque isn’t it? Repeat for true crime, history, cooking, children, educational, political commentary, informercials…
mikepurvis 5y ago
Tessa Violet is example of an artist who has blown up on TikTok and I believe has parlay that into real world success in terms of shows, merch, etc. First 2 Eleven is a YouTube cover band who I believe are still fully independent and On the streaming side, musicians like Danielle Allard are killing it, though sometimes in a scenario like this it's unclear if it's even the goal of the person to "go mainstream" vs just carving out a cozy and sufficiently monetized space to achieve financial stability and practice their craft.
- basisword 5y ago
  I'm not saying it's impossible, it happens for sure. But the death of labels has been predicted for the last 20 years and somehow they've managed to continue to make themselves relevant.
- CharlesW 5y ago
  > Tessa Violet is example of an artist who has blown up on TikTok and I believe has parlay that into real world success in terms of shows, merch, etc. I've not heard of the others, but Tessa is on a label, T∆G Music, which has a global distribution deal with a subsidiary of Sony. She launched her career on the Make Music label as well.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    I stand corrected!
    - CharlesW 5y ago
      There's still great examples out there but I wonder if they're "exceptions that prove the rule". I think Chance The Rapper is still independent?
xmprt 5y ago
I think that while it's been "technically" possible to have an audience without labels for at least a decade, it's been incredibly difficult because of all the barriers to entry that labels have put on the industry. YouTube has Vevo. Labels have deals with companies like Spotify and Apple that indie artists can't make. Your options have either been to fight and more than likely fail (or succeed with one viral song and then fail) or give in a join them. However recently, the tide has been turning because labels haven't figured out how to gatekeep things like TikTok (yet).
- CharlesW 5y ago
  > Labels have deals with companies like Spotify and Apple that indie artists can't make. You don't need a label to distribute your music on major music services. https://www.tunecore.com/ https://www.tunecore.com/
  - mjr00 5y ago
    Yep. I'm a verified artist on YouTube, TikTok, Bilibili, Spotify, etc. and all it took was a $15/year Distrokid subscription. That being said, the real challenge for independent artists is getting "blessed by the algorithm," so to speak, where they actually start showing up in Song Radio and Discover Weekly algorithmic playlists. I'm not keen on the details of the Spotify algorithm, but I imagine labels do help with this, and being on the same label as a popular artist would increase your chances of showing up on that artists' song radio.
    - bryans 5y ago
      > That being said, the real challenge for independent artists is getting "blessed by the algorithm," so to speak, where they actually start showing up in Song Radio and Discover Weekly algorithmic playlists. This mindset is unfortunately why most musicians fail to gain traction. Relying on an algorithm for success is fallacy, because all of these algorithms are based on input, not random chance. If you're not steadily supplying new listeners through your own direct efforts, then the algorithm isn't going to perceive value and you won't get any benefits from it. Playlisting represents approximately 1% of the independent music industry puzzle.
karmasimida 5y ago
Most artists don't have a career. How many self sustained artists in the music industry are there, comparing against the self-claimed ones?
- alar44 5y ago
  Idk, millions? You can be self sustained without being an international rock star. I lived off of my musicianship for just over 10 years.
blackearl 5y ago
Chance the Rapper won 3 Grammys without ever working with a major label
priddypixels 5y ago
Check out how Frank Ocean released 2 albums at a time to A) get out of his Def Jam contract then B) release another album (same week?) in a deal with Apple Music. He was black-balled by the industry after. Not another Apple Music partnership since afaik
jstummbillig 5y ago
> It's never true. It is, and increasingly, but not obviously. Labels have money and power. If you have enough money and/or power, you can always be some form of gatekeeper. It used to be studio access. Nowadays that's increasingly a commodity. What is increasingly more expensive is attention, so the labels shifted towards being publishers, building their own channels of distribution, to provide ears and eyes to artists in need. If an artist has already broken through the wall, and has the attention, labels are in a very awkward position, in terms of their value proposition. > Artists can get much further than before but going viral on TikTok is not a viable career strategy for most artists. Which bring us to this part: There is no viable career strategy for most artists, period. Artists obviously don't wanna believe that, so they think of labels as the solution to their issues (they are not). Labels on the other hand only need artists that they think do maybe have a viable career strategy. The bigger the label, the more able and willing they are to take high risk/high reward bets, but relatively a lot less so than they did years ago, simply because it's not necessary anymore because of the dramatic democratisation of access to music production quality. Put simply: Labels want artist that don't need them, but also don't realise, that they don't need them. In 2022, if you are an artist, and labels are getting terribly interested, you are probably a lot closer to not needing them than you think.

davtbaum 5y ago

Disagree hard - every major label I follow is embracing TikTok and encouraging their artists to leverage the platform for growth. Also, labels have so much infrastructure for marketing, merch, booking shows etc. The need for this support doesn’t magically go away with new distribution channels. It just helps newer artists get signed quicker :p

bryans 5y ago
I didn't say that labels don't use TikTok, so you're disagreeing with nothing. What I said, was that labels don't have any legitimate value in a TikTok era, because there's nothing that they can do which an independent artist can't do on their own. > Also, labels have so much infrastructure for marketing, merch, booking shows etc. No, they actually really, genuinely don't. They use the exact same channels that independent musicians do. Booking agencies, merch providers, publicists -- all of them are hirable by anyone, not just labels. Everything you think that labels do, they hire someone else to do that, and then tell you that they need to keep ownership of your music to recoup those costs. That is how the music industry has worked for a hundred years, and if you disagree with that, then go read literally any book on the subject.

nemothekid 5y ago

>They're scrambling to figure out how they fit into the TikTok era, where artists no longer require years of financial incubation to succeed Before this was the Napster era, then the MySpace era, then the SoundCloud era, and now the TikTok era. Somehow those damned labels keep figuring out.

bryans 5y ago
You're giving them far too much credit. They're still very much trying to figure out the Napster era, as to this day they are suing pirates left and right because they genuinely see that 0.01% of the market as a threat to their security.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  What do you mean by pirates? RIAA is suing the distributors and creators of pirated content. They are not suing individual pirates much at all. You said “to this day…left and right” which indicates your average person as that was the most know thing they were doing before in the 00s. That’s not true any more.[0] 0. https://jolt.richmond.edu/2018/03/15/has-the-riaa-given-up-on-combating-end-user-internet-piracy/ https://jolt.richmond.edu/2018/03/15/has-the-riaa-given-up-o...
  - gen220 5y ago
    They sue pirates where the LTV of the litigation is greater than the CAC. So, they tend to go after businesses with predictable and large incomes, that are dependent on music, to varying degrees, for generating that income. Peloton, for example, were sued into a royalty contract with the major labels [1]. It's a fun coincidence that their new CEO is the former Netflix and Spotify CFO. Spotify wasn't sued, because their predecessors were sued into a merger [2][3]. Instead, they acquiesced [4]. The LTV:CAC ratio on this customer was super high. [1]: https://exploration.io/exploration-weekly-peloton-and-nmpa-settle-copyright-infringement-dispute-2019-music-revenue-up-by-13-t-series-first-to-reach-100-billion-views/ https://exploration.io/exploration-weekly-peloton-and-nmpa-s... [2]: https://www.wired.com/2000/04/riaa-wins-suit-against-mp3-com/ https://www.wired.com/2000/04/riaa-wins-suit-against-mp3-com... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.com,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.co.... [4]: https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/19/8621581/sony-music-spotify-contract https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/19/8621581/sony-music-spotif...

phphphphp 5y ago

There’s lots of independent artists that are successful, you’re about 5 years late on the “…independent musicians will kill labels…” prediction which hasn’t been borne out. Musicians are actively choosing to sign to labels, even when they don’t have to… make of that what you will.

bryans 5y ago
You're trying to twist this into a scenario of absolutes, as if there's an on/off switch at which point independent artists make 100% of the money and labels don't exist anymore. That's clearly not what I said, and it's rather inflammatory of you to suggest that it is.
- phphphphp 5y ago
  You said "record labels are rapidly becoming irrelevant" and "the jig is up and labels are going to be panicking". That's about as absolute as you can be. I contend that labels and independents will continue to co-exist, as they have done for many years, despite people proclaiming otherwise (to varying extremes).
  - bryans 5y ago
    "Irrelevant" and "non-existent" are two completely different concepts, and neither of those quoted phrases are even remotely absolutes. Unless you have an actual point to make based on actual knowledge of the subject at hand, please stop with your false pedantry. It's entirely unwelcome and not adding anything to the conversation.
    - phphphphp 5y ago
      Music labels are in the business of cultural relevancy, a label does not make money if they're not relevant, certainly Warner, UMG, Sony etc. wouldn't be generating multi-billions of revenue each year if they were not relevant. I have a point, I am not being pedantic. The message of your post, or at least, the message I took away from your post, was that the tides are turning against labels and independent musicians are the future... ...but that's been the claim made for at least the last decade, and it's proven again and again to be untrue. Yes, independent artists can reach huge levels of success without a label, and certainly it's becoming easier and easier to achieve success without a label, however, that doesn't have any logical through line to music labels becoming irrelevant. Artists like Macklemore are great examples of independent artists who reached great success but still chose to work with labels, because labels provide value. Likewise, there are many successful independent artists who sign with major labels, even some of the artists people pointed to as independent examples in this thread have gone on to sign with labels. I will happily make a bet with you, and you can choose the metric: in 5 years, major record labels will be doing better than they are today. My metric of choice would be total revenue as measured by the IFPI, but I'm open to other metrics if you think total revenue as measured by the IFPI isn't a fair representation. Although I don't work in the music industry, I have participated in this discussion many times over the years, including conversations with major label artists. Historically, record labels were gatekeepers and it's fantastic to see the shifts in consumer habits that have enabled independent artists to succeed, I would not dispute that for one second, and I will happily celebrate it alongside you, but the last decade has disproven the anti-label thesis again and again. Labels and independents will co-exist, they will grow together. If your comment was focused entirely on the success of independents, I wouldn't have had anything to say. I would have just given an upvote, because I agree wholeheartedly.

shadowgovt 5y ago

The dark side to this is that artists are learning that the things labels did for them are things someone really does have to do, and some hate it. I've seen a couple artists talk about what a pain it is to maintain a social media presence (especially on platforms they hate) because the alternative is obscurity. My prediction is that there's a pendulum back-swing in progress as people figure out how to offer brand-management-as-a-service without just becoming a label.

bryans 5y ago
You're absolutely correct about the dark side, and I would never want to minimize the complexity or sheer effort required to self-manage a music project. Like any startup, it is not easy and you are wholly responsible for everything that happens -- including any mistakes, of which they will likely be many. This is far too daunting for some people, and understandably so, particularly when they just want to "make some rad music with my friends, man." That said, all of those professional services are directly hirable by any musician, without the need for a label middleman. The best move a band can make, is hire someone to handle the thing they least want to do. As you mentioned, posting on social media is the most hated of all tasks for a lot of folks, and in that situation your first hire should be a publicist (aka social media manager). It gets the largest monkey off your back, and frees up that time for all of the other business stuff that still needs to get done. That said, you could also hire a publicist for a day, and they could assemble a social media schedule for you, and provide a bunch of templates to use, and take all of the mystery out of what to post and when and how and why. And now instead of paying a retainer or sharing gross, you're paying someone in the band to do it, and all of the money stays with the group. As for your prediction, you're correct about that, as well, because it's already starting to happen. Many people, like myself, offer a sort of label/manager on-demand service, where for a very small consultation fee, the band gets a monthly analysis of where they're at and what steps they need to be taking, along with all of the granular instructions on how to accomplish those tasks. If I had to guess, there are currently about 1,000 people doing this around the world, but that number is growing rapidly. There are also a lot of tools springing up to help simplify those tasks.
- deleted 5y ago

Melatonic 5y ago

Until the Ticketmaster monopoly goes away I think independent music superstars are gonna be in for a hard time.

bryans 5y ago
That is a fair point on the touring side of things, but every city still has theaters and large clubs which are not beholden to Ticketmaster. So, while an independent artist may not have access to a Beyonce-level stadium production, they can still be extremely successful in literally every other capacity.
- Melatonic 5y ago
  There was an article recently I read that basically posited that was actually no longer the case - Ticketmaster has bought up the companies that own or have exclusive contracts with most venues and now most venues are fairly locked in. I am sure there are some in any big city that are not but not nearly enough.

IMTDb 5y ago

I think labels are more relevant than ever. In a world where it's easier and easier to create music, and distribute it, how do you discover music ? Through curators, podcasts etc. And those are managed by - you guessed it - labels. Thing is that - in order to be relevant, and play that role - labels need to actually develop a style and expertise in the specific genre/type they want to operate in.

bryans 5y ago
> In a world where it's easier and easier to create music, and distribute it, how do you discover music ? Through curators, podcasts etc. And those are managed by - you guessed it - labels. That's simply untrue. The vast majority of curating and playlisting is through bloggers or social media personalities and not through labels, so I'm not sure where you got that from.
- basisword 5y ago
  Who has access to those bloggers and social media personalities? Labels. Otherwise you're just sending your demo to a blog and hoping it might get listened to in the same way you would have sent it to a college radio staton 30 years ago.
  - bryans 5y ago
    That's a conspiratorial and untrue claim. The most popular curated playlists (i.e. ones that aren't algorithmically produced by Spotify under the guise of curation) don't actually have label influence. Anyone can contact those curators directly, and if presented with something palatable, they will most likely put it in rotation. > Otherwise you're just sending your demo to a blog and hoping it might get listened to in the same way you would have sent it to a college radio staton 30 years ago. What do you think the record label is doing when they contact a curator or radio station? It's the exact same as if a musician had contact them. It's an email to a person, who makes a decision based on the content.
    - 5y ago

EMIRELADERO 5y ago

Do you think this could have an effect on copyright in popular culture?

conradfr 5y ago

There's great labels still, like Sargent House. Social platforms and digitalization can helped being truly independent but there's still non-music work that a label would do for you that you now have to manage. And even if the stories about the struggling musicians becoming rock stars has always been embellished, it seems nowadays most of the current ones had financial security before pursuing their music career because of the low budgets available to develop new artists.

bryans 5y ago
> Social platforms and digitalization can helped being truly independent but there's still non-music work that a label would do for you that you now have to manage. Except that is rapidly becoming untrue, which is the entire point. Self-management in the music industry is actually quite simple if you have the tools and knowledge, and both of those are now widely available to everyone.
wintermutestwin 5y ago
>There's great labels still, like Sargent House. True, but the only OmarRodriguezLopez (for example) that I actually listen to is available on Apple Music. Every once in a while I'll pull up something on YouTube that isn't on Apple Music, but my 99% of the time music player is Apple Music, and if I buy something that's not on there it is a PITA to deal with and costs as much as a month sub to all the things on streaming. The only reason that a label like Sargent House is relevant is as a discovery aid.

milesward 5y ago

Macklemore did that already.

52-6F-62 5y ago

Maybe, maybe not. There's a larger variety of business model behind record labels than what people usually mean when they refer to record labels. They're not all middlemen trying to take a cut out of artists. Those exist, and artists have always railed against the model... and then start their own label. Labels are mainly a house for all of the logistics behind an artist. No artist wants to spend 90% of their time marketing, merchandizing, booking, etc, etc, etc. They want to create and perform. The label is supposed to enable that. As long as the label does so, then it's worth it. Plus it's a great way to work with your less musical friends. Corporate isn't the only option.

bryans 5y ago
> Maybe, maybe not. There's a larger variety of business model behind record labels than what people usually mean when they refer to record labels. They're not all middlemen trying to take a cut out of artists. Those exist, and artists have always railed against the model... and then start their own label. It's a nice theory, but it doesn't really play out like that. For example, back in the 90s and 00s, indie record labels were all the rage, particularly in the metal world. You had all of these companies like Relapse, Metal Blade and Century Media operating "outside" of the major label system, and you'd think that would protect the artists from middlemen, but it didn't. Those companies absorbed massive amounts of money with relatively small staffs, and much to the detriment of the artists who would often go home with nothing after a tour. I watched it happen so many times that it became pointless to keep count. And don't even get me started on how little they actually supported the artists in any capacity -- they wouldn't even send singles to radio stations when the stations themselves were asking in order to put them into rotation. There are certainly "good" independent labels, as well as good people working at "bad" major labels. I think almost everyone gets into the business because they love music and want to participate in finding and producing the best talent. However, much like every industry, once the revenue reaches some threshold and the employee counts grow, those altruistic motivations become much more difficult to maintain. Unless the person at the top of the company is wholly dedicated to music and that attitude is able to trickle down to every employee, then labels have a proven tendency to devolve into middlemanning and nickle/diming and worse. > Labels are mainly a house for all of the logistics behind an artist. No artist wants to spend 90% of their time marketing, merchandizing, booking, etc, etc, etc. They want to create and perform. The label is supposed to enable that. As long as the label does so, then it's worth it. That's an oversimplification and the last bit is definitely not true. A label is not actually a manager or booking agent or publicist. Labels pay people to do all of those things, in the same way that any musician can. In fact, the biggest function that an indie label provides these days beyond some physical distribution (which is also a third party service), is maintain a list of those managers and booking agents who may be willing to take a meeting with a no-name startup band just because the label vouches for them. That's about it. More importantly, managers and booking agents still aren't going to do all of the work for you. One of the biggest shocks that bands face when getting signed, is just how much of the business and marketing work they need to do themselves. So at the end of the day, anyone is more than welcome to give away 80% of their gross to a label if they want, but they have to do so understanding that more than 50% of the effort is still going to fall on the band members' shoulders.

te_chris 5y ago

[citation needed] You’re not wrong, people can do more themselves now…but the labels can also do these things, while being globally networked. You sound like you know what you’re talking about, but probably worth spending more time knowing your enemy if you really want to destroy them.

gumby 5y ago

> Sometime in the next year or two, we will see the first truly independent music superstars achieve household-name status. Once that veil is broken, then the jig is up and labels are going to be panicking -- if they're not already. We are almost there but not quite. Justin Bieber famously got his start on YouTube, which is a step up from A&R scouts haunting the clubs -- he was 14 and in Canada so probably would never have been found. But a label signed him and increased his exposure by several orders of magnitude. That wasn't even 15 years ago. Moving from the opposite direction is live music revenues -- from the late 1980s The Grateful Dead made most of their money from touring, not albums, and were one of the top grossing acts for a few years despite a paucity of hit records (a phenomenon the music and financial press seemed to find incomprehensible). Like Bieber, they needed the labels to get there, but then again they started about 60 years ago. They were also pretty into investigating new technology and models despite playing somewhat "low tech" music. And some breakout stars now control their own finances and corpus, which is also new and really of the same vintage as the Bieber example. I think Ke$ha was a pioneer in this regard, but she built on a prior precedent of some label-developed megastars (e.g. Bowie, Beatles, and famously Prince) who managed to get to the point where the labels needed them more than they needed the labels. Ke$sha pulled it off before getting to that point and she's not the only one (interestingly the only ones I've heard of doing this are all women, but it's not like I follow the music business). The phase change I'm waiting for is when someone can really break out on their own without a Svengali like the labels. The influencer "infrastructure", such as it is, is too tenuous to pull this off today. But like you, I don't think it's far away, though next couple of years seems too soon. But within the decade. The fascinating thing about this is the whole debate about how fair the streaming payments are will go away. Instead the stars will likely prefer that the music not be paid for at all (that will magically increase its frequency in the mix); instead it will function as a kind of free advertising for alternative revenue streams. In this, the example of the Dead is illustrative.

canogat 5y ago

And 99.9% of artists still won’t get paid squat.

eezurr 5y ago

I would be interested to hear your non-editorialized argument without the symbolism. YouTube is a precursor to TikTok and for the most part offers the same functionality (organizing and distributing media to billions of people). YouTube has existed for 17 years and is not lacking in uploads by talented musicians, singers, and bands. Since the two companies are not that different and both serve billions of people, there's already 17 years of proof against your argument. Also, Justin Bieber would not exist without the record labels. He very likely would have faded out of the consciousness of the masses a few years after his e-fame. >The music industry is growing because independent musicians are finally figuring out how to navigate it without any need for those traditional industry services. Uploading music to YouTube or TikTok is not "navigating" the industry. As easy as it is to upload content, it's just as easy to be forgotten. There's countless other people competing for eyeballs on those platforms. The record labels provide administrative resources, recording/audio engineering, distribution/merchandise, legal, booking/touring, management, public relations, industry contacts, and probably more. Tackling that workload (if popular) without outside support does not seem possible. Also, the record labels exist to serve the masses. They always have, and always will. I don't see a huge demand for the style of music independent artists create. If there was such a demand, the record labels would capture it. They exist to make a profit, and aren't dumb. They don't hold the little guy back, it's the little guy who doesn't understand they are competing in a (wrong) market that isn't interested in their product. I grew up hating the RIAA. I used to spend time reading articles about how awful the RIAA was as a budding musician. Now that I'm older, I'm sad to see what they represent disappear. They were the foundation that the pinnacle of American culture was built off of in the 60s-90s. Their gate offered quality at the cost of quantity. What's happening now, IMO, is that the market is dividing more and more every year. More bands that fulfill the needs of fewer people. This trend is not sustainable in the long run, especially for the musicians.

wodenokoto 5y ago

On the flip side I want to say the fastest growing genre globally is kpop and it is extremely heavily label driven, with very long incubation periods.

dehrmann 5y ago

I'm less concerned with artists bypassing record labels because "artists already get enough promotional value out of social media" (and they actually might if they're full-time marketers and part-time artists). If I were a label, I'd be worried that the death of radio and rise of personalization kills the demand for professionally written, produced, and recorded tracks, eventually replacing them with ephemeral, low-value TikTok videos. How are you going to find out about that latest Dua Lipa single if you're not hearing it anywhere? And why would you care? Labels sell polished, high-value tracks to listeners, marketing services to artists, and to pay for this, they need a large market, broad appeal, and residual revenue. That's just not a match for TikTok. It's not that they're being disintermediated, it's that there isn't any value left for a middleman with short-lived, low-value niche products.

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