| Features | What role do labels play? Do you need a label to be successful? |
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Are you on Rawrip and playing a festival? Let us know here in time and we'll get your name up in this feature. |
Words by Tom Hannan
So what is a record label? Well, first and foremost, a record label releases records. This might sound like a stupid thing to say as it’s so blindingly obvious, but in this state of constant, manic flux the whole industry is in at the minute, what is a record any more? Hell, they’ve always been collections of sounds – does sound even need to exist physically any more? Did it ever? Well, despite the fact that you can get a number one single without ever pressing a hard copy of a record at the moment, when it comes to albums, figures seem to suggest that physical copy is still a desired medium. People still enjoy thumbing through a booklet, losing a case, putting things in alphabetical order on a shelf. And if you want thousands of people to be able to do this with a record you’ve written yourself, then getting a record label is probably the best way to go about it.
Record labels exist, if you take a romantic view of things, because somebody somewhere likes a record enough to believe that the rest of the world – or at least a few more people than just close family and friends – should hear it. And that applies to everyone from the independents to the majors. Their role is about giving things wider audiences – something a band themselves might not have a clue about. Some labels get a bad rap. These are usually big, faceless corporations known as ‘majors’, where money is deemed by the music listener to be the be all and end all of their endeavours. But majors have released some of the best and most artistically relevant music of all time, don’t forget. We’ve big ‘bad’ corporations like these to thank for the likes of Prince, Bruce Springsteen, The Clash and countless others. Some more independent labels however, deemed to be the most ethically sound and artistically daring, become as loved by their fans as the bands they release. The likes of Dischord, Touch and Go, Sub Pop, Creation and SST spring to mind. Recently, with physical record sales declining, many major record labels have become more interested in what’s know as 360 degree deals, whereby instead of taking a big cut from royalties they afford the artist more of the money that comes from record sales and instead take a cut from the areas of music that are still making money – t shirt sales, touring, syncs on adverts, festival appearances and the like. Previously, the artist would keep if not all then most of the cash from these areas, and this would be where they’d pay the bills from, a lot of the time. One has to wonder if this new format is truly in the best interest of the artist, but also it should be noted that increasingly more artists are signing to deals like these who, in this day and age, simply wouldn’t get a record deal any more. Presumably, they think a 360 deal is better than nothing – and the label still does its job of getting the record out to the wider audience, still its main purpose.
You can be successful without a label, sure. But until the record industry sorts out what it’s doing with regards the internet (and believe me, it still doesn’t really have a clue; the fault of huge dinosaur corporations being slow and reluctant to change their working methods because they stubbornly just don’t want to), that success probably isn’t going to be on an enormous scale. Even so called web successes like Sandy Thom, Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen – if you dig around enough, you’ll find a label at the core of their success. As an artist, it all depends on what you want for your music, how ambitious you are, how much control you’re willing to give up. Want to fund your own tours, release your own music via download, press up your own t shirts, manage yourselves? Well go right ahead, and the very best of luck to you. But you could always have done that. Want your record to be released in Korea, Switzerland, Argentina? Want tour support for that jaunt around South America you’ve got planned? Want that gatefold double red 12” release of your debut album? Sad though it might be, if your ambitions are as lofty as those, then you’re still only at the minute going to get by with a little help from some people who may or may not yet turn out to be your friends.
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But do you really need a label any more? Radiohead – who released their stunning In Rainbows LP via a free download on their website a few months ago – might argue that you don’t, as said LP was one of their most successful both artistically and critically in many years. And they managed to do it all of their own backs, to their infinite credit. But Radiohead are unique, for many reasons, and not just musical ones. They found themselves in a position where they could afford, in many senses of the word, to do what they did. You won’t find a small band doing it – and if you did, you certainly wouldn’t find them being as successful. Even bands with considerable profiles like The Charlatans and Saul Williams have tried similar systems in the wake of Radiohead’s success, only to find the world’s reaction was a bit more ‘meh’ than ‘wahey!’. 
