Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Do we Need Record Labels any more?

No, and we haven't for a while.

We are at the dawn of a great age for musicians. An age in which musicians aren't going to be hindered any more by the constraints of how much it costs to record and distribute their music.
Or by the demands of record labels.

What record labels brought to the table was the infrastructure that was needed to record the music, press it, ship it, distribute it, and get it played on the radio. And it was a lopsided and unfair system. Google search for "deal memo", or click here, and you'll find Steve Albini's excellent write up on this terrible system.

Now that recording isn't (or doesn't need to be) as expensive a process, "pressing and distributing it' involves sending a few copies to CD Baby or Tune Core so you can get it on Amazon and iTunes, or just letting people download it from your website, and to the extent that airplay is even necessary, you can do that yourself as well, streaming on places like MySpace, the record companies really don't have a viable business model.

It's not like I invented this idea, either. Artists like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead have been doing their thing for several years now. What's new is that the wave is starting to pick up speed as smaller artists get on the bandwagon.

This is all probably pretty scary stuff if your job is tied to a record label or an ancillary industry, but as a recording engineer and a musician myself, I find it all pretty exciting, and I know I'll be watching to see what happens next.

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