what label are you aiming to be on?

me? no clue. part of the reason why I'm creating this thread. it's time in my life i start sending out demos, so this is a start.

  Fred McGriff said:

me? no clue. part of the reason why I'm creating this thread. it's time in my life i start sending out demos, so this is a start.

You should probably start with Mush records

thanks MRX I'm checking them out now.

what about you? rephlex?

resonant

death row records

warp and rephlex because they love accepting demos, as clearly indicated by their very informative webpages

i don't know how suited i am but i definitely would rate planet mu above all.

Yeah. Planet-mu is very appealing.

earstroke

i recently turned down giving a demo to one of the warp boss's friends. still have no regrets about it..

i also reluctently send a demo to planet-mu, but i think mike had to pay the extra postage on it as i send it 2nd class..and probally didnt bother, which i cant blame him. lol.

lol i just dropped a blank cd in a box, wrote "astralwerks" on it, and punted it out the front door

motown

labels are evil

beatniks are brainwashed

I think we should aim at some massive-label that can pay us a lot of money. mwahah T__T

apple

v/vm!

or Planet Mu!

yeah earstroke is the dope

yes

any that will have me.

it's one of my new years resolutions to send stuff out. Especially as I've just written some new stuff that I quite like that will apear in Your Latest Creations in a few days.

with many labels you have to accept that they may sit on your tune 2+ years before putting it out, or deciding not to put it out - they may or may not pay you - the grand-total of their promotion may be your EP title on the label website - they may not give you any advance, make any profit, or manage to shift more than a few hundred units

the big labels are often the worst offenders unless you happen to be a seminal electronic act from the early 90's

all the while, there's people making a living selling new age guitar music off their own websites, shifting 20,000 CDR's and racking up similar numbers of downloads

labels are a good thing because there's seas of crap out there - they're a bad thing because they typically have less common sense or marketting knowledge than a 15 year-old business studies student

a myspace page and a picture of a cat can get your more exposure - and a lot of signed artists are realising this

like any label would ever accept my music...

  ieafs said:

see, i think that's very true... well in terms of smaller labels.

 

the only things that a label really does is make you part of a community of like-minded musicians. for example, with a label like kranky you can sort of know what to expect by someone one there. there's a certain aesthetic or attitude that ties them together... which is something i really like. that sort of community thing that labels like rephlex, UR or kranky have.

 

and obviously, hopefully be able to fund putting out records for you and links with distros etc.

 

but for a small record label probably run by some well-meaning, but no business-savvy people... there's not much they can do that you can't do with - like prof says - a myspace page and a website selling CD-Rs. actually, my brother is in this band and they got a message from a pretty big label on their myspace asking for a proper demo. and this is with no marketing or anything at all. shows that people are out there looking in places like that.

oh yeah, i think we're about to enter an age where the musician has to take on the role of designer/marketter/distributor/etc. him/herself to get anywhere

independant music's extremely over-saturated - it's unrealistic to expect a release not only to cover its own costs, but those of all the other people in the chain who need to make a living...

when i was mastering, i was often the only person, out of about 20 involved closely with the project, who'd make any money off it at all

my best friend's band's been on Sony for about 3 or 4 years - none of them have made any real money out of music - they get the odd all-expenses paid trips to places like Japan for a few days, but apart from that, very little in the way of royalties - the odd £1,000 cheque once or twice a year... the advance all goes on studio costs and replacing instruments and things

yeah that's usually how it is - make more money selling your promo copies to friends and selling t-shirts at gigs

but then, with bands and big labels, there's often so many people between the guy writing the song and the person buying it, all trying to earn a living - from the engineer and manager, to the label staff, distro staff, pressing plant, right down to paying for the heating and lighting in the HMV you buy it from

but i wouldn't be suprised if in a short time there's plenty of artists making a decent living off myspace downloads alone, in just the same way as ebay's a realistic alternative to running a shop nowadays

Sublight Records and Planet-Mu