LABEL recommendation thread

[+] experimedia. listens carefully, honest answers, usually short answering times.

[+] earstroke. no offense answers, though quality control is obvious. yes/no answer honest and usually in short answering time.

[-] thinner. doesn't take any new artists anymore, no matter how close they come to the idea.

[-] stadtgruen. almost the same as with thinner. stupid short offending answers, though the music obviously was skipped through. said in a telephone call... the label is held for the names being. lot of rubbish talk about other topics like print media too.

What about real labels?

  Mr. Modular said:

What about real labels?

yeah. enter some infos. just put some useful infos, ok ? i think both, web and hardcopy is interesting.

Fat Cat told me "no".

What can 'real' labels really do for peeps these days? Lets be honest you're better off promoting yourself. There are only a handful of labels that in themselves have a strong enough name/following to be very useful as promotional units in themselves.

  Promo said:

What can 'real' labels really do for peeps these days? Lets be honest you're better off promoting yourself. There are only a handful of labels that in themselves have a strong enough name/following to be very useful as promotional units in themselves.

That might be true if you only make "electronic music", but for other genres labels still mean a lot.

but seemingly less and less by the day...

i mean, i wouldn't have replaced vinyl with CD, given the choice... i'd have waited until we had 192khz 24-bit digital medium before we made the switch - it is a comprimise, but it's a very useful one...

likewise, i think we lose a big something exchanging mp3's rather than physical albums... and not just sound quality... but it's inevitable digital distribution's going to be the only way to buy and sell music in a few years time... i'm sure there'll always be a hardcore sticking with vinyl, but CD's? as connections get faster i'd hope we'll soon see mp3 formats better than CD quality - no reason why not

so what's going to separate a net label from a "proper" label?

a label's just going to be an identity, to help navigate and catagorize the 100's of thousands of independant musicians out there...

thing is, i don't think any scene can support more than 3 significant labels at any one time - regardless

"real" labels are becoming redundant, if an artists chooses to put in the effort he can easily release the work himself and make some money. i like this vision of the future.

i wonder if the content of the discussion thats placed here... could not have been added up into the NETLABEL thread. i mean if you dont count on any label... why do you enter here ?

for myself i feel a label is very useful for listeners. promoting oneself is important. but if there's additional chances... you need and will have to do them.

therefor its important to know where you are better off...and why. i feel its even a useful information for consumers...to know which label is open to which of the artists. no ?

do i need to browse all the artists weblogs for reading which labels kicked them off with offensive words ?

that's the problem isn't it - navigation...

but then, do we need a label for that, or could we simply rely on any centralized media source, like a respected magazine, fanzine, DJ, radio show or reviewer?

i think the problem with labels now is that there's far too many to be of any use as navigation tools...

but then in accepting that any music scene needs paradigms, you maybe also have to accept that the vast majority of aspiring labels and artists out there will never be anything more than background noise

  kaen said:

"real" labels are becoming redundant, if an artists chooses to put in the effort he can easily release the work himself and make some money. i like this vision of the future.

Likewise, not just for music but for things like video and especially computer games as well

labels are needed for quality control... (!!!)

so the next step...

labels that govern sub-labels obviously

a whole new can of worms... or dicks rather

tbh, i think it'll be more down to internet based magazines of some sort to provide quality control and point people in the right direction...

at the moment there's nothing remotely suitable... fanzines seem to mop up all the aspiring Guardian columnist, media studies dregs these days - people with mostly very predictable, uninteresting opinions, and with ego's the size of planets, trying to hone their own, unique writing style before even proving themselves capable of writing for a real publication in the first place...

in many ways, fanzines suffer from the same problem net labels do...

to become a good writer or musician, and to actually be worthy of having your own voice, style and opinions, you need to prove yourself and develop your craft over years, if not decades... a good writer may have been working 60 hour weeks in magazine offices for 15 years before they get the opportunity to write a regular column in a decent publication

it's those years of hard graft and struggling where you develop... i think it's very easy to get in the habit of being a bad writer, or making amateurish predictable music... the last thing you need is positive reinforcement for doing that...

i believe you do need constant knockbacks and rejection, even when your work is brilliant...

...and if net labels and fanzines are ever going to be worthy of taking this place - they're going to need to be every bit as discerning and professional... and we're a long way off that at the moment

for me it breaks down like this...

real label/real cds etc...gets your music released and you get some money.

cd-r label...music gets heard, no real money, maybe a few free copies to give to mates.

net label... simply getting your music heard. good for networking and might lead to other things.

nice net labels (in my experience) are test-tube, camomille, 2063music, oblast, standard klik music. plus you get some "known" artsits invloved which kind of legitamizes the net labels credability. im thinking kenneth kirschner (test-tube) and david kristian (camomille).