How to open a label today

Background

Club-goers at The Que in Birmingham in January 1996.
Photograph: Terence Donovan

I can tell you that I'm not a newbie: I started making electronic music in the 90s.

I self-produced some records, others were produced for me by various labels, in all the formats that followed in those years: from vinyl to CD, up to the more classic digital format that is still used today.

After a long break I returned to the sector working for an English indie rock label, which printed vinyl, CDs and made digital releases. What I noticed was a huge change in the entire music market and I'm not just talking about tastes, genres, top artists: distribution is changing, the way people finds music, listen to, play, buy or "rent", everything changed.
Our generation owned the music they bought; now most of the people pays for a subscription to listen to what they want, when they want, until the subscritpion expires, whithout being owner of anything.

We had a very limited internet, constantly growing but not that busy and rich in contents as today: the most commercial music was proposed by radio and television, while underground music remained a subject of research by DJs and was passed down through word of mouth, research, passion.
I used to go to my record shop and if there was something I liked, I took my copy, or I tried to reserve something.
Otherwise, i would have gone to other cities, countries, shops, and buy what i could discover.
The DJ, in essence, brought all these novelties: he was a researcher, a collector, called for his baggage of records.
Today, everything is available: good, bad? Different, nothing else.
Do you want to compose electronic music? You only need minimal skills to download any type of program and publish a record. Do you want to be listened to and sell? Here everything changes.
Every day, 20 thousand new albums are released on Spotify alone.
If we want to be positive, maybe 100 of these are valid and will be listened to, the rest die every day and are forgotten.
So it takes an effort to emerge, a study, otherwise you will end up like anyone who tries just for the sake of it.

Prerliminary study

Starting a label doesn't have big costs, but some are essential and will make the difference.

A good website helps to create constant communication and to approach your listeners or customers in an appropriate way.
A graphic identity is also essential: in an era where everyone uses AI and everyone is the same, we pay real professionals to stand out.
After these essential steps it is appropriate to find a good distribution.
You will find hundreds of proposals, all different.
Personally I have done months of tests and research, using a lot of my personal material, often failing, because not everyone really does what they promise: be careful not to be fooled.
For the same reason why 20 thousand artists try to make new music every day, the market has filled up with new figures who live by promising results to these emerging artists: they get paid and then leave you in the void to fail.
No label that believes in its artists will ever ask for payment, in the same way no distributor.
Whoever believes in you, invests in you. Your success will be their success.
Likewise, the best distributors don't ask to be paid: they take a small percentage of your earnings.
Some distributors even advance you the cost of printing the records: but you have to be already famous, sought after, to get that far.
My advice, however, is to study the options and read the contracts very carefully.

Illustration by Killer X.
Killer is the author of our label logo and signs our releases whenever we have the chance to call him. Other illustrators are working as well for us.

Killer X Social Killer X Shop

The Artists, the Music

Alexer: the first Artist that joined our roster

A label is made by the people who populate it. First and foremost are the artists, the roster.

My personal choice was to invest in people who I thought were worthy, pushing each one to give their best, taking care of their releases individually, also taking them out of the label to make them grow: this worked.

Today the same artists who were emerging have become much more popular and make records with professionals.
We are all different, but we are part of a team, we have to grow individually and as a collective.

Prerliminary study

Don't rush. Don't burn albums and artists without taking a path, without studying.

We could have produced double the records, for example, but we collaborated with other labels to increase our audience and also to improve our skills.

Why put a song on YouTube on our channel with 100 followers when a specific channel has 200 thousand?
I prefer to have 200 thousand listeners today, so that tomorrow my channel will also be more sought after, or not?
So nothing must be left to chance, done just for the sake of trying.

Every artist will have to take their own path and in the same way their label, reasoned, productive, without rushing.

See you soon and good luck.

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DDos

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