Major Vs. Indie: What Really Happens When You Sign A Record Deal

As the recording industry continues to battle against the steady decline of physical album sales, and now steady decline in digital album sales, it can be difficult as an independent musician to determine the best path to take for long-term growth and success.

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Major Labels Still Invest in Music (Kinda)

In the graphic below you’ll see how major labels are currently advancing and promoting acts, primarily pop acts, in order to break them to the general public. It’s an interesting refresher in how much major labels are still able to put towards music, albeit music we may not care for. Their options are minimal and their expectations are high. With this still hefty investment, it makes you wonder how successful they could be pushing smaller, touring groups instead of putting all their eggs into one basket.

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How A Major Label Markets A New Artist

Recently, ASCAP’s Daily Brief included an article by David F. Carr entitled, “How Warner Music Turns Social Media Fans Into Customers”. I thought there was one paragraph in there that was extremely insightful that some readers may not have caught. It needed to be expounded upon. If you’ve always wondered how a major label goes about building a fanbase for a new artist - as far as their overarching philosophy on it - there it was!

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Do You Have To Choose Between Being An Internet Star And A Radio Star?

I’ve started to notice a trend. Radio doesn’t like the internet. Actually, most of the music industry doesn’t like the internet. The traditional music industry can’t do much about file sharing, loss of their brand, the flattening of recording technology, etc, but they can do something about radio and traditional media. They can use their power in both worlds to ignore nearly every music star the internet has created.

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Remake Remodel - The Major Labels Speak

Amongst the busy chatter of digital DIY dudes and galloping gurus it’s easy to forget that there is a major, multi-million dollar music industry that already exists. That’s because we seldom hear from the major players outside the sanitized propaganda sheets of Billboard and Music Week. But this week we can read their views in a Music Tank report by ex-EMI head, Tony Wadsworth.

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Food For Thought - 2 Warner Music Execs Share $14 Million

Warner Music SEC Filing via HypeBot

Are fan-funded models the future of the recorded music business?

Does last weeks announcement of another fan funded music business model called bandstocks, reinforce the feeling that labels are beginning to loose their attraction to release established artists records? 2006 saw the first real roll-out of fan funded model sellaband.com. Since then sellaband has gone on to have 23 artists reach the $50,000 US dollar threshold to record an album. In 2007 Slicethepie.com appeared on the fan-funded radar and now we have another twist to the model in the form of bandstocks.

What are the differences between each of these fan funded models and what are the pros and cons for artists, fans and the entrepreneurs who have established them? What are the wider implications of these new models for the traditional recorded music labels and publisher’s alike?

Lets drill down on what each of these models offer the artist and fans/investors.

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