What is the Record Label of Tomorrow?

Jeff Price is the founder and CEO of TuneCore

In the “old days” things were a lot clearer for bands; whether you liked it or not, getting signed to a record label was the path to become a rock star. 

Getting “signed” allowed the only possibility of having enough money and resources to record the artistic vision in your head, follow your dreams, play in front of 50,000 people, get your own Led Zepplin jet, have Sir George Martin produce your album, get great band photos, huge posters, distribution, fame and reach and CONNECT with your fans.

But now, labels are less relevant, less cool, less important, less needed.  Even the labels know they need to change if they are going to survive. It use to be a BADGE OF HONOR to say “I got signed to Matador, Staxx, SubPop, Merge, Warner, Atlantic, Motown, Columbia, Sun, Epic, Interscope, Geffen, Capital! My record label can kick your record label’s butt.  My label is cooler. I’m on the same label as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Hendrix, The Who, The Police, The Sex Pistols, The Pixies, Credence, The Offspring!”  It all meant something and made sense.  It was all part of the dream and how to get there. What’s the path to that now? What is the NEW record label and what role should it play, if any?

For a label to continue to matter to musicians it has to serve and provide unique and meaningful opportunities.  It has to release artists that other musicians respect and aspire to be. It has to shift its model to serve and work for the artist, not have the artist work and serve the label.  And it has to be cool…

Which brings me to TuneCore.  It’s a recent thing, but for the first time since we launched three years ago, when I tell musicians I run TuneCore they not only know what it is but many of them leave me really humbled by thanking me and calling themselves TuneCore Artists. 

It’s an awkward moment for me, as I feel proud and lucky and cool to be able to work with YOU. Which got me thinking more about how TuneCore could become a new version of what a record label needs to become. At the moment, TuneCore Artists get worldwide distribution, radio play in Guitar Center stores; endorsement deals with Ernie Ball strings; royalty administration, collection and accounting; marketing pushes with song giveaways; sales certification awards; advertising of your album, band and music in Guitar Center catalogs and emails; free buttons and other merchandise shipped out to TuneCore Artist every three months, guides and information on on-line marketing; educational information on mastering, mixing, trademark, copyright and more.  

Coming soon TuneCore artists will get guaranteed gigs in select cities with minimum $100 guarantees; the opportunity to have a song scored and made available to buy (and you get paid) as sheet music at MusicNotes.com; physical distribution via Amazon with CDs manufactured on-demand by the Amazon owned company Create Space (when the CD is ordered, one is made with full art in a jewel box and fulfilled and shipped by Amazon); a TuneCore branded section of Amazon featuring only TuneCore artists; direct emails sent by Amazon to its customers featuring only TuneCore Artist’s releases; a streaming widget that you can place anywhere on the net that also allows you to collect the email addresses of your fans; an iPhone application that allows music fans to share, listen, buy and discover music solely from TuneCore customers; an art tool that lets you build your own artwork with custom images and designs and more.

I like to think that TuneCore is a great model of what a record label needs to become. When musicians choose to become TuneCore Artists they are in a way “signed” under a new model that provides the good, but gets rid of what was wrong with the system.

I would love to get your thoughts.  What to you is the “label” of tomorrow?

Comments

[Shirley Girl]

There's an artist to look out for named Zkunk.The best commercial hits that I've heard in years.Forget everything on your roster this is it!Jealous ears in motion! This is the one act that will bring in the whole world.Guess what?They really don't want to sign!Now this act can write some hits.They've had a few offers but passed,No Bob Barker the Price wasn't right!Zkunk/Lower Realm.

[gousse]

JEFF, contact Max Gousse 310-228-7549

[Dmitry Mikheev]

Thank you for your great job!

Just two wishes at this moment:

1) Let TuneCore accept payments from credit/debet cards like Visa.
(Runing Paypal account in some countries is, well, "tricky".)

2) Let TuneCore send accounting reports in something more like "electronic tables", not coma-separated-values in lines of text. It's a nightmare to sort hundreds of lines of text "by eyesight" when it comes to calculating royalties for different authors of a dozen of songs...
(Though it's good there're hundres, yep.)

---
And our special thanks to Tai Morita for excellent cooperation!

[Allan]

Tunecore is a wonderful company and I'm proud to say I run with you guy's, but with that said, I'm not quite sure tunecore can do anything about changing the music industry for up coming acts.

Any type of new act weather they be rock, rap, soul, jazz, metal, etc etc are all stuck with innocent thoughts in regards to how the industry operates. Anybody who knows a little about this industry know full well how corrupt and rigged it is. It takes money to make money, and the bigger the record company, the more money they have.
Though record companies these days may well be considered to be 'uncool', what people seem to forget is that they have always provided funding for promotion (how else do you think new acts obtain MTV airplay!?), without a good label, acts would never see any kind of radio play, publicity, marketing etc etc. Labels have the money that is really needed in order to really push an act to where they need to be. In order to get a spot as the musical act on Letterman - you need to be fixed up with a very reputable publicist or publicity company - which, by the way, costs a LOT of money. ONLY record labels and companies can afford this kind of necessity. This aspect of the music industry will never ever change, I don't care what ANYBODY say's. How do you think the garbage we hear on the radio and MTV manage this kind of relentless publicity? New, unsigned acts will never beat this, they'll never come close. You either need a driven, financially capable label behind you OR a whole batch of cash in the bank.

[Andy]

Even though my band Atomic Fury doesn't really "tour", we just gig locally, and we don't have a huge fanbase, we've had decent sales through Tunecore, and I'm glad for a service like them.
For those complaining that they're not selling, you have to let people know your stuff is available, any way you can. We've put out all different kinds of YouTube videos set to our music and at the end of each of them is an add to buy us on the different stores Tunecore provides. They cost almost nothing to make, but we have sales spikes every time we put one out. And they're not all music videos, or people getting kicked in the balls.

[Wild Bill Austin]

"The internet has leveled the playing field," says Terry Copley, Founder and CEO of Local Scene Record Label. The veteran musician is geared to the needs of the artist, after, of course, the end user, "the listener." I was fortunate to sign with LSR this past month and I am already experiencing that our company will go the extra mile for the customers and us artists. The majors simply were too big to provide the home atmosphere like the smaller independents.

Since winning in music is a function of a positive mental attitude and persistence not the size of the Label, a good musician with drive and a sense for his/her audience will make it regardless of who they signed with.

Now, thanks to the internet, to TuneCore, and the internet independents, we now have the freedom of choice of listening to and discovering the stars of tomorrow.

Thanks, so much, Jeff

Wild Bill Austin

[Carl]

I uploaded 2 singles from 2 different bands on TuneCore. No promotion nothing. Sold 2 songs. I like to think the music is not totally worthless, just that without promo sales = 0.

The bands are Mugwump, song "Friend in Famine", and 98DA, song "Get Outa Here".

[Carl]

We need some money to pay our producer and studio costs, $1-2K should finish our EP. Then we could use another few $K to pay for some local promo spots and press CDs to hand out at live shows. Without funding for this stuff, you're still just a distributor. Not to mention tour support.

We are funding as much as we can ourselves, but to do a bang up job takes a ridiculous amount of financial resources for musicians struggling to pay the bills. Otherwise the recordings will sound like camel dung. Hence without funding we're taking 6 months to do what the big guys do in 2 weeks. Such is life, we're close to finishing anyway.

I considered SellaBand.com for funding, but their terms are 1 sided in their favour.
www.BigBlueX.com

- Carl

[jay.soul]

thanks for starting TuneCore and continuing to expand and improve it. It's not yet exactly like a label of course (if only for the immense scale - so many artists) but TuneCore definitely has created a very fair, affordable and useful way of digitally distributing one's own music. Rock on!

[D Mcknight]

Sounds good but what do the numbers look like on paper.

[Kwality Records]

I have been a Tunecore artist for almost one year and so far I couldn't be happier!

[Omar]

Tunecore is the best! I do believe the conglamorates/big labels still run the industry but their is a slow shift of power towards independent artist. Now that we can produce music for cheaper and distribute it by tunecore gives us an opportunity to live our dreams and let our music be heard. However, for us to compete against major record label, the cost of making quality music video need to lowerso that the average independent artist can afford. Then we think of our music being promoted on a larger scale...getting it played on radio stations internationally and not just local station. Thus being an independent artist we can run a profitable business but we are bound to a small market because because of monetary and networking limitations.

[Clayton Bryant]

I agree I am one of the many artists who has sort of a fan base and still i might have sold only 10 downloads.. how can we make promoting indie artists better. I'm almost done with my project and i want it to be a success...

[Yellow Red Sparks]

You guys rule...that's it!

[MADE]

The major labels still have a lot of financial resources at their disposal. I think once the old guard dies off, you're going to see a lot of the younger people at the labels splinter off and form niche operations with small numbers of artists. It's beginning to happen already