THE RECORD LABEL
At the start of the 20th Century record companies controlled recording and sales by owning technology patents. With recordings of their work performers reached beyond theatre and music hall to a new mass market. This made record labels central to mainstream music, and they dominated the music business through manufacturing, distribution and retail. After World War Two they gave up their monopoly in recording technology and their last home-grown formats (78s and vinyl) became standard recording media which opened the door to independent record labels. As recording technology became available to their competitors they based their business on popular artists and popular songs. A&R men (Artists and Repertoire) working for record companies matched artists with repertoire from music publishers. Eventually record companies outsourced recording technology entirely. Now, record companies still dominate the music industry but they are simply a service supplier to the artist, among many others.
The Majors and independent labels
Record labels fall roughly into two groups: the Majors and independent labels. These figures don’t change much from year to year.
The meaning of record companies and record labelsA record company is a business, which deals in recordings (e.g. EMI).
A record label is a unit within the company, which handles a particular catalogue or repertoire (e.g. Blue Note).
A label can specialise in a genre or country, or sometimes just the project of a particular label head.
A single record company can run many labels.
In practice the terms record company, label and imprint are often used loosely to mean the same thing.
Major labels make less than 1 in 5 of all controlled releases, and sell less than 70% of recorded music worldwide. The rest is sold by the independents.
Independent labels rarely include publishing or manufacturing. They occasionally run distribution and frequently have new media operations.The indies make 4 out of 5 controlled releases, and sell over 30% of recorded music worldwide. There are several thousand independents in the UK alone—they are simply record labels that don’t qualify to be called Majors. Some indiesspecialise in licensing existing recordings but most deal with their own content and artists.The bigger indies normally use Major label distribution.
Record companies originally made and sold recordings—today their business is based on recording copyrights. They are no longer in the business of manufacturing records themselves.