Netlabels and democratization of the recording industry

Citation: Patryk Galuszka (2012/07/02) Netlabels and democratization of the recording industry. First monday (RSS)
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Tagged: netlabels (RSS)

Summary

Music industry includes recording, performance, and publishing; authors focus on the first. Recording has been concentrated since its advent in 1877 through patents, fragile media, expensive studio time, and spreading marketing risk across artists.

Media democratization includes participation and access, decentralized technologies and organizations, and "collectivism, collaboration, and cooperation" resulting in more equal rewards and status. Democratization also has aesthetic consequences, resulting in more innovation and diversity.

Cheaper recording technology, DIY ethos, and other factors led to partial democratization through independent labels from the 1970s onward, but incomplete due to economic constraints of distribution and marketing and tension between idealism and mainstream success.

Internet has created another opportunity for democratization, but in order to create a major hit, marketing of traditional industry is still necessary; furthermore vastly increased supply of music has made marketing and discovery very challenging for artists and consumers.

Author surveyed 339 netlabels and conducted 19 in-depth interviews and 19 email interviews. Netlabels primarily consist of a website, some sort of submission process, and publishing music on website, though some do other activities, ranging from remix contests to live events. One netlabel is cited as accepting 10% of submissions.

259 of 337 netlabels specifying a geography were based in Europe. 59.4% responded that helping artists popularize their music is very important, while only 4.4% said the same about making a profit.

Running a netlabel also facilitates non-virtual contacts: 82.6% with artists, 76.5% with listeners, 64.6% with other netlabels, 29.5% with traditional media, 23.9% with music industry representatives.

The majority of netlabels release electronic and experimental music, but many other genres are also represented. Nearly half report releasing music "other" than 16 well-known (eg rock, pop, electronic, experimental, hip-hop, world, classical) genres provided as options.

Netlabels have attracted little attention relative to filesharing and major labels, not competing directly with either, nor being as problematic legally.

In second to last paragraph, author states "The more noise there is on the music market, the more valuable the services of the best netlabels will become, at least unless we find better ways to preselect music."