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looking for insite how you label owners do your thing.
do you run a loose or tight ship? pinching every penny, or not too concerned with breaking even? are you just concerned with putting out good vinyl and not concerned about loosing some money, or must you be profitable? do you pay your artists a flat rate? or royalties? do you not pay them at all?
any and all feedback will be appreciated.
thanks
gil
Great basis for a topic.
Please answer some of these to help out the newer upstart labels.
This is a wicked topic!!!
I resonally try my hardest to keep it all in order, i think you have to run a label as a "Tight Ship" or else things will get forgotten or fall apart.
It is important to get every penny that you are owed and entittled to, dont just let that go out the window for a start. with De Novo for me i just want to put out the music that ive produced and have a good remix done, having people talk abut your label and telling you they loved the tune is better than any felling ive experienced!!
I would like to say that im not totally concerned about making alll the money back but if i dont make enough money that obviously compramises the next releases.
I dont want to disclose too much about how i pay all the artists that sign but i try and arrange a flat fee with No royalties from there on, it seems to work with all the Artists and remixes that ive recently signed. But im sure other people manage thier label's in other ways!!
just my feedback for the post...
:lol:
Maybe some of the big Boys could have a say on this like Mark, Henry, Glenn and any others!!
Would be great to have some views from the big player labels i reckon...
I'd say I always lean more towards the tighter side of things in life.
Ian and I kind of view it as more of an ongoing art project rather than a second income. We've never really been about making anthems or #1s so the amount of money from the releases we've put out thus far has been rather small. We're currently revamping Abiotic and Enemy to have new full sleeve jackets, thicker pressings, and cooler artwork. We'd rather have people be able to pull our records out 2 or 3 years for now and see that it's still a quality release. Basically, we're proud to have our names on our releases, so why not put something out that we're proud of? Everybody enjoys a good looking, heavy, and great sounding record (especially at $11US/£5+).
I think this kind of mindframe is much more common in the experimental/IDM scene. There are some amazing packaging designs, ideas, and concepts for their releases. It's usually really expensive to produce but in the end it compliments the music very well. They know the money sucks so they invest it back in to their work.
To be honest, I think this industry needs a good dose of professionalism. How many thousands of times have you seen misprinted information on records/flyers/cd's and more? The font styles are often inconsistent, as well as the validity of the information itself. There are some really big techno labels out there (think sweden/italy/etc) that appear to be on the ball everytime. Great packaging, great sound quality, all around a great product. I think the professional look and approach do help a label. This isn't always the case but I know the more bigger labels I think of, they often appear to have a professional looking front (even if things are a disaster behind the scenes, which they often are).
I guess my thing is the money isn't always great for releases unless you've been established for a while and even then it's questionable. Why not have fun and look good doing it?
As we know its not easy to make money off a techno Label at the moment.
What we do with Gotham Grooves is really try to push American (and sometimes international) Techno artists while putting a remix of a bigger artist. American or International (Zentz, Xavier, Vigorito, Kanzyani, etc.) on the same records. This way people will be more inclined to pick up the record and give it a chance. Which will spread the name of the artist we are trying to promote.
This is not a cheap way to go about it and I usually put all of my own money money into promoting our releases and our artists, so it will increase they're exposure and increase the # of dj bookings they get. Since I'm a dj as well it sometimes works out.
For example with our next 2 releases GGr007- Agent Orange EP (w/ Vigorito remix) and GGr008 Various Villians 2 (Adam Jay, Noah Pred, Alek Biotic) - we are in the middle of doing the promotions for them including T-shirts, stickers, nice Jackets, big record release parties, etc. I know in advance that this is all money that will probably not comeback to me :doh: through record sales but will hopefully increase the # of performances of all the artist involoved. ;)
By the way what's up Gil?
I would love me own label one day,it would be my dream.