Record label
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end, holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed."--"The problem with music" (1993) by Steve Albini |
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In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. In everyday usage, a record label is also a company that manages such brands and trademarks; coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, promotion, and enforcement of copyright protection of sound recordings and music videos; conducts A&R; and maintains contracts with recording artists and their managers.
Record labels may be small, localized, and "independent", or they may be part of a large international media group, or somewhere in between. Generally, recorded music needs a record label in order to be widely known, reviewed, heard on media outlets such as radio or television, and in order to be available to buy in stores, although the Internet has changed this to some extent.
The name, "record label", refers to the usually papered and cut center area of a vinyl recording that prominently displays the manufacturer's name, along with other pertinent information. Many 7" vinyl singles were pressed with a relief in lieu of the paper label, particularly in Great Britain.
A record label that is a part of a larger record company that also operates as a record label, might be referred to a sublabel of its parent record label.
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Some record labels central to this site
Pre 1970s
- Mericana salsa
- Black Ark Records, reggae, Lee Perry's label
- Studio One, reggae, Dodd's kabel
1970s
- Strata-East Records, jazz and kosmigroov
- Turbo Records, funk label that issued Wood Brass and Steel's underground hit Funkanova
- Salsoul Records, along with West End and Prelude, one of the bigger labels of the disco era
- Prelude Records (record label) Francois Kevorkian and disco.
- West End Records, disco, hits like Heartbeat by Taana Gardner
- Gold Mind Records Walter Gibbons disco mixes.
1980s
- Wackies New York eighties reggae label.
- Trax Chicago had an independent pressing plant and it put out the first underground hits of house music on Trax records.
- Kult Records
- 99 Records New York minimalistic funk label (home of ESG and Liquid Liquid)
- Nite Grooves records go for anything by Joe Claussell, Mondo Grosso, ...
- Sleeping Bag Records proto house
- Jump Street Records proto house
2000s
- Nuphonic records Dave Hill, Faze Action
- Compilation album labels of the early 21st century
See also