advice on setting up a new label??

agodi · Post by **agodi** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 2:36 am

I'm currently going through the process of setting up a new label with a couple of friends and knowing that there are quite a few label managers on here, I was wondering what kind of advice you could give me?

patrick bateman · Post by **patrick bateman** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 5:03 am

Don't do it unless you got lot's of money.

Gummo · Post by **Gummo** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 9:44 am

I've never managed one, but I believe the best advice would be: don't do it to release your own music nobody else wanted.

dsat · Post by **dsat** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 12:51 pm

Gummo wrote:I've never managed one, but I believe the best advice would be: don't do it to release your own music nobody else wanted.

worst advice ever!
many labels started that way!

if you're thinking about a vinyl label i would also say don't do it, simply because there are already so many labels out there
but if you think you can make a difference, then go for it
just be prepared to lose a lot of money

but what exactly do you want to know? because a lot of things can be said about setting up a label

patrick bateman · Post by **patrick bateman** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 1:09 pm

dsat wrote:
Gummo wrote:I've never managed one, but I believe the best advice would be: don't do it to release your own music nobody else wanted.
worst advice ever!
many labels started that way!

if you're thinking about a vinyl label i would also say don't do it, simply because there are already so many labels out there
but if you think you can make a difference, then go for it
just be prepared to lose a lot of money

but what exactly do you want to know? because a lot of things can be said about setting up a label

Well of course we always say 'dont do it'.
But it's true as you write, that if you really think you have something exciting up your sleeve, then go for it.

But yeah, what kind of advices are you looking for?

agodi · Post by **agodi** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 2:06 pm

I realize that vinyl is expensive and unfortunately I dont think it will be be an option for us, for the first year at least.

Have any of you guys started with digital only labels and then expand to include vinyl at a later stage?

One of my proposals is to re-release an album on vinyl with our best selling tracks at the end of the year. Could something like this work?

Our plan is to have 3-4 releases ready to go before we start and to maintain a backlog of 3-4 releases so that we'll keep 6 months ahead of ourselves. Is this enough of a backlog?

How do you copyright a track?

Can anyone recommend a good digital distributor?

Dragonsand · Post by **Dragonsand** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 4:51 pm

Make something with soul.
Make very good artworks.
Write beautiful track titles.

Avoid the easy concept of saying "only the music counts! Good music I dance, not good music I not dance". Most of the time it's a shitty argument for empty tracks.

Be an art label before being a music label, because there's too much music labels.

Good luck!

michielwijnen · Post by **michielwijnen** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 5:05 pm

Dragonsand wrote:Good music I dance, not good music I not dance

What's wrong with this statement... it's been on my myspace since the beginning