Label Whores

[jordanneke]

After reading all of this, in some way I am kind of glad that I am not talented enough to make money from my music.

I say this because once you have to rely on creation for your livelihood it seems that there are a lot of compromises that you have to make to pay the bills. Unless of course daddy has a trust fund, or you are awesome enough to dictate the market forces.

One of those may well be getting 100euros here and there for a remix, or being forced to do shit cos you got to eat.

Even the mighty Aphex twin had to licence his tracks for ads. When asked if he 'wasn't sucking corporate cock?' - He said 'well, yeah.... totally'

[Hades]

After reading all of this, in some way I am kind of glad that I am not talented enough to make money from my music.

I say this because once you have to rely on creation for your livelihood it seems that there are a lot of compromises that you have to make to pay the bills. Unless of course daddy has a trust fund, or you are awesome enough to dictate the market forces.

One of those may well be getting 100euros here and there for a remix, or being forced to do shit cos you got to eat.

Even the mighty Aphex twin had to licence his tracks for ads. When asked if he 'wasn't sucking corporate cock?' - He said 'well, yeah.... totally'

I think about that once in a while as well.
I mean, it's gotta suck balls to constantly have to water down your wine untill there's sometimes mostly water left, no ?
It's one thing if you make a tune "on demand" once in a while, but it's another thing if you constantly have to think about if your tracks will sell or not ?
Obviously there are exceptions, but how many of us would ever be able to become that good ?
And when I read about that article of how it only costs you approx. 100€ to scheme your way into the beatport top 10 (not that I'd wanna be there thank you very much),
then I thought "jeezes, what's electronical music still worth these days ?"
I mean seriously, how many people still appreciate it properly ?

Anyway, don't wanna sound like a desillusioned old grumpy bastard, but it does make one think about these things sometimes...

[Hades]

so, as an artist, if you want to earn some money, you gotta do the DJ-thing a lot.
but that means being away from home all the time.
So how are you gonna be able to combine that with a family life ?
Unless you are already really big anyway, and you earn enough per gig to be able to accept only the ones that you want to do and that fit into your family life.

conclusion : it's a good thing I have kids. I can now stop thinking about my lack of talent,
because when my kids will be pain in the ass teenagers, asking me why I never became a professional musician,
I can say "look girls, daddy had more than enough talent, actually daddy had tons of it. But it's all YOUR damn fault. all of it !!"

[Mattias]

After reading all of this, in some way I am kind of glad that I am not talented enough to make money from my music.

I say this because once you have to rely on creation for your livelihood it seems that there are a lot of compromises that you have to make to pay the bills. Unless of course daddy has a trust fund, or you are awesome enough to dictate the market forces.

I think about that once in a while as well.
I mean, it's gotta suck balls to constantly have to water down your wine untill there's sometimes mostly water left, no ?
It's one thing if you make a tune "on demand" once in a while, but it's another thing if you constantly have to think about if your tracks will sell or not ?
Obviously there are exceptions, but how many of us would ever be able to become that good ?

As someone who makes his living on music I must answer....yeah, it's a fine balance between loosing yourself because you "must deliver" and "keep true to yourself" sometimes. However I also feel this have a lot to do with attitude and what kind of person you are. I personally always try reach for things that makes me able to do what I do without whoring myself out because I gotta pay the rent.
For example I've developed several aliases during the years and what can I say....House can sell well. Occasionally I think quite a few producers hides under a random alias and release some stuff they know will sell so they can keep on going. It's a bit whoring for sure, but not THAT bad.

I never try to care about if a tune or remix will sell or not because there are so many factors and variables that matters. If I do my best and deliver the best I can to the label asking me for a remix that's all I can do really...if the remix sells good then it's brilliant! It's all about release date, what other releases the EP will crash with (sometimes it's very shitty to get a release at the same time as some big label etc), timing in general, some luck and of course the music itself and how it's presented.

[NakedLunchRec]

Without wishing to be too negative what is it with label whores? What I mean by this is exponential output of pretty much the same type of thing to 100's of different labels. Why don't people play the long game and enjoy a lengthy and satisfying innings is beyond me, seeing things grow organically as things take their course. Absolutely beyond me rant over lol

I think many people are like that, but I suspect it's because there are wayyyyyyyyyyyy too many options now in labels so people are intimidated and stick to what they know. I guess it's also the same as many labels can be artists whores, they only pick the same artists to do tracks or remixes on their labels, so it can go both ways.

The explosion in technology for producing music has some downfalls.

[gabe DM]

there are many ways to get revenues with music. in the past, and still today in other genre, the artist does the song and the business machine looks further to make money and give spare changes to the creator, still enough to keep him alive and in good shape. but we do techno, we move underground and apart few cases noone gets to the superstar level (yet). So, in order to get money, you need to dj a lot (and have an averagely good cache) or to sell a lot and remix a lot but that's hard because too many tracks get released and most of them are easily downloaded illegally (whic is totally fine with me if you're not on a big big level but this another topic I know).
I personally score movie soundtracks from time to time and had a period (short) in my life where could get good money out if it , the only problem is to be in the director/editor/movie production buzz which is a big shit. ppl usually sucks and I don't quite fit in there.
back to techno the problem to me is that too many ppl play the same music in clubs and so too many ppl write same sounding music. one more thing I notice how monthly dj charts always end up having the same tracks playlisted. always seems to me like a "I chart you / you chart me" or worse "let's chart tracks from big label so I can get noticed" or even worse "let's chart what dj xxxx charted. it must be a good track for sure". this sucks cause chart are become the only way of knowing tracks also tfor the fact that so many tracks get released every week. I def agree with Ross. but the solution is to cultivate things with passion and get deeply involved in creation.

[gedda]

I find that a lot of the best music is free, as in you aren't downloading from torrents or mp3s illegally. You download from netlabels and bandcamp. I think that's where a lot of gems are. There's a stigma out there that free=bad. This is not the case. I remember posting asking for some awesome netlabels here in this very forum, and that thread delivered.

I personally don't mind that there are too many labels now. Techno has always been DIY, and it'll always be in it's own corner. As a consumer, I personally like that I can dig through catalogs of music. The downside to this is that I do not get to support one artist or label since I dig and don't follow labels or artists as much as I used to anymore. It's very possible I'm consuming music from a guy who has a day job, a college kid living in his bedroom, and an established artist who's already had a following.

[ashley BORG]

back to techno the problem to me is that too many ppl play the same music in clubs and so too many ppl write same sounding music. one more thing I notice how monthly dj charts always end up having the same tracks playlisted. always seems to me like a "I chart you / you chart me" or worse "let's chart tracks from big label so I can get noticed" or even worse "let's chart what dj xxxx charted. it must be a good track for sure". this sucks cause chart are become the only way of knowing tracks also tfor the fact that so many tracks get released every week. I def agree with Ross. but the solution is to cultivate things with passion and get deeply involved in creation.

I agree a lot with this.

[Darkfloor]

It all comes down to why the label is being run in the first place.
For me a label is a place that has a certain ethic, maybe a certain sound, and collects and promotes music to fit these ethics, ideals and sounds.

When a label has 14million remixes per release, it just seems like they are throwing mud at a wall and lack confidence or true belief in their artists.

If a label only sticks to big names then it's only concern is commercial concerns, and I see that as very anti-music/anti-creativity

The music should always always always come first, otherwise why bother?

Of course as mentioned there are in built problems with beatport. They want their labels to be exclusive, but they also demand x amount of releases and x amount of sales, forcing abella to release regardless if there is anything god to release, and forcing them into named remixes or shitty commercial crap to sell.

It's why I boycott beatport, they DO NOTHING for the underground or for the progression of creative music. Stop using them....

In my opinion a label should not be releasing just for the sake of it, just because beatport says so.

With my own label, I don't claim it to be anything special, but I run it how I want, I only release music I stand behind 100%, when I want, by any artist I choose regardless of status, it's all about the music.
Why do it any other way?

The fallacy of buying in a big name is that you will benefit. A lot of labels do this, buy buying a remix from, surgeon for example, they think they are then buying surgeons audience and their own music will get raised up because of it.
What actually happens is that the surgeon fans follow surgeon, buy the surgeon tune, and then follow him on to whatever label he is on next, having little interest in the host label.
(Surgeon is a bad example here as tony is careful to not rinse the remixes).
The only reason to get a remix is if you think it will benefit the music and compliment the release.

As for label whores.
Yeah you see it time and again, even mates who I have talked about this to who have said "never me mate" have gone on and done it.
Rinsing out so many releases that they all sound the same, reducing their own longevity, then getting caught up in the need for quick fix sales and just following trend, it's a common story. It's an issue of patience and you see it from A list celebs all the way down.

Someone gets famous, next thing you know they have a book out, perfume, their own clothes line etc
Then they wonder why people get sick of them.

I hate that this type of commercialism has infected the techno community so much, but it really has. And I find fewer people care about it all the time.
The art is slowly being eroded by the need for quick fix fame and money.

Great post Steve. Pretty much exactly my thoughts and process behind the Darkfloor Sound label.

Actually really pleased you guys have posted about this as it's something that has been annoying me off n on. But label whores is the sum-up I was looking for. Nice.

Churn out the fodder. Churn churn churn.

[Zappa]

Hi folks,

There's some great posts on this thread and I agree with a lot of what's already been said. Something I wanted to add is that I think there's also a little correlation between what you're discussing as "label whores" and the type of DJ/producers who run a radio show and constantly play their own tunes. For me, it comes down to them basically taking the piss and taking advantage of their position as a techno (or house) show host in order to hammer their own music and constantly plug themselves. I've heard some do it modestly (ie with modesty about their work), but I've also heard some really banging on about how big their tunes are and how X or Y new track of theirs is smashing up the clubs etc. I dunno, maybe it's just me, but that's a cue for me to switch off, find something else to listen to and not tune into their show again.

Sort of a tangent I suppose, but I do think there's a correlation of some sort...

[s-tek]

like written in post 1 -> thats the reason why my own label only get 3-4 releases per year.
labels like "night voltage"(you know the german name) release like I wear my pants and most of the stuff is boring shit and every day the same thing. I cannot believe why people support it or still releasing there. the music on such labels is unimportant, changeable and get low down under the high amount of releases. even if you're a big name in biz.

for me the best way is:
- dont follow trends
- make your own thing
- do it right or not, for the artists and with love!

[oddmyth]

This is one of those threads that I find really funny.

When there's not enough music being released we complain that we are limited by the few records we can get, and moreso that everyone is playing the same records. This was rampant in the 90's, there were only about 5-10 decent techno releases a week and everyone bought them.

When there's too much music we complain that the music isn't well differentiated enough.

I agree with the sentiment 'say something only when you have something to say' and I also agree with Steve when he mentions the artist burnout, taking every opportunity to put their name on something and taking every remix job - I've seen this many times and disregarded many artists I liked initially as I found their output becoming stale (Maceo Plex is probably a good more recent example albeit not exactly techno, Blawan is getting pretty cringeworthy too, despite that Decoy remix). This has been happening for at least a few decades now, it's certainly not a new phenomenon.

But in all honesty I think we are in a great time and I have few complaints. I've listened to about 10 different techno mixes this week (thanks guys!) and I've only heard one tune in all of them that was played on two or three of the mixes ( for the record it was Oscar Mulero - Intentionally False (Shifted Remix) on Warm Up which is a bloody great tune, hell every tune on that record is quality ). That's stark difference to what I used to hear.

Beatport can do whatever they want, they have a great search engine but they aren't the only game in town. I use Beatport to filter a portion of the music I will buy, and then I used those crates I build to go find that music in places I want to buy it from. Sometimes it ends up that Beatport is the only place I can find some tunes so it ends up that about 10-15% of my crates gets bought there. I'm not going to deny myself a great tool because the business side of a website wants things done in a particular manner, if I did that then I really would not know about half the stuff I do know about because it would simply take too long to find out.

[Ttinga]

But in all honesty I think we are in a great time and I have few complaints. I've listened to about 10 different techno mixes this week (thanks guys!) and I've only heard one tune in all of them that was played on two or three of the mixes ( for the record it was Oscar Mulero - Intentionally False (Shifted Remix) on Warm Up which is a bloody great tune, hell every tune on that record is quality ). That's stark difference to what I used to hear.

Beatport can do whatever they want, they have a great search engine but they aren't the only game in town. I use Beatport to filter a portion of the music I will buy, and then I used those crates I build to go find that music in places I want to buy it from. Sometimes it ends up that Beatport is the only place I can find some tunes so it ends up that about 10-15% of my crates gets bought there. I'm not going to deny myself a great tool because the business side of a website wants things done in a particular manner, if I did that then I really would not know about half the stuff I do know about because it would simply take too long to find out.

I agree with you, it's a great time to be a music consumer. Personally it's also a great time to be a music producer, although if my livelihood depended on it I might not be saying the same thing...

[oddmyth]

Musicians have been whoring themselves out since the dawn of time, at least nowadays we don't need to make church music or write ballads for kings to get by.

If anything it's the dawn of a new age where an independent musician can promote themselves almost equally as well as those with a dedicated agency behind them.