Do we need a label?

So, we've finally got to that point that we've been struggling towards for the last few months - the recording for our album is finished! It's not mixed or anything exciting like that yet, but, bar a possible overdub here and there, we have 10 tracks completed. Including a slightly concepty introduction. But it's ok, we promise to wait until album number 3 before we go completely prog on you...

Anyway, this morning I happened to read this post on The Guardian Music Blog. This, along with having finished recording, has had me a-thinking (it's a dangerous thing) about what it means to be recording and releasing our album ourselves. The article highlights a lawsuit being pursued by Eminem against Universal, claiming that he is due extra royalties, as his current agreement allows Universal to take a large chunk of his net sales as payment for manufacturing and packaging. He claims that, due to the widespread use of download sites such as iTunes, their packaging costs are now likely to be significantly lower than when he signed to the label, so he should be receiving a greater percentage of sales.

This brings up the question of what exactly the role of a record company is in this day and age. In the past, the process of recording an album was very costly, as was the associated packaging and distribution mentioned above. However, with the cost of recording equipment constantly falling creating an abundance of small, affordable recording studios, and the popularity of digital downloads always growing, this whole process has become much cheaper. And as we have now (almost) proved, it is entirely possible to record and release an album with no support from a record label. Fair enough, the quality of the recording might not be quite what we would have got had we been able to spend £5,000 on time in a top notch recording studio, although thanks to Al Heslop it's looking like it's going to sound pretty damn good. And we might not be able to afford to get 1000s of CDs duplicated in one go, but to be honest we'll count ourselves pretty lucky if we manage to sell more than a few hundred straight off, and we don't really fancy QUITE that many coasters, however nice Adrian's artwork for them will be!

This, however, is one of the main arguments people give for record labels still existing - the potential to make your album available to thousands rather than hundreds of people. But do we need them for this? We plan to make our album available for download through iTunes and a number of other sites, as well as having CDs for sale through Amazon and our own website, all fairly easily and without any substantial outlay. Fair enough, we might not be able to get it into any record stores, but who actually buys CDs on the high street anymore?

So, the album will be available, but how will we get people to want to buy it? This, unfortunately, is the tricky part. But it's not impossible. Thanks to Phil's incredible hard work we are hopefully going to be playing a number of festivals over the summer, along with gigs up and down the country (well, up to Cambridge and down to Portsmouth anyway, which is a pretty good chunk!). We will also be featured on a number of local radio stations, and should be getting our album reviewed in a number of well-respected music magazines. We might not be able to weasel our way into NME yet, but to be honest we don't think we've got the hair for it!

All this adds up to pretty good prospects for independent artists. Yes, it will cost you a fair amount of money (but by our calculations we should break even somewhere between 100 and 200 sales), and you will have to put in a lot of work, but as you can probably tell from some of our other posts on here, it's great fun at the same time! And it certainly is doable. Plus, if even Eminem doesn't feel that he can get a reasonable deal from the labels then we're glad to put in the effort ourselves rather than being small fish in the big pond of record label sharks!