indie labels
Peering over U.S. borders at the rest of the world, the recorded music business looks like the land of opportunity. The U.S. is certainly lucrative, but it’s also hyper-competitive. While the three major labels have locked up most of the States’ recorded music revenues — they distribute many indies, too — they command a far lower share internationally.
A new estimate of independent labels’ market share shows why major labels’ investments and acquisitions in foreign territories are so common. On an ownership basis, independent artists and labels had a 46.7% share of the global recorded music business in 2023, according to a new MIDiA Research report, with independent labels taking a 40.8% share while artist-direct distributors such as Ditto Music and TuneCore having a 5.9% share. (The data, collected through an online survey of independent labels, accounts for 93% of all global revenues.) That leaves 53.3% for the major labels.
The U.S. is considerably more concentrated. Independent labels and distributors had a 35.7% share of the U.S. market in 2023, according to Billboard’s analysis of Luminate data — 11 percentage points less than their global share — with the major labels owning the remaining 64.3%. That means that while independent artists and labels were behind the majority of the well over 100,000 new tracks that were being uploaded to digital service providers daily as of early 2023, they only accounted for a bit more than a third of revenue.
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The U.S. market gets even more concentrated when distribution, not just ownership, is measured. In the U.S., the major labels have an 84.3% distribution share through their ownership of music distributors Ingrooves (Universal Music Group), The Orchard (Sony Music), AWAL (Sony Music) and ADA (Warner Music Group), leaving independent labels and distributors with a 15.7% share. But MIDiA puts the independents’ global distribution share at 34.2% — 18.5 percentage points higher than their U.S. share.
Besides the availability of market share, companies are also investing outside of more familiar, Western countries because they’re chasing high growth rates. The U.S. is slowing and has settled into solid, high-single-digit annual improvements: 7.2% in 2023 and 5% in 2022 after a pandemic-related 41% surge in 2021, according to the IFPI’s data on global trade revenue.
Emerging music markets, on the other hand, are growing like weeds. Strong gains in some heavily populated countries led the U.S.’s share of global revenues to dip from 41.2% in 2021 to 38.6% in 2023. Over that time span, China’s share grew from 3.8% to 5.1% and Brazil’s share rose from 1.8% from 2.0%. In 2023 alone, Mexico grew 18% to $490 million, and India grew 15% to $357 million to overtake Spain as the world’s No. 14 market.
For majors and indies alike, the never-ending pursuit of market share is taking them across the globe. This year, Universal Music Group bought a majority stake in Nigerian record label Mavin Global and Outdustry, a record label and artist services provider that focuses on China, India and other emerging markets. Warner Music Group took a majority stake in Indian digital media and music company Divo. Believe acquired Turkish record label DMC and purchased Indian record label White Hill Music’s catalog and YouTube channel. In 2022, Sony Music acquired Brazilian independent music company Som Livre. A year earlier, Warner Music Group invested in Saudi Arabian independent label Rotana, building a presence in the Middle East-North Africa region where Reservoir Media has a partnership with Abu Dhabi-based PopArabia.
Streaming and social media have allowed independents to blossom around the world, creating a market “more diverse, fragmented, international, and regional than it has ever been,” wrote MIDiA’s Mark Mulligan. “It has resulted in a market that is characterized by both fragmentation and consolidation,” wrote Mulligan. “These opposing forces are shaping today’s market and will do so in the coming years.”
Songwriter. Musician. Singer. Producer. Creative director. Social media expert. Videographer. Editor. Marketing department. Digital department. Product manager. Data analyst. Label owner.
These are just some of the job titles that can apply to an artist in 2024 — a whirlwind of adventure, experimentation and exhaustion. Throughout my career, I’ve been signed to a major label, indie label and recently just started my own. Maybe you’re an aspiring artist, you listen to my music or you’re simply bored and scrolling. Here’s what I’ve learnt, what I’ve loved and what I’ve struggled with.
How I Got Here
In 2012, I was a 17-year-old girl from a small town, equipped with a guitar and big dreams. I released my first official EP, The Apple Tree, which shot into the top 10 on the iTunes chart. The lead single, “The Apple Tree,” then became BBC Radio 1’s “Tune of The Week” and I subsequently signed a five-album record deal with Universal’s Island Records. I desperately needed the money and I also naively thought they were going to make all of my dreams come true. After battling to find my identity on their roster and trying to hone my craft as the musician I wanted to be, I released my first folk/pop album, Peroxide. It charted at No. 11 on the UK’s Official Albums Chart Top 100, missing the top 10 by a small amount of copies. After this was classed as a disappointment, I was promised another shot and they picked up the option for a sophomore album. However, after two years of making that album, it became clear that I had in fact been shelved and was later dropped — the night before a music video shoot for the first single. It was brutal and mortifying.
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I threw myself into songwriting for others and, after having some success with that, I wrote my second album, The Sun Will Come Up, The Seasons Will Change. I had written the majority of the album before I signed to an indie label at the end of 2016, writing and recording the demos in the bedroom of my London flat share. I couldn’t afford to pay producers after being dropped, so I taught myself how to do it until I found a few passionate collaborators. I still had this gut feeling that my time as an artist wasn’t over. I felt like I had something to prove. My manager and I sent the demos around to most of the labels, including “The Best You Had,” which eventually earned us our first silver record and a spot on Taylor Swift’s playlist. However, at the time, everyone passed on the songs except a handful of indie labels.
I met with Cooking Vinyl and although they had no one else like me on their roster — it mostly consisted of older, hugely established artists with decades of releases under their belt — I liked what they stood for. I felt like it was a place I could have full creative control and I knew they already liked the album. It was a risk for them and it was a risk for me. I released my second album through Cooking Vinyl in 2019. Overall, my indie-label experience was a very positive one and just what I needed to restore my faith in the music industry. They helped me build a long-term career and I’m forever grateful for all the work they put in to take me to the next level. I then released my third album, Älskar, on Cooking Vinyl in 2022, written mid-pandemic. This is when I felt everything start to shift. The world changed. The music industry changed. Social media changed. I changed.
After the success of my second album and a grueling touring schedule — once being on two tours on different continents at the same time — I felt completely burnt out. Mentally, creatively and physically. It wasn’t a sustainable way of working. I felt like I had to say yes to everything in case it was my only shot. Then the pandemic hit and we were all forced to slow down. Things became increasingly online and the rise of TikTok began. Suddenly, unknown artists were having top 10 hits almost overnight, and artists that had been dropped were having their big breakthroughs. For a time, I felt like it started to give power back to the artists and fans. It was something I would’ve dreamed of when I was a teenager starting out, coming from a small village with no industry contacts or financial backing.
However, as time went on I started to feel like it was becoming a competition for the viewer’s attention. Social media felt oversaturated with everyone trying to do the same thing, and there seemed to be an overwhelming amount of music being released. According to Luminate, an average of 103,500 tracks were added to streaming services daily in 2023. I started to miss some of my favorite artist’s albums coming out because I didn’t even hear about them.
I was encouraged to reduce my songs to 10-second clips, to try to start trends with certain lyrics, or do something that demanded the viewer’s attention within the first few seconds. But I felt like I didn’t fit into this new world. I’m not shocking. I’m not extroverted. I don’t think I’ve just written the song of the summer. Like most of my fellow musicians, I’m full of self-doubt and anxiety. I wanted something more than virality and views.
Why I Decided to Launch a Label
In 2023, I took some time out to write for other artists and reassess what I wanted to do. After some time away, I started to write music for myself again. I was fully independent at that point. After the pandemic and how everything had changed, I just wanted to create something that set my world alight because the rest felt so uncertain. Over the course of three months, in the mornings and evenings, I wrote my latest album, Mountain Music. It’s a folk album and completely different to anything I’ve released before. After playing the demos for my manager, Vicky Dowdall — who has managed me since the 2012 release of The Apple Tree EP — we decided to send it to some labels.
I was unsure what a record label could offer us in 2024. My last album campaign with Cooking Vinyl felt very social media heavy. Of course, I always want to be the one running my social media, but it is a lot of work when you’re also trying to juggle the music side of things. It made me question: If it’s mostly on me to get this album out there, do I really need a label? Vicky and I have always been proactive with every album release. She and I are lucky to have relationships with passionate people who work at streaming services. Vicky has always been the one to book meetings with the likes of Spotify, Apple, Amazon, YouTube, etc. She has always been the one to do the meetings. Vicky has secured me playlists and billboards around the world for my releases and I trust her fully to get my vision across. I started to feel like the traditional support a label could offer us seemed slightly redundant in 2024. Everything now feels so social media-based, and I believe it really does have to come from the artist. People want to see behind the curtain. They want to know who they’re listening to. I thought, why not fully embrace that?
Off the back of receiving some offers from labels, I told Vicky I’d rather start a label with her. After a decade of going from label to label, leaving large gaps between releases while we figured out the next deal, I wanted to create our own home. Momentum is so important in an artist’s career, and I’ve found that switching between labels and the lengthy waits during these contract negotiations can really affect it.
The other thing for me was that typically, an artist manager works for 20% commission and only gets paid once the artist gets paid. The chances of the artist actually earning money from an album is slim. You have to really believe in it and be willing to initially work for free, as does your manager — but in the end, they will only receive 20%. These days it feels like so many managers are also taking on the roles that a label used to. Vicky and I were in agreement that we would start our label as co-owners. We couldn’t do it without each other. We decided to call it Apple Tree Records, as a homage to our first release together. It was a time when anything felt possible, when we were two young women in the music industry on a mission. I wanted to weave that ethos into our label and remember that feeling with every release.
How I Launched My Label
I’m not ashamed to say, I had absolutely no idea how to go about starting our own label. I had no idea what it would look like or what it would require. Vicky took the first step to secure a distributor who would help fund it. We went with FUGA as I loved their passionate team and how they also provided an audience service, which meant they’d help with the social media and the digital side of things. Distributors typically sign labels, not artists, so we formed our company and the rest was history.
It was then time to decide what kind of team we needed. We initially kept it very small, with a few people consulting on marketing. Over time we started to hire services such as radio, PR, TV and more. We hired people coming from all different areas of the industry — some with decades of experience, some with much less. I think everyone can offer different perspectives which feels important, especially in an industry that is rapidly changing. We also had to find someone to help with invoices and legal contracts — the boring part that I like to pretend doesn’t exist!
There’s definitely a lot more to setting up a label than I first thought, but it felt empowering making these choices by ourselves. I loved handpicking our team, people who were truly passionate about the project. As an artist signed to a label, sometimes the person leading your campaign will leave and then someone else will inherit you. It can work out, but it can also be detrimental if that person doesn’t click with your project. It was incredible to feel supported by a group of mostly women, as it reminded me how much times have changed since I first started out.
The Good Parts
I’ve loved waking up every morning thinking, “What can I do to further this project today?”
I’ve enjoyed being part of a team, not just being the artist. Working side by side with my manager and making all the decisions together. I’ve loved having absolute free reign to do niche creative things, such as creating a microsite where listeners can visit a map, get access to exclusive content and follow along the journey while listening. Making sure every single aspect of this album campaign has been carefully thought out has been so fulfilling. From the colors and stories associated with each vinyl to the way we address my listeners in each mailer, making them feel like they’re going on a road trip to the mountains.
I’ve received so many lovely messages from my listeners telling me they’ve really enjoyed how interactive and creative this project has been. It’s also been interesting to see where our spend has had results and where it hasn’t. It’s been a learning process about what is worth investing in and what isn’t. Every artist’s project is completely different and there’s no right answer for everyone, but I think the main thing this campaign has taught me is how important your audience is. Of course, they’ve always been the most important thing, but they now also hold the power to break you as an artist. In the past, it was the audience who bought the songs that ultimately broke an artist, but it was often the result of extensive radio play or a massive TV slot.
These days it feels very direct. Artist to fan. I believe investing in your listeners is more important than any influencer campaign, radio play or TV show. So I’ve constantly thought: What can I do to add value to their lives? How can I help them to feel understood? How can I connect my songs to their own experiences? How can I reward them for their support? I can see my audience slowly growing and that’s more important to me than any chart position or industry win.
The Not So Good Parts
Artists tend to be quite sensitive and I’m definitely no exception. I found it difficult in the beginning to be comfortable with ad spend being put behind my videos on social media — especially when I received trolling for it. I guess my agenda as an artist is to always let things grow organically and hope for the best. But of course, the agenda of a label is to get you out there in front of as many people as possible and sell albums. There are financial targets and money that needs to be recouped. It’s becoming increasingly harder to even reach your own followers, so online ads do feel like a necessary evil these days. I initially found this tricky and pushed back multiple times, having lengthy chats with my team. As someone working at a label, I assume you don’t feel the mental effects of being the artist, putting yourself out there to millions of people. However, wires cross when you’re the artist and the label. What’s in the best interest of you personally and your mental wellbeing can be quite the opposite of what’s best for your album campaign and career.
I think a lot of us artists are desperate to be seen but also terrified of it. I’ve had to try to work through this and really seize the opportunity that I’ve been given to get my music heard. It’s become easier as time has gone on. When I was on a major label things were very much filtered down to me. It’s very common for the artist not to attend or be allowed into meetings about the campaign so people can speak freely. However, when running your own label, you have to be aware of everything, good and bad. This has definitely been hard at times. I also found direct-to-consumer (D2C) a bit of a minefield, having to try and guess how much stock to order, not wanting to be left short but also not wanting to over-order.
Touring is very tricky. I know many artists are struggling with this right now, as I don’t have the traditional major label tour support and everything is currently self-funded. Lastly, I’d say one of the most challenging things was knowing what roles we needed within the label. Whether it be a product manager, marketing, digital or just overall consulting. You can start by thinking you know what you need, but as time goes on and the campaign develops, sometimes it becomes clear you need to adapt. I’ve learnt, much like making music, that sometimes fewer people can be more, as decisions can be made quicker and communication can be more efficient. It’s also just a really difficult time to try and break as an artist; sometimes the team can be doing all they can, but you still need the stars to align.
The Takeaway
Releasing Mountain Music on Apple Tree Records has been a stressful, intense yet incredibly rewarding and empowering experience. In an industry that has so often sunk its teeth into young female artists, attempting to mold and manipulate them, it feels like I’m finally in a safe place where I can lock the doors and take a deep breath. Starting your own label is by no means a walk in the park. It requires a village. I couldn’t have done it on my own. I’m grateful to have shared all the big decisions with Vicky and had the support of a team around us. I’ve learnt to trust my gut instincts and to also question what’s actually just my own fear.
Personally, I’ve felt even more pressure to deliver compared to when I was signed elsewhere. On a big label, you know you’re one of many and could be dropped at any time. But when it’s your own, you see firsthand how hard everyone is working. It’s made me want to succeed not just for Vicky and me, but for everyone else too. From my own experience, I wouldn’t advise an artist to start a label without a strong support system around them who is willing to share the workload. Starting this label has been very different from just releasing something independently through the likes of AWAL or Platoon, partly because of the length of this particular album campaign and partly because I’ve signed as a label, not an artist.
I should also state that I’ve been in a privileged position to not rely on the advance that you get from signing to a label as an artist. I did not receive any personal income for signing as a label. It’s not something I could have financially done at the beginning of my career and I realize most new artists rely on this to sustain them for years to come, much like I did. Despite the uncertainty of everything in the industry right now, it feels comforting to know we have our little slice of home. Something I can grow over time with a person who shares my vision. It’s hard to find and I feel so lucky to have a partner to go on this journey with. I hope in time we can sign other artists and be the label I wished I’d had.
Nina Nesbitt is a Scottish singer-songwriter who has released four albums to date. The most recent of those, Mountain Music, arrived in September via her own label, Apple Tree Records.
A coalition of some of the world’s biggest independent labels, including Beggars Group, Partisan Records, Sub Pop and Because Music, have joined forces to launch a “first-of-its-kind” think tank to promote better understanding of the global music business among governments and policymakers — and advocate on the industry’s behalf.
The Organization for Recorded Culture and Arts, or ORCA for short, will develop and promote research, data, and “qualitative and quantitative evidence that underscore the significant economic, social, and cultural value of music,” said the newly-formed organization.
Founder members also include the U.K.’s Domino Recording Company; Germany-based City Slang and !K7 Music; Spain’s Everlasting Records; and U.S.-headquartered Exceleration Music, Secretly Group and Hopeless Records. Other participants are London-based Ninja Tune, Stockholm’s Playground Music and Canada’s Secret City Records.
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Artists that have either been discovered by or are currently signed to the 14 founder labels include Adele, Nirvana, The National, Pavement, Christine and the Queens, Fontaines D.C., Arctic Monkeys, Mitski and Phoebe Bridgers.
“This is a concept long in the making, arising from a realization of shared values above and beyond our existing collective independent activities,” said Martin Mills, founder and chairman of Beggars Group, in a statement. “Music is an undervalued asset in the daily round, and we seek to translate the motivations underlying its production into an appreciation that art and commerce can live as one.”
In line with the organization’s launch, ORCA has published its inaugural research report, “Setting the Stage: How Music Works.” The free-to-access study is intended to provide government policymakers, finance institutions and cultural development agencies with an in-depth understanding of how the record industry operates and the economic and cultural benefits it generates.
The 155-page report was researched by the nonprofit Center for Music Ecosystems, which is working alongside ORCA, and features case studies of several indie-label artist success stories, including Guadalupe Plata (Everlasting Records), Patrick Watson (Secret City) and Christine and the Queens (Because), as well as an analysis of distribution practices, artist development and income revenues in the indie sector.
“We’re proud of the artists we choose to invest in and the people we choose to work with. We’re also aware of how little actual data there is out there that illustrates how this industry actually works or our contribution to it. We’re incredibly excited to get that ball rolling with this first report,” Tony Kiewel, president of Sub Pop Records, tells Billboard.
ORCA says future reports will focus on collecting primary data to demonstrate the benefits of independent record labels to the wider global music economy, looking at the positive impact the industry has on job creation, social equality, sustainability and culture. Members will meet at least once a month, with the next report due out later this year.
“Whilst we are in competition with the other ORCA founders, we are similar in what drives us to find and develop new talent and there’s a shared incentive to making sure that the benefits of our work are understood beyond just the industry itself,” says Zena White, chief operating officer at Partisan Records and chair of The Worldwide Independent Network (WIN).
White says that one of ORCA’s primary goals will be to measure the economic and social impact of labels’ investments in artist development, which she says has “been sorely lacking” in the global independent sector.
The think tank also aims to address some commonly held misunderstandings about how the record label business model works, explains White, whose label roster includes IDLES, Cigarettes After Sex, Ezra Collective and PJ Harvey.
“Labels at their best underwrite living advances, recording and marketing costs that the artists’ entire ecosystem will benefit from. Of course, there are bad actors, but many are essential to ensuring that music gets made and that it’s heard,” she says.
“We have a fantastic network of global trade associations for independent music… [but] they badly need empirical data that backs up their conversations with governments and players at a local level,” White adds. “ORCA is supplementary to that network and hopes to be able to help.”
“The music business is an incredibly complicated and messy industry,” says Kiewel. “We’re often the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to new technologies. If there are policy conversations happening that affect the livelihoods of independent recording artists and the labels that support them then we think it’s important that they have a seat at that table. I believe that there are many people and policy makers who would be interested in what we have to say, and we want to make sure that those representing our community have tools to help convey their perspectives.”
Louis Posen launched a label on a dare. It was 1993 and he was directing a music video for Guttermouth when the band threw down the gauntlet, challenging him to put out a 7″ single. Posen cheerfully admits he had no business plan and zero funding. The guiding principle, he says, was “surround ourselves with good people, and we’ll be fine.”
More than fine, in fact: That label, Hopeless Records, has gone on to work with more than 200 artists — including Avenged Sevenfold, All Time Low, The Wonder Years, Taking Back Sunday and Yellowcard — that span from punk to ska, metal to emo. All told, the roster has sold more than 15 million albums. And now, Posen is celebrating the label’s 30th anniversary at A2IM’s Indie Week in New York (June 10-13), where he will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award Monday (June 10) at the organization’s 2024 Libera Awards.
While Posen’s decision to cannonball into the deep end of the label world might seem recklessly spur-of-the-moment, he now believes it was almost preordained. “We have all these moments in our lives that lead us to something,” he explains. One came in the fifth grade when a friend’s mom’s boyfriend took Posen and others to see the L.A. punk group X at the Reseda Country Club. “That was the first time I saw mohawks, stage diving, slam dancing,” Posen remembers. “And I was like, ‘Wow, this is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.’”
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To celebrate Hopeless Records’ 30th anniversary, the label put together a traveling exhibit full of memorabilia commemorating key moments in its history. It will be open during Indie Week this week, before heading on to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas. Posen and Ian Harrison, the label’s GM, spoke about Hopeless Records’ origins, the challenges of condensing 30 years of activity into a single exhibit and the value of the independent sector.
Hopeless Records
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What led you to start a label?
Posen: I was in film school at Cal State Northridge and I directed a music video for NOFX. The opener for the show we shot at was Guttermouth, who asked me to do a music video for them. And then while shooting that video, the band dared me to put out a 7″ record for them.
I went out and bought a book on how to run an independent record label. I tried to follow what it said, along with calling Fat Mike from NOFX because he had a record label. The first 7″ came out in December 1993, with the first song being called “Hopeless.” And that was where the name of the label was born.
I was still in college directing music videos at the time. It was really a one-off dare. Another group that I was doing a music video for was Schlong — a band with the drummer from Operation Ivy. While we were filming that video, the guys said, “Hey, we want to cover the whole West Side Story soundtrack and call it Punk Side Story. Would you put it out on this new label you started?” I said, “Let’s do it.” Things were so spontaneous back then.
What was the response to those early releases?
Posen: Guttermouth had a following. I was able to sell that first pressing of 500 or 1,000 records fairly quickly. The book also had distributors and their phone numbers so I called all of them. Some were willing to take the 7″, and then the rest I would sell at local Southern California retail stores. I would go drop them off on consignment and then come back a week later, see what sold and get paid.
The third release was all the music videos that I had directed along with videos from some of my friends who were directors. We put it on a VHS cassette and called that Cinema Beer-té, a play on “cinéma vérité.” After that, I decided to do the label full-time.
So you got the hang of things pretty quickly.
Posen: We’re still getting the hang of it; 30 years later, the best part about this industry is that it’s always changing and you always have to be learning. Those who feel like they know it usually get stuck and hit a ceiling. We need to be humble enough to learn from our successes, but more so learn from our mistakes and keep getting better every day. That’s been our philosophy and hopefully has been a part of why we’ve been able to survive for 30 years.
Hopeless Records
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How did you approach distilling three decades of history into a single exhibit?
Harrison: We’re pretty fortunate to have too much stuff — we could do two or three more exhibits if anyone was interested in that level of detail. We took a lot of inspiration from the Punk Rock Museum in Vegas, how they displayed the history of our world. We put our own tweaks on it.
We spent maybe two months going through stuff before we started building anything. And that was really just trying to get a sense of what we had, what we could get from artists, and what was important to tell the story. We have access to certain items that are interesting, but we also have big moments at the label that we want to make sure are represented, and sometimes those don’t always line up. It took maybe four months altogether. One thing we took away from this experience was feeling like we should do a better job archiving stuff in the future, both digitally and physically.
Posen: I always keep something next to my desk that reminds me of the beginning so I don’t forget where we came from. I kept the original Guttermouth 24-track two-inch tape in my office. Ian also spent some time — very kind of him — going through my garage with me to find all kinds of stuff that no one had looked at in 30 years.
The idea from the beginning was for it to be mobile, so we could go from museum to museum. Ian came up with the idea of putting these items in road cases, which was really cool because it has a music connection. You’ve got these music road cases like an artist would have on tour, but with the glass fronts like what you would see on the wall of a well-known museum.
How often did you have to ask artists for items?
Harrison: About 25% of the good stuff I’d say comes from artists. Avenged Sevenfold’s guitar that they used to record Waking the Fallen, that came from the producer actually who still had it. Neck Deep gave us a guitar. The Wonder Years gave us these two amazing lyric books with original song titles that had changed, early album plans, a pros and cons list about conversations with the label. That’s gold.
A lot of the good stuff came from artists, which is really nice and also requires us to have good relationships with them. That’s another bright spot for the label — we generally have pretty good relationships with these artists over time.
Posen: The third way we got stuff was becoming an expert at searching eBay, finding old T-shirts and things that we don’t have any stock of anymore. We used to put out these parody shirts that look like Rolling Rock, but they said “punk rock.” We found those on eBay.
Harrison: For maybe a month my house looked like a crazy person’s house. We just had the weirdest-looking packages coming every day. I bought a lot of posters that came in like these insane packages.
Hopeless Records
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Are there any items in the exhibit that are especially meaningful for you?
Harrison: For me, it would be The Greatest Generation workbook from around when The Wonder Years put out that album. That’s one of the top records in the company’s history. I remember us putting out that record and going through the whole process. To see the inner workings of that record as it was developing, to me that’s the coolest thing. And then I also threw in my own gold record from All Time Low when they first got a single plaque.
Posen: I mentioned we did the Punk Side Story that covered the whole West Side Story soundtrack. We actually got a letter from Leonard Bernstein‘s daughter — he’s the composer. She said, “This is an amazing version of my dad’s work and we’re not going to sue you.” It’s handwritten on her stationery. That’s an amazing piece.
And we have a letter from the late Senator Dianne Feinstein, who’s an icon in California, recognizing our charitable work with Sub City. Our belief that the artists’ voices can do more than make musicians rich and famous, that’s still the fabric and foundation of what we do every day.
What advice would you give to someone who aspires to start a label now and have it last 30 years?
Posen: I’m always hesitant to give advice because every individual is different. But there are definitely philosophies that I have that I like to share. We have a list of principles on the Hopeless site. If you’re just doing this for your own benefit, I think that’s not sustainable or rewarding over a long period of time. And it’s not about whatever the quick, easy path is. It’s about doing things the right way, treating people the right way. Those principles aren’t necessarily in fashion now, but we think those are universal and everlasting. And my biggest one is probably to still surround yourself with great people. This is really a team sport.
How do you feel about the health of the independent label landscape?
Posen: We’re a big believer that the independent music sector is an amazing place to build your career and create social mobility. This community does that. It’s an amazing environment to get started. Most independent labels don’t require you to have a Harvard degree, or any degree. It’s all about how hard you work — and how much you care. This community is what gave us the environment to start and thrive. And so we want to make sure this community stays strong and grows for the next generation of labels and other music businesses.
Ian made a list while he’s been putting this together — all of our albums that have reached 100,000 copies sold in the U.S. You only get a gold record at 500,000 or a platinum one at 1 million. We’ve got a few of those, which is awesome. But what’s actually more exciting is we have 33 albums that have hit over 100,000. To me, that symbolizes what we do and what independent music is all about. It’s not about superstars necessarily. It’s mostly about great music and art and allowing these artists to make a living doing what they do.
As the showdown continues between Universal Music Group (UMG) and TikTok after the world’s biggest record company pulled content by its artists and songwriters from the video-hosting social media site, it seems as though the ban has created a window of opportunity for independent music acts.
A look at the upper echelon of Billboard‘s TikTok Top 50 chart shows that most of the top 20 entries on the chart are independent recordings, including Dasha’s breakthrough “Austin,” Mitski’s “My Love Mine All Mine,” Djo (a.k.a. actor/musician Joe Keery)’s “End of Beginning,” and even Bobby Caldwell’s 1979 song “What You Won’t Do For Love.” Prior to UMG’s TikTok ban, independent artists, music from independent artists already made up a significant portion of the TikTok 50 chart, which debuted in September 2023, but without UMG artists’ or songwriters’ works on the platform — which by Billboard‘s recent estimates affects more than 60% of the most popular songs in the United States — the pathway to success seems more clear than ever.
However, top independent music executives have a message for artists in the sector: “Not so fast.”
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As UMG’s ban drags on, independent music executives are advising artists to look at the bigger picture — and also to use this as an opportunity to look at what rights they do and don’t control.
“I truly hope we don’t do what we so often do in the music industry, which is say, ‘Oh, this is an opportunity for me to get a bit of an advantage,’ and then take the advantage, but ultimately damage the ecosystem,” says Richard James Burgess, president/CEO of the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM). “I think we are sort of at a critically bad state, in terms of the amount of money that’s being paid through [to artists]. That works out fine if you’re an aggregator, distributor or label, and you’ve got enough copyrights. But it’s extremely difficult for the artist to generate enough copyrights to make a living from if someone’s not a household name.”
Burgess continues, “TikTok is an extremely bad actor in terms of the types of deals they do and the structure of their deals. It’s almost like trying to play the lottery — if you get a viral TikTok, it can have an impact on your sales, but how much money does TikTok make from us trying to get that sort of viral spike? They should be paying for the use of music and they’re effectively not paying. I think Universal did a great thing here, and my membership, my board, supports that position.” (A rep for TikTok has declined to comment for this story).
In a 2022 Billboard story, one executive from an independent label noted that artists on his roster earned approximately $150 from TikTok from around 100,000 videos that were made with their music. Meanwhile, in the same report, a marketer who spearheaded a campaign for a music single that was used in approximately half a million TikTok videos noted that his artist earned less than $5,000 from TikTok, though views rose into the billions.
While there are opportunities for increasing numbers of independent artists to gain greater traction on TikTok during the platform’s impasse with UMG, “it’s important for artists to use the opportunity to focus on their own art instead of chasing trending sounds or being the one-millionth person to cover a hit song,” says Jody Whelan of independent record label Oh Boy Records, which was founded in 1981 by the late singer-songwriter John Prine and which now represents music from Prine, Kelsey Waldon and Arlo McKinley, among others. “If you’re lucky enough to go viral on TikTok, you want folks to stick around to hear what you have to say.”
For many contemporary acts, TikTok is a key component of their marketing plans, with labels and managers urging artists to create content in hopes of driving listeners to streaming platforms. A 2023 report, commissioned by TikTok and facilitated by Luminate, noted that 62% of U.S. TikTok users pay for a music streaming service, compared to 43% of all consumers.“TikTok user engagement metrics are strongly associated with streaming volumes,” in the United States, the report stated. “In other words, higher TikTok engagement — whether that’s likes, views or shares — corresponds with elevated streaming volumes.” The report also noted that TikTok users are more engaged with other areas of music-related consumption, claiming that in the United States, 45% of TikTok users purchased music-related merch over a year-long span, compared with 35% of overall music listeners, while 38% of TikTok users attended a live music event during the year, compared to 33% of overall music listeners.
Even with stats like these, Whelan says the TikTok/UMG battle should serve as a cautionary tale to realize how even so-called independent artists can get caught in the ban’s web because of an affiliation with UMG or UMPG. “This should also serve as a reminder to the independent community: You can’t rely on someone else’s platform to reach your audience,” Whelan says. “This month it’s UMG, next month it could be your distributor. The algorithms and priorities of social media companies and the streamers continuously shift. You have to be able to control the means in which you communicate directly with your audience, whether that’s by email or by text (we also still send out postcards to our fans!).”
Stem CEO Milana Lewis agrees, seeing the situation as a “great moment to highlight the difference between independence and autonomy. Artists believe they’re independent when they do a deal with the independent distribution arm of a major label because their deal terms might be more flexible. In reality, they still have very little control over their rights, and this is a great example of how a big corporation is deciding on their behalf whether or not their music is available on a platform and whether or not they are willing to trade off earnings for exposure.”
Independent artists should be taking this time to examine their relationships with all social media and make sure they are taking full advantage of each platform despite TikTok’s current dominance, says Seth Faber, Stem’s general manager of music distribution and payments. “Time will tell if Universal’s maneuver will lead to a meaningful redistribution of the viral pie. In the meantime, artists should continue to lean into the full landscape of snackable content,” Faber says. “The power of Instagram’s Reels, Spotify’s Clips and YouTube’s Shorts aren’t to be ignored. Diversify those content portfolios.”
For Burgess, UMG vs. TikTok is a repeat of an age-old battle pitting the industry against artists, with artists often coming out on the short end of the stick. “[TikTok] plays this promotional exposure-discovery game. How many times do we get sucked into that?” Burgess asks. “Radio hasn’t paid [artists] for recorded music. MTV didn’t pay. We keep making the same mistakes. Good thing is that Universal is big enough, and especially with the publishing and everything, the tendrils from that go far and wide.”
Burgess further likens the UMG-TikTok battle with the ongoing battle with secondary ticket markets, saying that most of the money is not making its way to artists. “That is the essence of the problem,” he says. “It would be good if people did the right thing here and stood together to get a better deal for everybody.”
At the SONA Warrior Awards in October, hitmaker Justin Tranter used his acceptance speech as an opportunity to warn the music business: “If we’re not careful,” he said. “We’re just not going to have any songwriters left.”
It used to be a lot easier to make a living as a songwriter. In the days of physical records, songwriters would get paid with each album sale, even if they had the least popular song on the album. Now, in the streaming era, songwriters say the only way to get a livable wage is to write the album’s breakout single. Getting a song on AM/FM radio is still a good way to make money, but radio hits are tough to come by. Plus, there’s the problem with artists demanding cuts of publishing income, even if they didn’t pen the song, and writing rooms have grown bigger than ever. For these reasons and more, songwriters like Tranter say the current business has led to the “decimation of the songwriter middle class.”
To try to alleviate some of the strain facing songwriters, three small independent labels – Tranter’s Facet Records, The Other Songs and Good Boy Records – have made a new pledge they hope will catch on: giving songwriters a percentage of master royalties— or “points” — on every single record.
“We didn’t feel like the industry was changing fast enough to fix this,” says Billy Webber, co-founder of London-based indie label The Other Songs, which has Ren, Navy and SUPER-Hi on its roster. His company, founded alongside brother Alastair Webber, started first as a series of events, offering songwriters the chance to perform their unused pitch songs in front of a crowd of publishers and advertisers. From the start, Webber says, they knew they wanted to not only take care of their artists, but also to look after the writers behind their records.
In 2020, The Other Songs started offering four points to songwriters on every recording, split between however many writers there are. (The policy excludes writers who are also the artist or producer, roles which already receive cuts of the master income.) They call it the “TOS Writer Royalty,” and it is taken from the label’s share of revenue — not the artist’s.
Tranter’s Facet Records — home to emerging talent like Jake Wesley Rogers, Shawn Wasabi and Shea Diamond — announced earlier this year that it would start a similar program, offering three points from the label’s share to songwriters, also split between however many non-performing writers were on the track.
Jaime Zeluck-Hindlin — founder of Nonstop Management which represents hitmakers JKash, Michael Pollack, and Ryan OG — says she has been calling for a standardized system for songwriter master points for years. She explains that her larger writers can sometimes get half a point or a point on a master when they have enough leverage to negotiate it, but it is still considered a luxury for anyone to receive. “It’s not the norm yet,” she explains. These days Zeluck-Hindlin asks for points for all her clients, not just the hitmakers, and has been making some headway, but she notes it’s a careful conversation that varies project-by-project. “More than ever,” she says, “it’s so hard for songwriters to make money, so I don’t feel as bad asking anymore.”
Writers and their teams are in a difficult position when asking for master points: They don’t want to push too hard and threaten getting cut out of sessions for being labeled “too demanding,” and if an A-list artist wants to cut a song, their name and image alone could propel it to success.
Songwriters historically have not received payment for the master recording, because they are not part of that formal recording process like producers and artists. But now, citing economic hardship for writers — even with a song that is a streaming “success” — it has become more common. “I’ve noticed people are way more open to the conversation than they were before,” says Zeluck-Hindlin.
It might seem like giving a songwriter master income is a band-aid for a larger issue, but those who are fighting for it feel it is the best option available, given the current system. Streaming rates on the publishing side have always been considerably lower than on the master side, and in the U.S., publishing income is regulated by the government, making it much more difficult to make changes.
Good Boy Records, a label started by producer Elie Rizk and entrepreneur and manager John Zamora that represents Mazie, Judith and Georgee, is also working on their own system for master points. “We want to give out one point per songwriter,” says Rizk. The team at Good Boy started to work on finding a way to cut in songwriters since Mazie hit it big with her song “dumb dumb,” which helped Good Boy recoup its distribution deal with Virgin and see “real money” for the first time earlier this year.
By May, the team paid every songwriter who had ever worked with the emerging label a small non-recoupable fee as a thank you. “Since then, we have gotten savvier with our system,” says Zamora. “We treat songwriters like we treat producers – with fees and points every time, but we are still evolving as we go.”
Some producers are also hoping to address the economic problems facing songwriters. Producer, Tre Jean Marie, posted to Instagram this summer that he would be giving £500 of his production fee to non-performing songwriters on every major label release he has. “I believe that the record labels, turning over billions of pounds in revenue every year, should shoulder the responsibility of ensuring songwriters are compensated for their time and work, but until that happens, I want to help,” he wrote. Rizk says he has also shared a portion of his producer fee and points with songwriters on the recent single “Heartbroken” by Diplo, Jessie Murph, and Polo G to makes the payments more equitable.
The heads of the three indie labels say that they hope that by being public about their new offerings for songwriters it will encourage other labels, especially larger ones with much greater financial impact, to follow suit. Tranter says they are already talking with one “pretty large company” to discuss how to implement a similar system at that company and is hopeful for more to follow suit.
But he is not confident the majors will accommodate songwriters anytime soon, especially those that are publicly traded. He thinks there are still other changes that can be made within any label to make it more songwriter-friendly, like offering per-diems, free lunch or free transportation to sessions.
“If we can do it [as a new label], then pretty much any record label that’s really taking itself seriously can do it as well,” Webber says. “Songwriters are basically the beating heart of our industry. Without them, we’re not going to have any masters anyway.”
The independent Latin music industry is having a great moment, with acts like Fuerza Regida, Bizarrap and Peso Pluma dominating the charts and selling out arenas from Mexico and Argentina to the US and beyond. And the heads of three of the most successful independent labels on the market would not conceive of any other way of working today.
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“Independence is priceless, it is the best thing that can happen to us,” says Fede Lauria, CEO of Dale Play Records, which represents Argentine stars such as Bizarrap and Nicki Nicole, highlighting the speed with which they can respond to the needs of its artists by not depending on third parties.
Lauria made this statement on Tuesday (October 3) at Latin Music Week 2023, during “The Power Players: Indie Edition” panel moderated by Billboard‘s Leila Cobo and presented by Lexus. The panel also featured Jimmy Humilde, CEO of Rancho Humilde (label of Mexican regional music superstars like Fuerza Regida and Natanael Cano); and George Prajin, CEO of Prajin Parlay and manager and partner of Peso Pluma. They are, in short, the heads of three of the most successful independent labels on the market today.
For Humilde, who began doing flyer parties in California and over the years rose to become one of the most successful Mexican music executives, it’s about doing “what we want… what we feel,” without having to ask permission. It has worked for him, and “coming from very low, it is a very big blessing because we appreciated it more,” he said.
Prajin, meanwhile, compared the current situation with his beginnings in the industry some 40 years ago, when an indie label could not compete with the big ones because there were no streaming services and slots on the radio were limited, as were the resources to promote indie artists. “Today’s artists have direct engagement with the audience through social media and independent companies can compete at all levels. We lead. We don’t follow,” he said.
Each one, in their own style and way, is committed to taking their artists to the top. Humilde, for example, says that he does not sign artists but rather has business agreements with them — as in the case of Legado 7, with which he established Lumbre, the label where Yahritza y Su Esencia began.
Lauria, who helped launch a wave of urban acts from Argentina including DUKI, Nicki Nicole, Rei, WOS, Rels B and others who began in their teens and soon after were filling stadiums and traveling the world, highlighted the importance of accompanying them in their development and ensure their physical and emotional well-being. “Artists also suffer… they are not aliens. This generation Z of artists has to prepare at superhuman speed to meet that pressure,” he declared.
Celebrated for more than 30 years, the 2023 edition of Latin Music Week includes a Superstar Q&A with Shakira; the Legends on Legends chat with Chencho Corleone and Vico C; Making the Hit Live! with Carin León and Pedro Capó; a panel with RBD’s Christian Chávez, Christopher von Uckermann, and Maite Perroni; Superstar Songwriter discussion with Edgar Barrera and Keityn, among many other panels, Q&As and workshops.
See the ultimate Latin Music Week guide here. This year’s Latin Music Week, taking place Oct. 2-6, also includes showcases by Peso Pluma, Mike Bahía and Greeicy, DannyLux and Fonseca, to name a few. Check out the dates and times for the showcases throughout the week here.
Official partners of the 2023 Billboard Latin Music Week include AT&T, Cheetos, CN Bank, Delta Air Lines, Lexus, Netflix, Michelob ULTRA and Smirnoff.
Latin Music Week coincides with the 2023 Billboard Latin Music Awards ceremony, which will broadcast live from the Watsco Center in Coral Gables, Fla., on Thursday (Oct. 5) and will air on Telemundo. It will also broadcast simultaneously on Universo, Peacock, the Telemundo App, and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean on Telemundo Internacional.
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