I said it is a myth that record companies exist to filter out rubbish. That is what they would like us to believe, only the best is good enough for them. A myth reinforced by the chumps who struggle to be on a record label. Will even debase themselves before Simon Cowell to get a recording contract.

If a record label is set up to promote what the founders believe to be good, then they are acting as cultural gatekeepers as they are keeping out what they believe to be bad.

Thus they are acting as cultural filters between those who make the music and those who wish to listen.

Good and bad in the context is defined as what is commercial. It could just as easily be cans of baked beans. Whether good or bad in a cultural context is irrelevant, it will be hyped to the brain-washed masses who part with their money thinking they are buying into something cool. Music is a commodity.

This is not just music, it is books, films, clothes.

Read No Logo by Naomi Klein for an excellent analysis.

Also The Winner Stands Alone by Paulo Coelho.

There is good and bad music in the same way there is a good and bad wine.

Dumb the culture down and people lack the ability to choose or judge.

Not to your taste, is always the fall-back position of those who promote something bad.

Do not confuse taste with genre. And genre is a problem because it tries to classify, pigeon-hole.

That is not to say there are not those who promote music for the love of music.

Only last week I had lunch with the director of an international music festival. He does not do it for money. He does it for the love of music and as a consequence enjoys what he is doing, even though it is a lot of hard work.

I have seen good musicians play and thought, what a pity this performance has not been recorded. My reaction has not been, they ought to be on a music label.

What will a music label provide?

Distribution.

When was the last time anyone saw or passed by a record shop?

After lunch with the festival director, I checked out several of the artists who I may wish to see. Few had the means to listen to their music, those that had it was cumbersome, a few seconds snippets of lofi.

As for download.

I tried this a few months ago. It was a pain. It was only because I had code for free download I persevered. I would not have otherwise bothered.

They all seem to exist in a long lost world of record labels and record shops. A world their record label is not going to disillusion them from as it is not in their interest to do so, as they may then question why do they need a record label, as many indeed have done and found themselves better off without.

Shadowboxer have found they do not need a record label. They go into a recording studio and engineer their own music.

As does Imogen Heap, only she went one step better and built her own recording studio in her own house.

Bandcamp provides the platform to listen, share, download music. If people like it is easy to share. If they like enough to buy, download is easy.

That is not to say there are not people who set up a record label because they love music. But it should not be taken that it follows that artists need a record label, as they do not.

Andrew Dubber and Steve Lawson cover many of these points in a somewhat shambolic and rambling discussion between themselves. Too much wine methinks.

http://newmusicstrategies.com/2012/07/04/podcast-5-record-labels/

That’s either daft or disingenuous.

Keith, people don’t start a record label to act as some kind of cultural gatekeeper, to lock anyone out, they start one to release and promote music by artists they love (or see/hear something in).

You’re tearing down a definition that nobody else would use (or live their working life by) in the first place.

Just because *you* think the music is rubbish, doesn’t mean it is. The audience isn’t ‘brainwashed’, they just have different taste to you, because music is subjective.

Yes of course, the established capitalist success-based (and over-visual) iconography of the ‘star’ is very prevalent and very problematic, across all culture now – but that’s not record labels’ fault.

Your point about Twitter is entirely correct but is completely separate to this wrongheaded critique.