Why Record Labels and Traditional Media Still Matter

MP3s killed the CD star, and blogs + iPad is supposed to kill magazines and newspapers. But there’s a reason why record labels and traditional media still matter.

The role of record labels, magazines, and other traditional outlets as a distributor is obsolete, yes. Anyone can deliver digital content now. But their roles as editors is more important than ever. And that’s why record labels and traditional media still matter – to be quality filters in an over-saturated world.

Think about it: if you’re really honest with yourself, you usually tend to gravitate towards content from “established” outlets. Whether that’s music on some record label rather than some dude posting MP3s on his site, or an article from a bigger site or, dare I say it, traditional outlet like New York Times or Wired rather than some chick’s blog.

It’s human nature – in this internet age, we’re overwhelmed by choice, so we look to filters that do the finding of quality content work for us. If you know a record label is great, then you’ll trust their latest releases to be worth checking out.

That’s not to say it’s always the case – of course there are widely-read individuals like Seth Godin and John Gruber who have one-person blogs with no traditional outlet interference (well, Seth had book publishers, but the blog was separate from those). And amongst all the crap out there you no doubt have found a golden nugget or two that you passionately follow. I know I do – Seth and John being 2 examples, as are countless electronic labels like Warp, BPitch Control, Kompakt, and Hyperdub.

But those are rare exceptions for the most part. 99% of DIY (do it yourself) stuff out there is crap. So what’s an individual artist (writer, musician, entrepreneur, whatever) to do? Either start passionately building a consistent-high-quality-output platform to become your outlet, or affiliate yourself with existing quality outlets, at least until your own name and brand is built up.

And that’s where record labels and traditional media come into play. They’re not needed to get music, writing, videos, and other content out to consumers anymore. But they are needed to keep consumers’ lives sane by being quality filters. And it’s your job as the individual content creator to use these outlets to your advantage.

Music writer Jacob Wright summed it up great on the electronic music site Resident Advisor: I think that as the quantity of music being produced continues to increase, editing is more important than ever. Nobody wants to check on hundreds of albums every month, we need shortcuts. We need labels like BPitch to stand for quality and to do this it important not to put out albums when EPs would be better. That why, even though labels as a round piece of paper and a facilitator of distribution are becoming obsolete, the role of the label is has never been more significant.