Signing, recording, promoting, publicizing, and selling music is a lot of work. As you’ll see, the larger record labels have the luxury of having many different departments and dozens of employees to run the label. The smaller companies have the same responsibilities to manage and they have to be creative and energetic to get all that work done.
Inside a Major Label
What are the key departments at a record label, and what are those departments responsible for? The CEO of a major label will generally oversee the business affairs of all the affiliated labels under their corporate umbrella. Each major label will have its own President who is responsible for all the label activities. For example, at Warner Brothers, there’s a president for Warner Brothers Records, as well as a president for Reprise Records, a president of Atlantic Records, etc. Each department at a major label is run by a Senior Vice President. Each of the following areas has a Senior Vice president in charge:
The Business Affairs Department takes care of label finances; bookkeeping, payroll, etc.
The Legal Department handles all contractual issues and other legal responsibilities.
The A&R (Artists and Repertoire) Department locates and signs new talent. They work with the artist in song selection, choice of producers and recording studio selection. They communicate with the label’s Business Affairs Department to make sure all the paperwork and accounting issues involved with the actual recording of an act’s record are set up prop-erly. In short, the A&R Department can serve as a liaison between an artist and all the other departments at the label.
The Art Department supervises all product design jobs, (CD, vinyl cover art, etc.), trade and consumer press advertising, retail sales posters and flats, and other print projects.
The Marketing Department is responsible for creating the overall marketing plan for every record the label is releasing. They’re also involved in coordinating all the promotion, public-ity, and sales campaigns that the label is committed to.
The Publicity Department arranges for feature stories, interviews, or record reviews in local and national newspapers, magazines, web-zines, as well as the broadcast opportunities for coverage on radio stations and television. They may also coordinate any of these publicity opportunities with an artist’s own publicist.
The New Media Department creates the websites and produces the music videos for the label’s artists. This department also oversees all the promotions and marketing opportunities on the Internet that use the audio and video technologies to stream or offer downloads of your songs.
The Artist Development Department usually oversees the career planning of artists signed to the label. This department coordinates a consistent marketing and promotion presence for an artist throughout their career with the record label. Remember, the Artist Development Department has changed over the last decade. Many labels no longer have such a department.
Others have changed the name to Product Development and concentrate more on “breaking,”
or promoting artists quickly in order to try to speed up the return on their financial investment.
The pressure to return a profit to shareholders has changed the face of the music business dramatically in recent years, so the emphasis has been more on Product Development and securing a hit as fast as possible.
The Sales Department oversees all the retail activities of the label and concentrates on building relationships with key record store chains and other music and mass merchandise retailers. At some labels online sales may be handled by the New Media Department, but if so, they’ll work closely with this department. The Sales staff coordinates their efforts with the major label’s distribution company, and communicates regularly with the Promotion and Pub-licity departments at the label.
In the last few years some of the Major labels have delegated their manufacturing and distri-bution business to outside the label companies. Nevertheless, a Label Liaison is the person who coordinates the business of the major label’s plans for manufacturing and distribution with the needs of their parent record labels. Street dates, (the date that a new release goes on sale at music retailers or when it can be sold online), must be approved by the label’s distribu-tion company in cooperadistribu-tion with the label.
The primary goal of the Promotion Department is to secure radio airplay for their com-pany’s new releases. These days radio is more than AM/FM stations. There are satellite sta-tions and key Internet broadcasters to deal with, and in 2006, High Definition Radio made its debut, giving the Promotion personnel more than a handful of work to do. Their ability to get songs played is central to the success of the whole company. The Promotion department is closely connected to, and constantly communicating with, other departments within the label to make sure that all strategies being used to market and sell an artist’s record are working together properly. Soliciting videos to MTV, VH1, BET and other music oriented television networks and Internet programs may also be the responsibility of this department. At some labels this job is a separate department, or part of the New Media department.
Every department at a record label plays an essential role in the success or failure of the com-pany. They’re team members, working together toward the goal of selling their music as one lean, mean, machine.
Inside an Independent Record Label
Independent record labels come in all sizes and shapes. The large well-funded Indie labels are organized into departments similar to the major label structure described above. The more money a label has, the more people they can hire to handle the various responsibilities of a
label. Smaller, grass roots or “garage” labels organize the work of promoting, selling, and publicizing their releases by having their staff wear as many different hats as possible.
These smaller labels have an awesome task marketing their records. There may be only two or three employees, including the label owner, doing the A&R scouting, calling all the different types of radio stations about airplay, working with a distributor (if they even have one), checking with the brick-and-mortar as well as online music retailers, and coordinating the publicity efforts—as well as dealing directly with their artists and bands to help them find gigs and put tours together.
Running a record label is a very expensive and time-consuming job. Few independent labels successfully manage the issues I’ve just outlined. It takes a lot of money and a lot of time to operate a legitimate record label. The more research and planning a young label can do before jumping into the world of music marketing, the higher the likelihood that they’ll survive and prosper in this competitive business.