To netlabel or not......

Paul Blackford's recent move to change his excellent label Militant Science into a netlabel got me thinking about the idea of free music. While I don't know Paul's particular motives behind this move, I've been operating Vocode Records as a netlabel since the beginning. There's a reason for that, and aside from the ultimate goal of getting my own music out there, as well as enable other artists who may not have a name to get some exposure to the Vocode and City of Bass audience, a lot of it has to do with time, cost and money. If you are passionate about music, but you have a regular life and a regular job to pay the bills, perhaps a family, I can definitely see going the netlabel route. That's not to say traditional label operator's aren't grinding 9-to-5, but for me the netlabel route was the choice. I probably honestly have 4 hours a week for myself these days, but I digress. There's of course the artistic view that artists should be compensated for their work, and I absolutely and emphatically agree with this. It's why you don't see free download hulkshare or zshare links on City of Bass, but rather links to reputable legitimate ways to purchase music. As an aside, I won't tell you how much of the search traffic I see coming to this site comes from 'artist + title' search strings appended with 'free download', or '.rar', or '.zip'. It's depressing. Originally, the netlabel scene blossomed from a sense of community and heads who just wanted to get their music out there. The stigma associated with netlabels, however, became one of too much s--t music, and too much ambient noodling. There's a lot of folks who won't take music seriously if it comes out on a netlabel. That said, some of these same folks don't have a problem downloading pay-label music illegally for free. So if that's the case, I can absolutely see why you'd sidestep the entire issue. I know there are some artists who see good money from their music releases, and that's fantastic. But I would venture to say that's the exception and not the rule - unless you have a name and a brand, it's hard to make a dent out there with all the noise. Going further along the stigma issue, what then do you make of a label like Militant Science going this route? You can't knock their solid reputation or the music or the artists, because Militant Science has been putting out bangers from day one, from respected artists. And they're continuing to do so, but under the creative commons guise.  I really see it as a positive, because it gives credence to the entire netlabel idea for those who look down on the concept. And let's be honest,  there's not too many artists who are paying to have their music professionally mastered. Mastering is not dumping presets on T-Racks and tweaking a few knobs... perhaps I'm just picky, but I'll tell you that I can pick out who's paying for pro-mastering and who's jacking pre-sets. Maybe your average punter doesn't care, but I do. And why would you drop the significant coin on getting your music professionally mastered if the end result is your tunes appearing on endless free download links? I don't know where I'm going to take Vocode Records. I don't get too much time to even produce anymore, much less make mixtapes. Between all the work I do that pays for my family to have bread on the table and a roof over their head, and the small amout of free time I have, all I want to do is to enjoy making music, and I want it to be heard, not rot away on a hard-drive. I don't have time for proper promotion, running the accounting, networking with distributors,  and all that other s--t it takes to run a label properly. Will I make the time eventually? Perhaps, I've got an idea for releasing a vinyl album at some point. But it's more just to do it, and I have to be honest - this thought is always in my head "why drop all the coin and energy into making a traditional label if it's just going to wind up chilling on megashare". If it's just so that some heads take my label "seriously" but then download my music for free anyway, I don't see the point. I know I get a fair amount of visitors to this site, and I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on netlabels, free music, and your thoughts on the matter. If you've taken the time to read this far, drop a comment and let me know. I'm damned curious. City of Bass: blogging daily about the electro music scene. Follow along via twitter or the RSS feed