I’ve Observed The Music Industry For 10 Years — Here’s the Marketing Argument For Artists to Sign With Major Labels

Musicians need to sign the record deal

The growing narrative in today’s music industry is that major labels are harmful to artists and cause more bad than good. I disagree with this narrative. While we can agree that major labels have abused their power throughout time it is dishonest to discredit the benefits they bring artists in the long run.

If you are confused by the surge in anti-label talk and need some clarity on the truths behind signing a record deal, then this article should simplify the benefits of music labels a bit.

Labels support artists in dozens of ways, but for this article, I wanted to focus on marketing and how a label’s marketing support filters into many other parts of an artist’s work.

When we get into the details it should become clear just how valuable and indispensable labels are to artists development and career growth. For convenience, I’ve divided the article into the following sections:

• Touring: In this section, I cover the promotional benefits labels bring to artists who are on tour.
• The Cost of Increased Exposure: In this section, I unpack some of the most important exposure-increasing marketing costs covered by the label.
• Greater Album Budgets: In this section, I show how costly making and marketing an album could be, and how labels make the process more doable.
• Access To Higher Quality Artists: In this section, I describe how labels put artist in touch with other established acts and expands their audiance.

Touring

When an artist goes on tour, they are not the only member of their team going on the live performance venture. Labels orchestrate massive operational and promotional feats for their artists’ tours including hundreds, at a minimum, staff including drivers, promoters, sound engineers, lighting designers, stage crew, security personnel, merchandise managers, and publicists, to name a few. The label not only flips the bill for the ball to get rolling but they run the planning and execution of this logistics-heavy project.

After the pandemic, it became harder for established artists to generate the same size crowds. During this period and even into the present mainstream artists with significant followings are facing financial hardships going on tour. Some are barely breaking even. The music journalist Zach Schonfeld had an enlightening interview with NPR in 2022 about this topic. He not only revealed the struggles of artists to make any money on tour and the heavy competition they face in established artists but he strongly confirmed that “the ability of professional musicians to actually, you know, generate income and make a living from their art is more difficult than it’s ever been.”

Indie artists are sinking on tour, so why wouldn’t an artist try and better their chances by teaming up with a label for better marketing and promotional support?

The Cost of Increased Exposure

Labels are great at promoting their artists across many different sectors. Firstly, there are music videos, where labels cover the costs of video and recording equipment. They are also dedicated to paying for the video actors, production crews, and post-production editing functions. These costs are not cheap and are adding up at a disastrously fast rate. Major label music videos cost an astounding $100,000 on average(!).

Another marketing line item that labels front includes brand partnerships, which many labels work on creating and negotiating on behalf of the artist. These ventures work for the label because, if successful, the new brand will promote the artist’s music without additional marketing dollars coming from the label.

Further, labels are working with radio stations, streaming platforms, and distribution networks to get the artist's name and music out there in front of the listener, wherever they are. If you ever wondered how certain artists get on the cover of playlists on your favorite streaming services, you should thank the label.

Imagine an artist trying to do this on their own, or even harder, paying to outsource these responsibilities to a marketing agency or related service. This is the plight of the indie artist. The time dedicated to these tasks or the allocation of these tasks is incredibly counterproductive to the goal and pursuit of artists. Artists should be focused on being creative.

Greater Album Budgets

Similar to tours, labels cover so much of the marketing and development costs that go into creating and releasing an album. Much of these costs are unseen by the listener. These costs include session players, targeted marketing and promotion, album artwork, producers, and engineers. Labels are concerned with how an album is packaged and delivered.

Throughout the making of an album, while an artist is working on the music, the label is strategizing ways to get this in the hands of the consumer.

Creating an album is an expensive project. Without labels, artists who want to make mainstream albums are faced with intense feelings of anxiety and trepidation. Budgets for most of the established artists’ albums on the Billboard 200 are worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. It’s a troubling reality.

At the most extreme budget is Michael Jackson’s Invincible album. The 2001 final Jackson album cost the label over $30 million due to expensive studios, producers, and promotional budgets. The promotional budget alone was reported to be over $20 million!

Access To Higher Quality Artists

One of the best ways to promote an artist is to put them together with an established artist with a lot of fans. Labels make these connections by sifting through their large and ever-changing rosters. Artists have the potential to work with hundreds if not thousands of artists and producers who are signed to the same label as them.

Labels typically encourage cross-collaboration between label mates to boost the smaller one up or to help an older artist find their footing in the modern sound. These kinds of relationships typically are unknown when listeners hear an album, but most of the features they see are the result of artists being on the same label.

Trying to make that many artistic relationships organically would be a Herculean task. Artists would need to spend most of their time networking at events and socials while they preparing to make an album. These types of errands would leave an already derelict indie artist burnt out by the end of their first album cycle. Isn’t being an artist, without that hassle, tough enough?

We could be honest and admit that labels bring significant marketing and promotional benefits to an artist over the course of their careers. Sure, some mainstream artists could hop back into the indie world after making their millions, but to go back to the indie world and encourage smaller indie artists to stay independent is disingenuous and harmful.

It’s more expensive than ever before to promote yourself as an artist online and across a tour. Artists need financial, promotional, and institutional backing, and label deals are the best way to acquire those.

The goal is for artists to make the best label deal they can when they have leverage. Once a trend of those starts to pile up in recent pop culture memory, like the distribution deal that Ice Spice just signed, the narrative will hopefully start to tilt back to the necessity of labels.

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