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Comment by marcus_holmes | Hacker News Reader

> In the future, artists will get record deals because they have fans — not the other way around.

I'm not in the industry, so I don't grok it too well. Why would an artist with an established fan base need a record deal?

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Before streaming, the label owned the means of production (professional studios and professionals), means of distribution (Vynil, CDs etc), means of promotion (deals with radios, magazines, channels etc) and it sort of operated like a bank. So it would give lots of money upfront and the artist would sign the deal to x amount of albums to be distributed by the label (which was kept very non transparent by design, so that the artists who were not business savvy always did a bad deal. There were all kinds of other shenanigans, like underreporting sales (to pay less for the artist) etc. Today labels lost a lot of their power in distribution (Spotify, Youtube, etc), a little in recording (recording is easier) but still have the promotion power. So they operate in a similar way but with deals focused on production and promotion. So an artist with fans would make a deal with a big label to get the promotion/production power they have and the bank function. So he/she would leverage on that to become a global star betting that this will bring more money that he/she owes the label.

Because the record label handles all the business aspects which is all the actual work of monetizing an artist. You can DIY but you will end up becoming a record label as you scale in the process.

They handle the marketing, merch, venues, social media, distribution, retail relationships, deals with studios, relationships with radio, relationships with personalities to do interviews, all the video production staff for music videos, like this could on forever.

They may have some fans, but not a lot of money. The label steps in to give money to fund creating a new album, creating music videos (these can easily run up to millions of dollars), issuing new LP pressings, doing concerts, advertising them, etc.

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