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Originally Posted by aligak  Is a decent netlabel good an initial buzz or first time release or doe sit actually "ruin" your reputation as to make it more difficult to get onto "real" labels in the future? |
i think honestly what would be far more impacting initial buzz would be to do just do the DIY promotion thing. put up youtube vids of your tunes, myspace/facebook/soundcloud/last.fm, and -- just being honest here -- circulate low-quality mp3s on p2p. i dont think there's anything a netlabel offers in terms of "boosting" you, is the thing, for all reasons mentioned.
like for example, there's this dnb label, commercial suicide. this label is owned by the artist klute, who is considered quite the badman in the genre. getting signed to commercial suicide means that klute thought you were good enough to have your name on his roster, which means not only that you have been accepted into a certain group of talent for which there is a bar to meet, but also that he was willing to take a financial risk on you.
none of that applies with a netlabel though -- what's the point? they release anything sent their way, have you seen how huge some of those labels are? some of them put out a hundred releases a year. there's nothing separating you from the flock by being signed to a label that signs anybody for zero effort or money. you could have made your own website and distributed through that, what's really the difference? what is the reason people would have to give you more attention than had you just gone DIY and represented yourself? you see what i'm saying, yes? it's a completely non-exclusive club, so what's the difference, what's the point? what's the difference between putting your music on a netlabel, and just dropping 320s of all your masters into a big p2p client?
do you think your music is worth paying for? regardless of whether or not that happens given the nature of the beast currently, just, do you think your music is good enough that even hypothetically people should find a certain monetary amount worth parting with in order to enjoy it? then you should DIY and see if anyone notices you.