Traditional record label deals are increasingly considered outdated and don’t necessarily serve all artists’ best interests in the current streaming ecosystem – one that means digital recording revenue can be lower compared to what artists historically received from physical sales.
In a traditional record deal, an artist sells the rights to their recorded music to a label in exchange for an advance, marketing, promotion and a royalty. As a result, the artist no longer owns or controls their copyrights and they do not necessarily have control over other important areas.
With label services, artists don’t give up the rights to their sound recordings. Instead, the artist and their support team will pay directly for the services they need to get to market, while keeping control of their work, as well as how it is used and promoted.
A good label services provider will offer solutions for digital marketing, promotion, sales, digital and physical distribution, logistics, stock management, neighbouring rights management, synchronisation, manufacturing, campaign management and D2C.
Basically, everything you might need to get your music and brand out there and in front of fans.
Absolute goes further, offering digital marketing packs, asset creation, and digital health checks across our artist and label clients’ streaming and social platforms.
We advise on best practices in terms of your presence on social media and streaming platforms.
We pitch on your behalf or offer advice about the best information to put forward when trying to make a breakthrough with DSPs in your pitch. We believe in empowering artists with the knowledge and tools they need to maximise their chances of playlist or editorial support from digital music services.
While a traditional record deal might report to you bi-annually, label services providers like Absolute report to you monthly, so you have regular income to fund a consistent release schedule.
We give our artists and labels access to their data via our “best in class” online client portal, Absolute Project. In Project, you have access to your releases’ performance across multiple platforms at a glance. Artists and labels using Project can also download their unreleased music and data straight from the portal at any time.
Under a label services deal, you are in complete control of how your budget is spent for each release campaign – we work within the parameters that you set out.
We can advise on a team and introduce you to a suitable PR person or radio plugger. We have existing relationships with a large network of contacts that we have built up over the past 20+ years.
Absolute is proudly independent. We’re selective about who we work with and we only take on labels and artists when we feel we can add value. We’re motivated by working with passionate artists, labels and managers – not increasing our market share.
We work with artists with established fanbases and we help these artists to tap into their audience and beyond. We also work with plenty of new and upcoming artists who are just starting out.
Artists and labels can take advantage of all or a select combination of the services that we offer. We provide infrastructure, our own knowledge, tools and experience to give artists and labels more choices, transparency and freedom than most traditional record deals offer. And, again, our clients retain their rights.
We’d call it an independent revolution – but we’ve been doing it since 1998!
