Indie vs Mainstream

Independent label

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• Respect for your music (can work with whoever you like)
• Close relationships (less staff = easier to develop close relationships and links with people they are working with)
• Artist - frindly deals (little indie labels do bussiness with a profit split, don't force to sign artists long term deals, doesn't have creative control over them)

Independent label

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• Money ( most smaller operations are trying keep up as they don't have the budget for recording or tour support, they have to be creative with their promotional ideas and artists usually have to invest in their own music carrer)
• Disorganization (not all indie labels are disorganized, but informal nature in these labels means that everything can get confusing.
• Size (don't have purchasing power like major labels when it comes to press)

3. Size (don't have purchasing power like major labels when it comes to press)

Mainstream label

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• Money (in the way people are purchasing their music gives these labels a great advantage, higher budged also means greater artsist promotion ideas and tours, music videos)
• Connections (they have been in bussiness for long time and have connections that can be your succsess path)

3.Size ( they have a large scale of records being sold, they can get the artists the best deals on manufacturing and advertisement as they do bussiness in a bulk

Mainstream label

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• Big pond - small fish ( major labels select the music that artsist produces to see what would please the audience, if the album released was not succsessful they are likely to loose any contact with you)
• Continuity ( the person who signed your album can dissaper from the label anyday and the new one might not be what you expected, this affects the career of many young artists)

3.Artist unfriendly deals ( major labels want a big part of everything the artist has, if the artist disagrees the lawyers can appear on their front door)

Merchandise and Ancillary

Bands are able to gain more audience due to their products. They also get more money when they sell the products that are relatable to fans and this way are able to produce better quolity outcomes.

Information

Fans can find out information about their favourite artists by visiting their official websites, looking at their interviews, looking up at google search, reading magazine articles and sometimes even by buying their ancillary products.

Mainstream or Indie?

If I was an artists reaching out to sign a label in order to get noticed I would choose an indie lable. This is because I believe that every real artists loves to express themselselves through their work and mainstream companies interfer too much with the creation as they like to include only the pieces they like into an album realese. It would never be to late to go for a mainstream lable after finishing your contract with indie one, this way you would already be quite known and recignised which means that mainstream lable would know your type of music and couldn't do much changes as it would lead to a loss of fans.

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