I AM LOVE

6y

This begs the question... who, in the music industry, uses KTT ?

@safe

safe

6y

so in this situation its usually on an album by album or song by song basis and usually dependent on region

essentially when something says exclusive license to Interscope it means that the artists label (Dirty Hit) have sold the exclusive rights to that album to Interscope. like I said it is usually an album by album basis and it might just be like in Mexico for example Interscope have the rights to the album but Dirty Hit have the rights in the USA

its pretty common for independent labels to do this since they dont really have the resources to market the album in so many places - big labels do this too though, sometimes an album on Sony might be licensed to universal in certain countries. it can be a win-win since Dirty Hit probably would get less money from selling the album in say Mexico on their own than what Interscope will pay to license it and Interscope will likely earn more revenue from the album in Mexico than they paid to license it

lil sunny

6y

Gotcha so in an exclusive license, both labels still end up getting a cut of the album revenue right (I’m sure the exact percentage is probably determined on a case by case basis)?

retiredfromhere

6y

tyler is signed to an independant label

safe

6y

I think that exclusive license can often mean that Dirty Hit gets a lump sum from Interscope for the license and then Interscope get all the revenue from the album

but I would guess that usually there are deals that involve some share of revenue along with a lump sum or similar on a case by case basis like you're saying ya

safe

6y

XL is a label that a lot of people tend to be associated with for 1-2 projects and then move on

Vampire Weekend moved to a major label after their 3rd album with XL
Tyler did 1 with XL then moved to Columbia
Adele is joint XL and Columbia
Kaytranada did 99.9% with XL then moved to RCA

hey man relax

6y

love you twin @safe 🤞

you should start a blog or maybe ig page as well where you post these same things

hey man relax

6y

also isnt dirty hit under polydor records? which of course is under UMG

edit: this is interesting, the 1975’s music is specifically under polydor, but i looked up two other groups on the label and their projects are released under interscope

safe

6y

nah the 1975 are distributed by Polydor but Dirty Hit aren't associated w them outside of that

they are distributed by Interscope in the US though but they're definitely still an independent label distribution is a fairly small piece of the pie

hey man relax

6y

maybe a condensed version for ig in the same way that Mayday does it, @​saturdayer on ig

safe

6y

There’s a lot of talk about the music industry on this site and as someone who tries to generally keep up with the music industry – it’s a career interest for me – I notice that a lot of people here don’t seem to understand some stuff around the industry. I wanted this to be a topic for one of my threads to give people an overview and some specific information about topics I see discussed here a lot. This thread is NOT about sales within the industry – I’m planning to do a thread specifically about sales, bundles, charts, label tactics etc. later on.

Labels are probably the most important player in the music industry. Three companies – often referred to as ‘The Big 3’ – cover the vast majority of music within the market. These are Warner Music Group, Sony Music Group (formerly Sony Music Entertainment) and Universal Music Group. In the past there was another major market player called EMI however in 2012 Universal Music Group despite significant regulatory setbacks took over EMI creating the current industry landscape. Globally these companies make up around 70% of the revenue within the market and in the US this market share can be as high as 80%. Universal is the largest of the three both globally and domestically and Sony is the second largest.

The rest of the market share in the music industry is made up of what’s called independent labels or direct to artist. Direct to artist means revenue goes directly to the artist and is probably what you think of when you hear that an artist is independent, but this is very rarely the case. I’ll expand on independence later.

Subsidiary labels is something that I see misunderstood more than almost anything else on this site. A subsidiary label or a vanity label is a label that is either partially but often fully owned by a larger parent label. Typically, you won’t hear an artist signing to Universal or Sony – you’ll hear about them signing to one of their smaller subsidiaries. These can also be called imprints. These subsidiaries have multiple purposes – they make the market appear less oligopolistic (less dominated by a few firms), they tend to have their own profiles (some are largely pop labels, some rock etc.) and they can operate essentially as their own smaller label that just answers to and generates revenue for the larger group. Artist labels fit in this category. When an artist signs to an artist label like GOOD, at the end of the day they are signing with a much, much larger music group. While decisions made will largely be the decision of the management of GOOD, they ultimately answer to their parent label.

Warner is run by Stephen Cooper. It has struggled recently largely thanks to being late on streaming but over the past few years has made significant ground on Sony. They have four flagship subsidiaries but the two most notable for users here are Atlantic Records and Warner Records. These labels have their own subsidiary labels – 300 Ent & MMG are both subsidiaries of Atlantic and OVO Sound is a subsidiary of Warner. Some of Warner’s notable artists are Ed Sheeran, YB, Thug, Meek, Lil Baby, Uzi, Bruno Mars and many more. Notably Warner recently went public on the NASDAQ so you can buy shares in the company.

Sony is run by Rob Stringer. Sony adapted well to streaming but is losing headway to Warner in the battle for 2nd. Sony has several flagship subsidiaries – most notable are Columbia, Epic and RCA. Notable subsidiaries of these are ASAP Worldwide (RCA) and Freebandz (Epic). Sony’s artists include Travis Scott, Future, A$AP Rocky, Childish Gambin, Khalid and more.

Universal is run by Lucian Grange. Far and away the biggest music group, Universal has dominated in market share over recent years. Their important subsidiary labels are Interscope (parent label of Dreamville, Aftermath and TDE), Capitol (parent label of QC and G-Unit), Republic (parent label of XO, Cash Money and Young Money) and Def Jam (parent label of GOOD). From these labels you can get an idea of the artists universal has under contract but they include Taylor Swift, Gaga, Rihanna, Adele, Jay-Z, Kanye, Wayne and Prince among many others. Notably with Universal the company recently sold a 10% stake to Chinese media giant Tencent – QQ (social network), various video game companies including League of Legends, Fornite and more and heavily invested in Spotify.

So that’s a basic rundown of labels.

Rhetoric I see a lot here is that the music industry is dying. This is unequivocally false. I’m not going to talk individual sales here but observe the following chart. Note that the drop in the early 2000s is largely due to piracy and the advent of the digital era. Streaming is a massive lifeline for the music industry – revenues for the big 3 labels was over $1m per HOUR during the last quarter of 2019 – and the music industry has grown for the last four consecutive years. The music industry is if anything undergoing a resurgence after a difficult decade.

Some more trends you should be aware of. Physical revenue is declining – vinyl, CDs, etc. particularly in the US. Digital revenue is growing rapidly (21% in 2018 despite a drop of 20% in digital downloads) thanks almost exclusively to streaming. The US is the biggest music market and latin America is the fastest growing music market – why you see a lot of latin America stars breaking through into the US market and why a lot of US artists are featuring them or remixing their songs. Labels are investing in ‘high-potential’ markets – markets like China, India, much of Latin America that have significant populations that are quickly becoming more digital. Record labels are investing a lot at the moment in artists, in marketing and etc. which is helping to push growth in the market.

82 Knives

6y

Nobody asked.

CactusJackSentYa

6y

This dope but I don’t see the part where they make black artists dance on tables

safe

6y

Lol
We actually talked briefly about this kinda thing on page 2 in terms of d*** and violence glorification and how much of that stems from the labels

But honestly looking at some of the issues in the industry (race, gender, etc) would be a good idea for a future thread there’s a lot of material around that I can use

But too much stuff for this thread - I filled up the character limit for OP and two posts already