Self Publishing and recording your own music. What are the benefits of starting your own Label?

[The Badderer]

Hi all.

General question for input from people who have or haven't done this.

My scenario. Going to be writing and recording a collaborative album over the summer / autumn. Going to be producing it all myself.

I will have a website to release the music through, as well as releasing to iTunes / Amazon (through the 3rd party companies you have to go through for that).

I will have a business set up for this.

I am also considering starting my own label, but I am confused as to what the benefits of having status as a Record Label is beneficial as further opportunities may arrive quite quickly.

Please share some info if you have looked into starting a Label and have or haven't done it.

There's lots of info about "How to Start" a Label, but I'm struggling to find much info about "What are the benefits" or "Why should you" start a Label?

Thanks Basschatters.

Simon

[RockfordStone]

if you are going to release a single project through the distribution sites, i don't see the need for a label to be honest.
unless you are looking to promote and work with other bands i don't see what you will achieve by doing it.

[ras52]

The AIM would be my first port of call: http://www.musicindie.com/home

[Lw.]

There aren't any benefits as such, it's more just the theory.

If you were licensing in other works or you thought the rights to the work you are writing/recording would be worth other people buying from you in the future then having a label to put everything under makes sense from an admin perspective. But in reality 90% of record labels people set up are vanity projects; it looks more professional when you're emailing people from a company URL account, it's nice to be google-able, people think you're cool when you pull out a record label business card but that is about it.

The practice of writing/recording/producing/releasing an album is perfectly accomplishable using your personal bank account and your standard gmail account. I wouldn't bother with setting up a company to shuffle all the admin through until the revenue generated starts pushing above say 3/4k but even then I've dealt with plenty of people/"companies" that are pushing a hell of a lot more than that through their personal accounts.

Don't let that put you off doing it though; the vanity reasons are perfectly acceptable & it's all good practice.

Edited June 9, 2016 by Lw.