pouët.net

Having been somewhat active in the scene for a while (ok, not so much lately :() I've come to befriend and appreciate a lot of scene music and musicians.

When some friends and I got together recently with the idea of starting a netlabel, I knew I wanted to post about it here. We're mostly looking for ambient and experimental electronic stuff, chippy stuff is obviously awesome too.

Typical netlabel model. Artists retain all rights. Digital distribution. We're just interested in promoting good music. We're looking for artists that want to release their work under creative commons.

The website is in progress at https://www.dekahertz.com. If you're interested in doing a release with us, shoot me an e-mail at contact@dekahertz.com.

Thanks for reading :)

competition!!! :)

what is your key point that differentiates you from the other netlabels?
(no flame here, i am genuinely curious:)

Yes! That would be awesome!



Thank you for that really excellent question! I think to answer your question, I have to diverge a little bit into what I see as the function of a netlabel. Like most netlabels, we don't have any money to pay artists upfront. If we expect artists to work with us, we must provide some other value.

I think first and foremost, a netlabel is a brand. If a netlabel is going to be successful, then that brand needs to be of a consistent quality (visually, musically, etc.) Once a brand is established, then artists benefit from the reputation of the netlabel.

To get back to your question of what we hope will differentiate us from other netlabels: we are trying to do it better. Better quality, better quantity (this does not necessarily mean more). Ultimately a better brand to bring more value to the artists we hope to promote.

One thing I am interested in as I'm sitting here sifting through demos is a really tight consistent sound within the roster. I think that's an essential part of establishing a brand. There are obviously a million considerations, but these are the first that come to mind without writing an essay about it. I hope I've answered your question!

that's pretty much what all labels are doing, you didn't answer the question in the end.

Awesome shaders! mail sent

Hey orby,

dont get me wrong, but your project probably wont work.
Even if Willbe,H0ffmann, Gloom, Lugoober, Virgill, Little Bitchard (just to mention a few ...) or any other well known and rewarded artist with scene credibility would come out with a similar idea, it would be hard to establish such ambitious project.

Luckily the typical bashing hasnt started here yet. ^^
Maybe you should leave it that way...

I appreciate your thoughts, and don't get me wrong, I've been around pouet long enough to anticipate the "typical bashing" ;)

I don't seriously think we're starting the next 8bitpeoples / insert other extremely successful netlabel here. But it really can't "fail" so to speak. The operating costs are practically zero. Worst case, we'll get to work with some artists and have a good time sharing some hopefully decent music. My ambitions are higher than that of course, but if that's all we achieve then I'm okay with that.

At the scale of a netlabel I wouldn't be worried abt failing financially, as running any small time label must be pretty much a hobby for everyone doing so. You often end up coughing up some money for your hobbies anyway, be it skiing, knitting or running a label.

I'd be more worried about getting a good vibe and traction going. Achieving this calls for much more work than just setting up a website and pushing loosely categorized music to it. Digital distribution (dd) is relatively easy these days, so to give artist any extra value your label needs to have great reach & presence. Or you provide extra value by paying for releases.

And yeah I have my own label too at funnelrec.com. While I'm currently too busy doing my own releases on it, publishing other artists music somewhere down the line would be cool too. Demoscene or not :)

I should be grinding away on the content for that demoscene compilation of mine boo-hoo, but while I'm at it here's one random tip for running the label related to dd and generating value for your artists:

When your label up to speed, you definitely might want to check how radio etc. airplay revenue is distributed in your country based on the ISRC codes.

Using where I'm from (Finland) as an example, when a song is used commercially (radio, tv etc) the resulting revenue is split 50/50 between whoever owns the ISRC code (usually publisher) and performers of the song. And performer share is further split according to how many stems each artist has performed for the song. So while shopping after a aggregator for it's cut of streaming and digital sales has some value, registering your own ISRC with the local IFPI rep to claim the publisher share of any airplay could have even more so.

I think this is something that all aggregators fail to mention (haven't seen one at least), probably on purpose to reduce friction with their processes.. and very likely to game on the odd chance that one of the kazillion progressive tech house mediocrities suddenly hits airplay platinum :D

Moroever important to me both as a artist & small label hobbyist, owning a ISRC & handling the reports by myself is one way of adding extra value for myself and the performers I'm privileged to work with. As they have a solid point of contact who looks after that their personal info is registered correctly for a release, they can be sure that if the song which they sung / performed in ever gets any airplay, the revenue will find its way 'home' eventually.

Personally had this happen recently with one remix I did many many years ago. Wasn't much more than pocket money to go shopping for a few plugins, but still felt nice to get it many years later.. and also comforting that the label had done their books proper enough for the local IFPI rep to find me.

Nvm all the typos :D

Unfortunately not :) You mentioned it will be good and... that's pretty much it. I don't doubt it but it's still not a differenciator.

However, I am intrigued by this tightly consistent sound you mean, you should maybe describe that to us?

i've been running enough records since 2000. i've witnessed dozens of labels come and go. they all want to be the best, some are even quite good. but they don't realize it's a lot of permanent work behind the spotlight to keep things running.

my main issue with "yet another label" is that it always feels like it's such a shame to witness good music being "wasted" on labels that promo it for a week and then never actively market it anymore. most just end up becoming dormant after a couple years. the music just gets hidden away and didn't get pushed out through labels that actually fight the test of time. meanwhile they were competing for the spotlight like everyone else, adding noise to an already overcrowded market.

that being said, running your own label is much better then having to sit around and wait for replies that never come in timely manner whenever you send out demos, and getting ripped off out of royalties, or not watching any promo happen, and all that jazz that comes along with it. running your own label also involves more work in final product packaging and marketing ofcourse, but it can be worth the bother if you like to keep track of the whole process and not just "do more music".

netlabels aren't that relevant nowdays, everyone has soundcloud and bandcamp and youtube and access to a cheap digital distribution platform (tunecore, routenote, cdbaby) so everyone can do their own "indie" label from their bedroom now. with or without creative commons.

netlabels had a boom when the market was being choked by the industry with "popular" releases only. nowdays you dont need to be a netlabel to break through that. you can put "pay what you want" labels on your things and get some streaming fees and still reach the whole market and be free to release whatever you want regardless of how well the consumer industry would take it. it's still a bitch to break through to commercial radio play and you're competing in marketing against people with actual budgets so you're probably not gonna reach as far, but it's not being "free for download" that really makes a difference thats my point.

the main issues nowdays, imho atleast, are:
a) the over abundance of music, there is too much being released all the time. a lot of people stopped looking for hidden gems, or follow labels or even know the authors of songs they like, they just play youtube or spotify radios for a certain style of sound and switch it around when they are bored of it.
b) perseverance in marketing, if a star blips once in a galaxy of releases, hardly anyone will care, you need to keep blipping, make a whole fucking constelation that backtracks to all those little blips you once did and get as much attention to any of it as possible. that's a very time consuming and unrewarding job. it always feels like you're spamming to people who couldn't care less. eventually it gets to you and you stop being as passionate about it, or rather try to become more selective and intelligent with the choices you make to maximize the attention obtained by effort invested.
c) you'll never be able to really compete with commercial music industry, they have money to throw at things and you don't.