What’s Happening to the Major Record Labels?
It’s no mystery. They are being squeezed financially. It keeps getting harder to promote a record, simply because of the way it is harder than ever to get the public’s attention. But as the cost of promotion keeps rising, there is no way to increase revenue. The record-buying public won’t pay higher prices or buy more records. The inevitable cutbacks let the major labels concentrate their efforts on fewer and fewer releases — but that means they are involved in less and less of the music that people actually listen to. Much has been made of the disappearance of the classical division, but classical is not the only musical genre to be cut. Folk, jazz, heavy metal, progressive rock, and other major categories of music have been quietly disappearing from the major labels’ catalogs. Cutbacks are also affecting the staff at the record companies. Word from the inside is that the new management has no realistic strategy to turn things around, further cutbacks seem inevitable, and morale is lo
