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Stephan Kunze's avatar

I'd say the indie success of XL or Domino will be hard to replicate. It's just a different time. Dirty Hit might be one to add to the list, while only founded in 2009.

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Shaggy Snodgrass's avatar

A record label, to a musician, has always meant two things:

1. Someone (with money) believes in what you're doing besides you; and

2.) A "tribal marker", denoting you as belonging to a genre/subculture/etc.

If you were on "Amphetamine Reptile" in the 90s, it meant something different from being on Matador, or 4AD, or Megaforce or Fat Possum. That mattered, bc the audience they were addressing was distinct, and would sample and (if agreeable) accept your band simply because of the label's "imprimatur".

The only label I can think of in the last 10-15 years to really get that right is Chicago's Sargent House.

Such an imprimatur was a great help to bands and discerning writers/radio show DJs (like on "college radio" here in US) and listeners, and now that that model has faded, we are all poorer for it.

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