Labels aren’t doing very well at the moment.  In fact, they’re darn right horizontal on their deathbeds.

People don’t want to pay for music anymore.

Children are being sued for copyright infringement.

Every digital music startup in the last three years has flopped.

It’s grim.

Yet there’s never been a better time to start a label.

Go ahead, sign a few acts – no one else will.

Nobody expects an advance or a fat tour bus.  It’s budget airlines all the way.

Invest in talent while it’s cheap and ubiquitous.

Don’t know how to do it?  Plenty of executives out of the job.  Go talk to one.

Four tips to get you started:

1. Quit your day job. Nobody will take you seriously if you’re doing something else 9 to 5.

2. Stick with what you know. If you lack people skills, avoid public relations.  Focus on your strengths and, when you can, develop or outsource your weaknesses.

3. You’re in business. Act that way.  Get organized.  Lots of stupid people own hugely successful businesses.  You too can create a successful business.

4. Pick great acts. Treat them well.  Work hard for them and they will show you returns.

Music is a safe bet.  There will always be money in it.

Now go make some!

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P2P streaming music service, Grooveshark, has launched an artist promotion initiative – much like the track placement scheme Jango conceived of – as a means for artists and music promoters to purchase plays on its platform, a direct advertising approach that makes sense.  The Gainesville, Florida, company of approximately 40 young entrepreneurs has created a music service that rivals that of Last.fm and Pandora, the two major players in legal music discovery and ‘free’ music streaming.

Grooveshark claims to have deployed a legal music discovery and consumption model, providing its users with a financial incentive to share music, compensating artist/labels for their respective share of ‘broadcasts’, and maximizing illegal file sharing by financing its original sources.  Whether this service is actually legal or not is questionable and it appears that the company has created an expensive model to sustain on ad revenues alone.  However, they’re coming through on some very interesting marketing features for small budget music marketing campaigns.  At its core, Grooveshark Artists offers pay-for-play audio realestate matched to its existing track recommendations and provides analytics tools for track placement optimization. 

In addition, it has partnered up with some of the most talked about music tech startups for music retail, licensing, funding, and more, including Bandcamp, Sellaband and TheNextBigSound, all under the Grooveshark banner which already includes a number of subsidiary services including Tinysong, a track link generating tool for viral distribution, and  Twisten.fm, a Twitter crawler that finds music-related tweets and links them to playable tracks.  All of this put together amounts to a powerful enterprise of do-it-yourself marketing and a 360 indie approach akin to ReverbNation.

YouLicense, the first online music licensing marketplace, released a product update last week detailing the launch of Private Label, a new service catering to YouLicense’s target customer base comprising of independent labels and enterprising artists.  Private Label is essentially a branded storefront, specifically developed for the streamlined procurement of synchronization and master use music licenses. This is a major turning point for YouLicense which, until now, has very much operated as a destination site and, arguably, the only standalone open marketplace for music licensing.  The company has already converted noteworthy distributors and labels including INgrooves, Big Fish Media, AWAL, MBop Digital, Dashgo, and Cyberset Records.  Private Label is currently in closed beta but interested parties can request an invitation here.

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