So this is how it goes. You’re a band or ‘outfit’ or a solo artist. You’ve been jamming for a couple of months, sounding solid. You’re pretty sure that given the chance your music will be consumed or rather devoured by an eager public. It’s different, no one else is doing it like this, or even if they are, you’re doing it better. Its time to start playing gigs, putting yourself out there, time to get the ball rolling. You get your biggest fans, your friends and siblings to help put this together. You spread the word through various social utility forums, it gets around and lo, there’s a bit of a crowd. You’re nerves are racked but you take the stage and boom. It feels like nothing else in the world. This is your destiny; you can smell it through the sizzling amps, hear it in the applause but before you know it… the show is over. But this is just the beginning. Perhaps one of your determined, ambitious friends, with the gift of conversation and organization takes on the role of being your manager.

The next step is to get into a studio and record about a 3 song demo, design a cover and voila your music is an entity. You can distribute/sell this at future gigs, put your music on the internet, but there’s only so far you can go without a little help from a ‘record label’.

Pakistan has been boasting a ‘music industry’ for quite a few years now but in all technicalities we still lack the proper mechanics that put such an industry in motion.

The way it’s supposed to go is this: A record label is in charge of discovering new talent, this happens through their A&R or Artists and Repertoire department. Once an artist signs, the rest of the labels departments go into full swing to ‘make the music happen’.

It is the labels responsibility to create, promote, market, protect and nurture their artists. That means record their album; make their videos, get them radio airplay, interviews, hype and concerts. It’s a symbiotic relationship. The success of an artist or better yet a string of artists ensures success for the record label.

A record label may seem to be an engine of glamour but like all organizations and companies it runs on solid hard work, on vision and communication.

Pakistani media is ambitious, its going strong but it needs a constant, structured supply of content. Music Radio stations especially need a continual stream of new music to promote. Record labels and radio stations all over the world maintain a solid relationship and rely on each other heavily. The sales/marketing department of a label will do whatever it can to get their artist on air. Often they will work together to promote an artist, other than air play they will offer collaborating on concerts and or artist appearances. Pakistan is probably the only place where artists will ask the radio stations to pay them for an appearance on air, highlighting the dysfunctional nature of our ‘industry’.

We currently have a few establishments going under the guise of a record label. But they, like many other set ups rush towards the easier way. The biggest job of a record label is to be able to recognize the potential in an artist or band and be able to activate it. Through out music history, great producers or record label representatives have been held in high esteem because they believed in the ability of their acts. They had the vision and the resolve to see them through and by doing so enrich the world with the kind of music we are lucky to have here today.