How many record labels are there?

The recent press release from Amazon about their soon to open music store indicated that they had deals with 12,000 record labels.  That seemed to be an incredible number of labels - stretching the bounds of believability, it left me wondering how many music labels are there.   A web search leads to this large list of record labels on the Wikipedia.  There's also a pointer to AllRecordLabels that claims to have links to 23,000 (!) record labels or net labels.  That's a whole lotta labels.

Posted on: May 18, 2007

Posted by: plamere

Category: music

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I'm sure the size of these record labels follows a long-tail distribution. Five or six big players with hundreds or thousands of artists, a few hundred medium-sized players with dozens of artists, and then a long tail of labels with only two or three.. or maybe even one.. artist. I actually expect the number of record labels to increase in the current internet climate, simply becuase it is becoming easier and easier for an individual artist to become their own record label. Distribution, marketing, etc are all moving online. And when this self-promotion really becomes second nature, the number of labels will increase even further.

Posted by Jeremy P on May 18, 2007 at 04:05 PM EDT #

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