A Studio is not a Record Label – written by Lesego Ginger Dithebe

Sometimes you just need to know that you’re a good producer, not a businessman. A studio isn’t a record label. A studio has everything to do with music but not so much to do with business.

Turning your studio into a record label takes things to a whole new level that you might not be ready for. Sometimes you end up delaying people’s dreams by doing that. There are dope studios like Jazzworx. There’s nothing wrong with owning a studio. You don’t have to sign niggas to your studio and call it a label. If it’s a studio, niggas can just come for recordings, mixing, and mastering then take their shit to other people who understand the entertainment and media industry.

You understand music, stay in your lane. Unless if you can assemble a team of people with a greater vision to be involved in your label. This is what niggas do: Hustle money, buy recording equipment, refurbish the backroom and turn it into a studio. Get niggas to come and record, then boom; it’s a label. No plan of action whatsoever.

The only thing you do is to create links for niggas songs and submit their material to radio then that’s it. Radio has proved to be unreliable so chances are that now you only have a link to prove that you trying to push a nigga. Something that he could have done by himself. The only gigs you can organize are open mic sessions. You’re out of your depth and you’re not aware.

The minute you say it’s a label then you’re taking a sole responsibility for niggas’ careers. You can actually be a team instead of a label, so that you delegate responsibilities. This is why you find a studio with more than 100 unknown hits on their catalogue. After every failed project, you go back to the studio to record more hits thinking that the masses will buy into your new shit.

When actually the problem wasn’t the music but how it was pushed. You make good music that you need to handover to someone else to promote it for you. Maybe someone who can even re-brand you as an artist.