American Rapper Natalac on What It Takes to Run a Successful Record Label

The music industry changes from day to day, making it a highly volatile sector. These constant changes push to have record companies increasingly equipped and advanced. Record companies are always looking for new talent. But to try to publicize talent, you must build a good reputation.

Opening a record label or record label requires a high financial effort. Labels are important to anyone who wants to emerge in the world of music.

A record label is a company that produces (in different types of media), marketing and promoting songs and music videos. Technological advances in recent years and new media have also spawned two different types of labels: independent and online.

One of the most recognized record labels in the United States is Natalac Records, established by the American rapper Natalac aka Sheldon Davis. Natalac’s professional attributes make him a rapper and an entrepreneur with two successful businesses.

His record label company has successful established his music career and is a personification of his hard work, diligence, and effort put together. Davis had humble beginnings and is a self-made man who supported his music career with his entrepreneurial pursuits.

Given the specificity of the function, and the skills and abilities required, Natalac has a deep passion for music and a good understanding of the art world. Very often, those who open a record label are the same artist, in order to promote himself independently, and other "colleagues."

Running a music production record label can be a very difficult task. You must manage not only your staff but the artists you have signed. Since such a label focuses on the music production side of things, it is essential that they have access to the best producers and studios as well as multiple connections to get music heard by the masses.

With that being said, Natalac gives us a glimpse into what it takes to establish and run a successful record label business:

1. For starters: the name, the strategy, and the bases

 If you have decided to create a record label, you must think that now you will be not only the artist but also the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs view their product not only from a creative and artistic point of view but also from a business perspective.

The first thing to think about then when making the determination to create a record label will be in a name that is commercially attractive and unique enough to identify our label, our concept, mission, vision, and objectives.

Coupled with this, a business plan will be very useful to give our company a roadmap, a path that allows us to create commercial strategies for managing our product, distribution, marketing, budget, and other essential elements for the operation of the seal.

2. Management

Once the bases have been created, it must be very clear that the label will now demand a very wide range of activities, including its management, the production process, the planning and execution of commercialization, distribution and promotion activities, the relationship processes with customers, suppliers (artists and producers), intermediaries (distributors) and other business actors (distribution channels [stores], the media, etc.).

It is essential to understand that from the moment you have a record label, it will be essential to carry out all the activities that any company that intends to sell a product requires. Working hours will be longer and more strenuous.

Unless you have the budget to have a team of people who specialize in the different issues that need to be done, it will be necessary for the musician to now also be a manager, producer, musician, A&R, marketing director, director of media, public relations, among other activities.

Natalac argues, “anyone claiming to be successful with a record label should understand that selecting and releasing music to the market will be just one of many tasks to do.”

3. The product, the music, must be handled with total planning and strategy

 Each element will be essential for success: product quality (excellence in the professional, musical, creative and technical quality of releases and artists), marketing strategy (a good product alone does not guarantee success in sales), the care in how, when and where it is distributed, in its image and in the roadmap used for its creation and dissemination will be elements without which it will not be possible to have the expected success.

4. Network: the relationship with artists will be essential

 A good business is concerned not only with keeping its customers happy, but also its suppliers. Long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with artists will be preferred. It will then be very important to comply with the contractual terms agreed with the talent, offer professional and fair conditions, clear accounts of the work done, and of course, offer the required and agreed reports and royalty payments.

5. Working alone will always be more difficult and will require more effort

It will always be important to find other actors in the industry willing to work as a team to initiate, execute, and carry out projects with the same seriousness and strategy for common benefit. It will always be indicated to bet on alliances that allow the expansion in the matter of disclosure and marketing.

6. Knowledge will never be enough

 Studying the business, staying informed of the trends and musical, commercial, and legal opportunities of the same will be definitive to be able to take the company to the desired place.

 No one has a recipe for instant success yet. However, if there are agreements against certain elements that are well developed, they are the basis for a safer path towards the objectives that we set ourselves with our record label.

“Discipline, knowledge, strategic, honest, and professional work will then be the foundations that will pave the way towards the goals that any record label yearns to achieve” – Natalac.