Before we can talk about a deal with a major record company, we must first define exactly what a record company really is. If we think of a record company as a company engaged in the production, manufacture, and distribution of records, by this definition there are only four record companies in the entire free world (ignoring China and the former Soviet bloc countries). They are BMG/Sony, UNI, EMI and WEA.1 (And it’s likely that by the end of 2006 WEA and UNI will merge as well.)
In fact, one could define a “major label deal” strictly as a deal to create a record that will be distributed by one of these four companies or their wholly owned subsidieries. See the sidebar. “Who Is a Major?”
To help create a picture that makes this clear, think about it as four trees with one distributor as the trunk of each tree. At the first branching off of the tree trunk, you would have each of the distributor’s major affiliates. For example, WEA’s main companies are Warner Bros. Records, Elektra Records, and Atlantic Records. These three companies make up the first three and largest branches of the tree. From these branches come the smaller twigs—the other labels. (For a more complete picture of how the industry is structured as of this writing, you can refer to the “Family Tree of Big Four,” page 251.)
Here are a few examples:
1. From the Island/Def Jam branch of UNI comes Mercury Records.
2. From the Warner Bros. Records branch of WEA comes Maverick.
Sometimes it can get confusing, because a Big Four distributor can have the same name as one of their record divisions:
3. From the BMG Records branch of BMG Distribution comes RCA Nashville—not to be confused with the RCA Records Group, which is also distributed by BMG Distribution.
4. From the MCA distribution branch of UNI comes MCA Records, from which comes the famous classic label Chess Records.
A family tree of the distribution channels expands every day, with more and more offshoots of labels splitting the branches thinner and thinner until you get to what I call “vanity labels”—small labels that have only one act on them.
When you look at a CD you’ll notice that there are several logos on the mirrored surface. These logos make up the pipeline of the act’s distribution. These same names appear at the base of the TV screen when you watch the group’s video. Some examples are “BMG/Arista” and “Sony/Epic/Crescent Moon.”2