Music | Columbia Records' New Roster
Quick announcement: Columbia Records is rebranding and you should be aware.
I’ve had this feeling that a new Renaissance is coming and Columbia Records has started stacking their team in preparation. Within a week, I noticed three musicians that I follow post about their new contracts with the iconic label over and it made me check out Columbia’s Instagram.
I know, this doesn’t sound like a big deal but getting someone to notice your company in an age where we’re oversaturated in content made my Millennial Done Draper ears perk up.
Don’t pay attention to how dumb that reference was, go with me.
It’s hard for music labels to stand out when, for the past 10+ years, musicians and artists have had to make a name for themselves on social media platforms.
Was all the music of the 2010s good? No, because it was the start of the digital age of music where literally anyone could make music and have it available to everyone, so they did. And now, music labels, like a lot of brands, are in need of a rebrand to stand out in the overwhelming social atmosphere.
What Columbia Records did, from the standpoint of someone who is just guessing, was look to see what musicians were carving their own way, making their own music, and have a following that is going with them. They looked to see where music was heading. And most importantly, they needed to recreate the need for a record label.
Their classic roster includes:
Barbara Streisand
… and those are just the B’s.
Now, they’ve got the new voices of music which include:
… just to name a few.
Their social media also looks like a young person or brand’s page, which means they’ve invested in their image and engagement with fans. Their IG Stories are animated playlists of their own artists. They have big playlists on Spotify of their artists’ work, which is the perfect platform for them that other brands don’t really need to consider. And I listened to their playlists, it’s the music you recognize from TikTok. Fucking TikTok. Think about that play.
Columbia Records is making big marketing moves.
They invested in young people (social media) to bring the music of young people (new music) to young people ($$$). They do the job that we always thought record labels should do. They bring attention to their artists so the artist could make money and become successful, so in turn, the record label sees a high ROI.
Are the contracts good for the artists in the long run? Who knows, I hope so. How this will affect pop-culture and music in the near future is unknown. But it does feel like the start of something new.
This is exciting.
