Survey of Top Dance Music Labels Highlights Artists’ Rush to Replace Lost Tour Income

The fast-paced music industry is in a constant state of flux, but few periods have been more anomalous for the industry at large than the last 15 months. The onset of the pandemic caused a shutdown of the entertainment business virtually overnight, accelerating seismic shifts in trends in unpredictable ways. 

Music demo submission platform LabelRadar surveyed A&R from some of the most vital organs of the dance music ecosystem including Monstercat, Dim Mak, Anjunabeats, and others to gain insight on how their role has changed and to identify emerging trends they’re observing. 

In their “The State of A&R in 2021” report, it’s clear artists have turned to expanding their media footprint to supplement lost touring income. As a result, labels are feeling the squeeze of more aggressive release schedules and an increasing sense of pressure for those releases to perform well.

Outside of streaming income, artists have increasingly turned their attention to more lucrative licensing opportunities such as sync, which has led to labels feeling a greater need to develop connections in this area of the business.

The broader trend towards remote work has additionally impacted the label business as A&R cite reliable file sharing software as the most important tool for the job. This trend has also caused some new challenges around being able to effectively coordinate collaborations among artists while everyone is remote.

Discover the latest music trends identified by label A&R in the complete report from LabelRadar.