The World-Wide Web is a great place to promote popular music, and major record labels have been quick to realize it. Web searches turn up over 300 record labels with active sites, which are improving on a daily basis. We took a look at the Web sites of 10 of the top major record labels. Some are little more than catalogs of artists and archives. Others turn your visit into a multilayered multimedia experience, complete with startling graphics. Of course, there's no reason you should know which label your favorite musicians record for, so it may take you a while to track them down. Until you find them, consider these sites most useful for browsing through (and listening to) the latest new releases.
MCA Records' Web presence is more than just a page; it's an actual on-line magazine. AMP, as it's called, is a very good-looking, ten-section site with a feature story on one hot new band, profiles of other new artists complete with audio and video downloads, lists of other available downloads, and even a place to submit your personal list of seven essential albums. Everything is done with real style; these are beautiful pages. But if the presentation of all this information gets a little confusing, just head for the index, which is organized by artist.
Designed as a virtual visit to the label's offices, Elektra Entertainment is a stunning site. You enter the space and wander the halls, checking in with the marketing department, the publicity department, or the artist's area. If you get lost, you just go (where else?) back to the receptionist. As you scroll the eclectic list of Elektra artits, you'll run into talents as diverse as Bjork, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Weezer. Each band has its own page, complete with biography, discography, and audio and video downloads. In fact, Elektra has more videos than any other label; there are 50 QuickTime clips available. Elektra also takes an extra step that no other label emulates; it includes links to other Internet resources related to its artists, so once you finish reading about Freedy Johnston here, you can go out and find all the other info about him that's available on the Web, a very nice touch.
Interested in big-name alternative stars like Hole, Sonic Youth, and Veruca Salt? Geffen/DGC Records is one of the hippest labels around. There are 20 artists in all, and each gets a multilevel page with a biography and audio and QuickTime video downloads. In fact, only Elektra has more video clips available. Also included on the Geffen home page: links to CDnow, Pollstar (an encyclopedic concert listing service), and 13 other well-selected music-related sites.
PolyGram is an international conglomerate that incorporates not only several record labels but also movie and video companies. At this site you have access to it all, including a list of 60 recording artists, that covers all the bases. Imagine Andre Previn, Marvin Gaye, Styx, and Tindersticks all on the same page. Most artists offer just one or two audio clips, but the hot artists of the month also have a video clip available. A cartoon character called Dwight guides you around the rest of the site, taking you to contests, film previews, games, and a geographically arranged list of record stores. This site isn't particularly fun, but there's certainly a lot of information to browse through.
New Age music created a quiet revolution in the early 80s, and it's still going strong more than a decade later. Windham Hill Records ushered in the era almost single-handedly. You'll find 30 artists with pages at this site, and you can download 30-second audio clips of each of them and get their concert dates and biographies. Windham Hill superstars like George Winston and Liz Story are especially well-represented. The site also has a chat line, a list of radio stations that play Windham Hill music, and a toll-free phone number for ordering albums.
Virgin Records is based in London, and its Web page, called the Raft, has a distinctly international flavor. It's surprising that this mega-label posts information on only 11 artists, including Boy George and Smashing Pumpkins. There are plenty of audio clips downloadable from the colorful pages, but you won't find any video clips.
"Where the future sounds better than ever" is the slogan of Motown Records. But if that's so, why are only a few currently hot artists like Boyz II Men and Stevie Wonder represented? Most of this site consists of boring catalogs of older albums and anthologies. You'll find neither audio nor video clips. Message to Motown: The Web is competitive. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Liven this site up!
EMI Records' Web site has one big problem, at least from an American perspective: It's in Dutch (the company is based in the Netherlands). While you can look at pictures and glean some information about bands like The Foo Fighters, you won't get very far here, though you may pick up a few Dutch words. Can you guess what "Klik hier voor meer info" means?
by Don Willmott