Columbia Records has to be the worst big label of all the big labels right? Their flagship artists are not doing as well as they should especially with streaming.

Miley's last album was a titanic flop and the visual made no noise. Harry's comeback lead is shaping up to be a huge chop. Adele and Bey have no charting albums on BB200 and 21 is arguably the biggest album of the century!

All the label cares about is pure sales and Grammys. They have no real strategy for the streaming era and when they do have a big streaming hit like As It Was or Flowers it looks more like luck.

They can burn with Epic for all of their payola, tbqfh

So RCA, Atlantic, Interscope and Republic are the best?

They definitely know how to promote music on streaming services because without them Flowers or As It Was wouldn't be as big as they are but the recent output from these artists is just not connecting with the GP

Looks like Spotify has detected their streaming farms. Now I'm scared for Adele.

2 minutes ago, Raphy said:

So RCA, Atlantic, Interscope and Republic are the best?

RCA has been notoriously horrible for well over a decade at this point, and Atlantic has had some major misses recently (Ed, Cardi, Lizzo) for every Bruno or Alex Warren. It's clearly Republic > Interscope > everyone else, at this point.

The It label of the moment is definitely Interscope right now, with how they staged Gagamania and Billiemania in 2025 and 2024 respectively + Kendrick's Grammy sweep last year and either Gaga or Kendrick likely winning AOTY this year.

6 minutes ago, hoax said:

RCA has been notoriously horrible for well over a decade at this point, and Atlantic has had some major misses recently (Ed, Cardi, Lizzo) for every Bruno or Alex Warren. It's clearly Republic > Interscope > everyone else, at this point.

But interscope doesn't support their acts on radio. So often their acts have hits but just miss the top 10 on Pop radio and peak at #11.

Edited January 25Jan 25 by Raphy

17 minutes ago, charot said:

Looks like Spotify has detected their streaming farms. Now I'm scared for Adele.

Adele's next album was never going to debut with more than 500k anyways

51 minutes ago, Ja_making said:

Columbia Records has to be the worst big label of all the big labels right? Their flagship artists are not doing as well as they should especially with streaming.

Miley's last album was a titanic flop and the visual made no noise. Harry's comeback lead is shaping up to be a huge chop. Adele and Bey have no charting albums on BB200 and 21 is arguably the biggest album of the century!

All the label cares about is pure sales and Grammys. They have no real strategy for the streaming era and when they do have a big streaming hit like As It Was or Flowers it looks more like luck.

Miley's era start was promising. End of the World was pushed on streaming and it had a cute debut but it seemed to me like the label saw the song doing poorly and stopped investing in everything else. As for the visual making no noise, it's both Miley's fault for having such a poor concept and the label's fault for allowing a visual album consisting of Miley walking around and looking cute. It was perhaps the biggest disappointment of the year. Such a promising concept that ended up being lackluster, except for the music itself.

The label could've done better, as well as Miley, who didn't seem to care, but it's FAR from being the worst big label out there.

Right now, the worst label with big artists is easily Island Records.

Edited January 25Jan 25 by thatsmydemi

21 minutes ago, Feanor said:

Gagamania and Billiemania

Every label have fail stories and succes stories.

Like if we look at Columbia, a lot of the named artists like a Harry, Miley, Adele etc they released their albums also under their imprints. So in what % is the label just for distribution and to what % is the artist and it's imprint responsible or has a say?

There are so many constructions possible these days. Acts with multiple labels, acts with imprints/label, acts with solely a distribution deal.

So the relationship per act can be drastically different, so is the amount of budget/support they get per instance.

Republic >>>>>> Interscope >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> everyone else

And it's not interscope's fault that some of their acts can't choose a radio candy song, like.. do you really expect obsessed by olivia or chihiro by billie to be a top 3 song on pop radio? abracadra peaking at n. 6 on pop airplay was huge knowing that gaga's dead there

Sony is notorious for big radio + playlist push but they rarely know how to make songs have longevity. Harry's House is pretty much the only exception to this

6 minutes ago, Solaria said:

Sony is notorious for big radio + playlist push but they rarely know how to make songs have longevity. Harry's House is pretty much the only exception to this

I agree on the longevity point, their big artists have strong debuts but the longevity isn't there. They have no real understanding of how to work the streaming system look at how UMG boost their artists on Spotify.

40 minutes ago, charot said:

Looks like Spotify has detected their streaming farms. Now I'm scared for Adele.

The farms are dust and non existent, and their playlisting is terrible.

2 minutes ago, Ja_making said:

I agree on the longevity point, their big artists have strong debuts but the longevity isn't there. They have no real understanding of how to work the streaming system look at how UMG boost their artists on Spotify.

Doesn't help that UMG and Spotify have a very tight contractual partnership. If you're signed to a Sony or Warner label ur pretty much 3-0 behind already

I'd say it's Epic, but they're not that far away

They're calling gen x for this on twitter unc

Their pockets are not hurting.

Honestly, Colubmbia is giving me a vibe of a tastemaker label these days. Their indie-adjacent roster is pretty impressive and they usually get very acclaimed (e.g. Haim, Vampire Weekend, Addison, now Slayyyter). So there is that

well yes, thank god the qualitea of Addison's material saved her and her debut became a moment due to that because they've been pretty useless.. she even said they didn't want to release Diet Pepsi at first or agree with her direction but at least they eventually trusted/let her do her thing I guess she needs to go indie and use some other label for distribution or whatever like some ppl do, that way she can also fully use the indie cred card

Edited January 25Jan 25 by okgo

2 hours ago, 19SLAYty9 said:

Adele's next album was never going to debut with more than 500k anyways

Adele is the biggest artist of the past 20 years, i think she can easily multiply your prediction by 5.

18 minutes ago, stevyy said:

Adele is the biggest artist of the past 20 years, i think she can easily multiply your prediction by 5.

Then why did she fail to last time?

3 hours ago, Raphy said:

But interscope doesn't support their acts on radio. So often their acts have hits but just miss the top 10 on Pop radio and peak at #11.

There are rooms for improvement, but Interscope definetely doesn't do payola (complimentary) like RCA and Warner, that are notoriously known in that regard.