By Aidan Sowa, CEO and Founder, Frontier Industries | October 2026
Record labels invented modern publicity. The press agent with a stack of singles and a talent for the outrageous quote built the template every other industry copied. Then the audience moved into an algorithmic feed, the gatekeepers became playlist editors and short video trends, and the label's old craft had to be rebuilt for a market that never sleeps. Choosing a PR agency as a label now means choosing who can work both worlds: the media that still confers legitimacy, and the platforms that confer reach. This guide reads the industry's published numbers, then shows you how to test for both.
$29.6 billion: global recorded music revenue in 2024 (IFPI, 2025) 69 percent: streaming share of that revenue (IFPI, 2025) 752 million: users of paid subscription accounts worldwide (IFPI, 2025)
I Discrimen
A playlist placement is not a press story
Playlist adds are distribution. Press coverage is belief. Confusing the two is the most expensive mistake in modern label marketing.
A playlist can deliver a song to a million passive ears and leave no trace in the culture. A press story, a cover, a critic's essay, a television booking, builds the narrative that turns listeners into fans and fans into a career. The economics point the same way. IFPI (2025) reported global recorded music revenues of $29.6 billion in 2024, with streaming at $20.4 billion and 69 percent of the total. In a market that size, attention is abundant and meaning is scarce.
Your agency's job is the scarce part. It constructs the story that makes an artist legible to journalists, award voters, brand partners and the sync supervisors who place songs in film and advertising. Playlist pitching belongs to your streaming team. The agency you hire for PR should be judged on narrative outcomes, not on access it does not control.
Ask a candidate firm what it did for an artist outside the streaming system in the last year. The answers sort the market instantly.
Streams are weather. Story is climate.
II Machina
The label calendar runs on moments the agency must manufacture
Music publicity used to orbit the album. The album arrived, the campaign fired, the tour followed. Streaming dissolved the album into a drip of singles, features, remixes, live sessions and deluxe editions, and the publicity machine had to learn to manufacture moments monthly instead of annually.
This is now the core competence you are buying: moment design. A signing announcement written as industry news. A first play positioned as an event. A feature collaboration framed as a meeting of worlds. Each moment gives journalists a reason to write now, and gives the algorithm fresh material to amplify.
IFPI (2025) recorded growth in every region in 2024, with the Middle East and North Africa up 22.8 percent, Sub Saharan Africa up 22.6 percent and Latin America up 22.5 percent. The calendar is therefore global by default. A campaign designed only for London and New York ignores the markets growing fastest, and the artists travelling between them.
Test moment design in the pitch. Hand the agency a mid roster artist with a single coming in eight weeks and ask for the moment map. Firms that produce a sequence with logic, audience by audience, understand the modern machine. Firms that produce a list of magazines do not.
III Exemplum
The signing that became the story
Consider a respected independent label signing an artist whose streaming numbers are respectable and whose name recognition is low, a pattern the trades see monthly. The conventional announcement would be a paragraph in a deals column, read by competitors and forgotten by lunch.
The label's agency instead builds the signing as an argument about where music is going: the artist framed within a regional sound that Luminate (2025) can document rising, the label head quoted on the record about the roster strategy it completes, and an exclusive first interview placed with the one publication the artist's peers actually read. The deals column still runs. It now runs underneath a story.
Artist representatives notice. The next three signings the label contests become easier conversations, because the label has demonstrated, in public, that it knows how to introduce an artist to the world. That demonstration is worth more than the coverage itself. In the label business, your publicity is your recruiting.
Ask agencies for their signing announcement work and read it as an artist's manager would. You are not buying column inches. You are buying the next roster.
IV Damnum
Your roster's crises become your balance sheet's problem
A label does not choose its crises. Its artists choose them, at 2 a.m., in public, at scale. The cancelled show, the feud, the old post resurfaced, the festival walk off: each arrives attached to your logo and your other artists' release dates.
The cost accounting is unforgiving. A controversy in release week can consume the entire publicity budget of an unrelated artist on the same roster. Brand partners pause. Sync supervisors, who grew licensing revenue 7.4 percent in a cautious market on IFPI's count (2025), quietly route around risk. Your crisis capability is therefore not an add on to the agency decision. It is half of it.
Interrogate it properly. Who takes the first call, and how fast. Who has standing with the artist's management to deliver unwelcome advice. What is the firm's doctrine on apologies, on silence, on letting a story burn for a day? An agency that has never managed an artist crisis at scale will learn on yours, and tuition in this subject is paid in other people's careers.
Also ask about the quieter discipline: vetting. A good firm reviews an incoming artist's public history before the signing announcement, so the label hears about the landmines from its own side first.
V Genus
Label needs split by roster, not by taste
| Agency type | Core strength | Structural limit | Best label fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Music specialist agency | Press, radio and TV relationships in music media | Can be genre narrow | Labels with focused rosters |
| Artist led publicity firm | Star handling, covers, big moments | Label corporate story neglected | Majors with marquee signings |
| Corporate music business firm | Deals, executives, industry narrative | Less heat at consumer level | Label groups and investors |
| Genre and scene boutique | Credibility inside one culture | Little reach outside it | Specialist and heritage labels |
| Digital first creator agency | Short video and fan communities | Thin traditional press | Catalogues and viral signings |
Match the row to your centre of gravity. A major with superstar economics needs artist led muscle and corporate cover at once, which usually means a lead agency plus retained specialists. An independent built on one scene should buy the boutique's credibility and rent reach campaign by campaign.
Genre honesty matters more here than in any other entertainment sector. Journalists in reggae, metal, jazz or electronic music can tell within one phone call whether a publicist lives in their world. Ask the agency to name the three writers who matter most for your lead artist's genre, and what each has covered this quarter. Fluency cannot be faked at that resolution.
VI Mundus
The growth is elsewhere, and the story must travel
The map of music money has tilted. IFPI's 2025 report shows double digit growth concentrated outside the traditional Anglo American axis, and Luminate (2025) counted 4.8 trillion on demand audio streams in 2024, up 14 percent, with growth outside the United States at 17.3 percent against 6.4 percent inside it.
For a label, this is a publicity brief, not a statistic. Artists now break market by market in unpredictable order, and a campaign must be built to be re lit in São Paulo, Lagos or Jakarta without starting again. That requires an agency with genuine partner networks or platform relationships in growth regions, and materials designed for translation: strong visual identity, story angles that survive language, and data support local media can cite.
Ask for the last campaign the firm ran where the second market outperformed the first, and what they did when it happened. The answer reveals whether their international work is a network or a hope. Labels are global businesses that still hire locally out of habit. The habit is becoming the risk.
Segment by artist tier as well. Superstars need scarcity management. Developing artists need volume and patience. Catalogue needs storytelling that makes old records news again. One agency rarely does all three well, and the pitch should force the firm to say which tier is truly its craft.
Add language to the segmentation. A campaign brief written only in English, for a roster whose growth markets speak Portuguese, Spanish or Korean, quietly caps the very expansion the numbers describe. Strong firms plan the translated life of a story from the start: which quotes carry, which images travel, which local journalist gets the first call in each territory. Ask to see the non English coverage a candidate is proudest of. It is the fastest way to learn whether their world map is drawn from work or from hope.
VII Occasio
The superfan economy is the opening
The industry's growth rate slowed even as revenues hit records: IFPI (2025) reported growth of 4.8 percent in 2024, roughly half the prior year's pace. When the tide slows, the money moves to depth. Labels and their agencies are chasing superfans: the listeners who buy vinyl, attend three shows, and fund the premium editions that carry margins streaming cannot.
Publicity is the superfan refinery. Long form interviews, documentary access, anniversary campaigns and direct community storytelling convert casual listeners into the committed few. Vinyl's eighteenth consecutive year of growth, noted by IFPI (2025), is a press story as much as a sales story: physical ritual gives journalists something to write about and fans something to hold.
There is a second opening in catalogue. Luminate (2025) found rock catalogue dominating deep listening, with 72.6 percent of rock streams coming from tracks more than five years old. Heritage rosters are appreciating assets that most labels publicise lazily. An agency with a catalogue practice, reissue narratives, sync placement stories, anniversary journalism, can raise the yield on recordings you already own.
Ask candidates what they would do with your back catalogue in a quiet release quarter. The firms with real answers are offering you revenue from assets already paid for.
VIII Consilium
Scorecards settle what taste cannot
| Criterion | Weight | Proof to require |
|---|---|---|
| Genre fluency | 25 percent | Named writers, recent placements in your genre |
| Moment design | 20 percent | A launch map for a real artist on your roster |
| Crisis record | 20 percent | Two managed artist crises, described candidly |
| Global partner strength | 15 percent | Named partners in your growth markets |
| Corporate and deals press | 10 percent | Executive and signing coverage placed |
| Catalogue thinking | 10 percent | A reissue or anniversary campaign example |
Write the roster rules into the agreement. Which artists get senior publicists, what response time applies in a crisis, and how conflicts are handled when two of the firm's clients compete for the same cover. Music publicity runs on relationships that can be spent on you or on another client. The contract should say, in advance, that they are spent on you at the moments that matter.
Also fix the boundary with your streaming and marketing teams in writing: who pitches playlists, who owns social, who speaks for the artist. Blurred ownership produces duplicated pitches and journalists receiving three versions of the same story, which is how a label acquires a reputation for noise.
Artists themselves face the mirror image of this decision, and the companion guide for recording artists works through it from the other side of the table. The full set of sector guides is in the industry resources, and retained scopes are described under public relations services.
Questions label teams ask
Should our PR agency also pitch playlists?
No. Playlist pitching is a specialised digital promotion discipline with its own relationships inside the streaming services, and it should sit with your streaming team or a dedicated plugger. A PR agency that promises playlist outcomes is blurring a line it does not control. Judge the agency on press, broadcast, narrative and crisis, and judge the plugger on playlisting.
How do we stop one artist's crisis from consuming the whole roster?
Contract for it. Your agreement should include a crisis protocol that isolates the affected artist's campaign, names the senior lead, and protects other artists' booked activity and budgets. In practice the damage spreads through shared staff and shared news cycles. A firm with a written segregation method will keep your other releases on schedule.
What should a label look for in an agency's artist references?
Range and candour. Speak to one artist team whose campaign soared and one whose campaign struggled. Ask the second what the agency did when the reviews were mixed and the budget tightened. Agencies reveal their character in the difficult middle of campaigns, not at the launch party.
How important is an agency's relationship with award bodies and voters?
Decisive for certain artists, irrelevant for others, and a good firm will tell you which of your roster belongs in which sentence. Awards campaigns are expensive seasons of positioning that begin long before entries open. If your artists compete there, test the firm's recent campaign work in detail. If they do not, do not pay for the capability.
Can one agency handle both our superstars and our developing artists?
Rarely with equal quality. Superstar work is scarcity, access control and protection. Development work is volume, patience and scene credibility. Some firms run genuinely separate teams for each. Ask to meet both teams and compare their instincts. If the same three people are offered for both jobs, you have your answer.
How should we measure a music PR agency's performance?
By movement in the things press actually drives: quality of coverage in outlets your audience trusts, broadcast bookings, narrative adoption, meaning the story told about the artist in pieces the agency did not place, and crisis outcomes. Streaming lifts belong mostly to the music and the platform. An agency claiming your streams is claiming the weather.
When should a label bring PR in on a new signing?
Before the announcement, ideally before the deal is public anywhere. The signing story is a recruiting asset and a positioning act, and it cannot be rebuilt once the deals column has flattened it. Early involvement also lets the agency vet the artist's public history while there is still time to prepare.
How this guide was built
Revenue, streaming share, subscription counts and regional growth figures come from IFPI's Global Music Report 2025. Stream volumes and catalogue behaviour come from Luminate's 2024 Year End Music Report. Sync and vinyl trends are IFPI reported figures. The signing example in Section III is a composite of standard label practice rather than a report of a named signing, and no artist's confidential information is used. The argument distinguishes editorial publicity from playlist promotion throughout, because the two disciplines are bought and judged differently in the current market.
IX Incipe
Buy the firm that can introduce an artist to the world
A label's catalogue is its past and its roster is its argument about the future. The right agency makes that argument in public, market by market and genre by genre, and stands steady when an artist makes the argument harder. Choose for fluency, for crisis character and for moment design, and the coverage follows.
Frontier Industries works with labels and entertainment groups on campaign structure, agency selection and the corporate narrative that supports a roster. Start through the industries team page, or go direct to the campaign route below.
Labels ready to move can start at https://industries.frontiercapitals.com/start-an-industry-campaign/ or call the practice on 401-219-4207.
Sources
1. IFPI, Global Music Report 2025, recorded music revenues of $29.6 billion in 2024, via Music Canada: https://musiccanada.com/tag/ifpi/ 2. WIPO Magazine, IFPI Looks at a Decade of Digital Transformation in the Music Industry: https://www.wipo.int/en/web/wipo-magazine/articles/ifpi-looks-at-a-decade-of-digital-transformation-in-the-music-industry-73661 3. Music Week, IFPI Global Music Report 2025: Paid Streaming Lifts the Market: https://www.musicweek.com/labels/read/ifpi-global-music-report-2025-paid-streaming-lifts-the-market-but-overall-revenue-growth-slows/091626 4. Luminate, 2024 Year End Music Report, global streams near 5 trillion, via Advanced Television: https://advanced-television.com/2025/01/16/report-music-industry-nears-5-trillion-streams-in-2024 5. Record of the Day, Luminate 2024 Year End Music Report, global audio streaming grows 14 percent: https://www.recordoftheday.com/news-and-press/luminate-2024-year-end-music-report-global-audio-streaming-grows-14-driven-by-ex-us-markets 6. Music Ally, Luminate Report: Audio Music Streams Grew by 14 Percent in 2024: http://musically.com/2025/01/16/luminate-report-audio-music-streams-grew-by-14-in-2024/ 7. Music Week, Spotify Loud and Clear 2025 Report Breaks Down Its $10 Billion Role: https://www.MusicWeek.com/digital/read/spotify-loud-clear-2025-report-breaks-down-its-10-billion-role-in-the-streaming-economy/091558 8. Voronoi, Global Music Industry Revenue 2024, IFPI data: https://www.voronoiapp.com/entertainment/Global-Music-Industry-Revenue-2024-5532 9. Headliner Magazine, Luminate Year End Report coverage: https://headlinerhub.com/luminate-year-end-report-reveals-females-dominate-us-music-industry.html 10. Z89, IFPI Global Report 2025: Music Revenues Up 5 Percent to $29.6 Billion: https://z89online.com/2025/03/ifpi-global-report-2025-music-revenues-up-5-to-29-6-billion-amid-ai-copyright-concerns/