Five record label websites, and who should copy which

Kompakt: a shop that owns a label

The navigation opens with Webshop, then New, Pre-Order, Exclusive, Back in Stock, Downloads. Releases and artists come after. There is a whole section for the other labels it distributes, and its own description calls it a record label, an artist agency and a music store, in that order.

Right for labels genuinely selling physical stock at volume, direct, including other people’s. Wrong for almost everyone else, because this is a retail operation and retail is a job.

Ninja Tune: a catalogue with a player

Artists and releases lead. There is a persistent player with a playlist you can clear, so the music keeps going while you browse. And it carries a family of imprints — Counter Records, Big Dada, Technicolour, Brainfeeder, Ahead Of Our Time — each with its own identity under one roof.

Right for deep catalogues and anyone running more than one imprint. The part worth stealing is the player that survives navigation: most label sites make you start the music again on every page.

Hyperdub: a feed, a shop and a mix series

News, releases, artists, videos, merch, mixes. Every release carries a buy button and the shop is threaded through the site rather than parked in a corner. The detail worth noticing is Mixes sitting in the top navigation as a first-class section rather than buried under news.

Right for labels whose identity is partly radio, mixes and a running conversation. Worth stealing: promoting the format you are actually known for to the top level, whatever that format is.

Dekmantel: an events brand that also presses records

Events sit before records. There is the festival, an editorial section, a series called Rewind, a shop. The records are real and the label is respected, but the architecture tells you plainly where the centre of gravity is.

Right for labels born out of a party, where the night is the main event and the catalogue documents it. Worth stealing: letting the navigation admit what your business actually is, instead of what a label site is supposed to look like.

Warp: a wall of announcements

The homepage is a raw stream — artist name, release title, again and again. No hero, no introduction, no explanation of what Warp is. The navigation exists, artists and discography and video and editorial and events and shop, but it is folded behind a menu.

Right for labels whose name already does the explaining. Wrong for you, almost certainly: this works because everyone arriving already knows. Hide your navigation before you have earned that and you have simply made a site nobody can use.

What all five agree on

They disagree about nearly everything, which makes the handful of things they do identically far more interesting. These are the transferable parts.

• The music is the homepage. Not one of them opens with a paragraph about the label’s philosophy
• Artists and releases are wired together, so you can go from a record to its maker and back without a menu
• Buying is never a puzzle, whether the shop is theirs or somewhere else
• No welcome mat. Nobody has a hero image with a tagline over it — that pattern belongs to businesses that have to explain themselves

What to actually do with this

Pick the site whose business matches yours, not the one whose design you envy, then build the smallest version of it that tells the truth about your label.

For most independent labels — a catalogue in the tens, a roster you could name from memory, records sold through Bandcamp and Beatport — the honest answer is a trimmed Ninja Tune. A catalogue built on catalogue numbers, a roster that leads back to the records, dates when you have them, and buying handled by linking out.

Specifically, do not build the shop. Kompakt can carry retail because retail is a department there. For everyone else a checkout means tax registration, fraud, refunds, chargebacks and support email, in exchange for margin you are already getting from Bandcamp without doing any of it.

And do not copy Warp. It is the most tempting of the five and the most dangerous, because what looks like confident restraint is thirty-five years of recognition doing the work the interface is not.

The short version

• Records and artists on the homepage, above anything about you
• Every release on its own page, with its catalogue number and players
• Every artist on their own page, linked to what they released
• An obvious way to buy, even if it points somewhere else
• Dates if you run nights, and an archive that clears itself
• Demos pointed at the platform you actually read
• Navigation you can see, until your name is doing the work instead