Where the Needle Stops

Record labels as visual and textual icons

This post marks a change in direction and a lighter tone than some of my recent posts, while also flagging another aspect of the Songs and Objects project I’m exploring. The topic here is the materiality of music: not sound as physical thing (though I am interested in that), but rather the objects and things that music gets attached to in order to be circulated, heard and remembered.

My way of approaching that here is through what might seem a quite minor object in the history of recorded music, but is one that will be familiar to anyone who has ever bought, borrowed or played a record. I’m talking about the record label.

I’ve long been interested in record labels, both in the way that term gets used as shorthand for what might more properly be called record companies and as physical things in and of themselves, the small (mostly) circular items that get glued to records so that users can tell one record from one another, one side from another, and several more things which I’ll go into below.

In 2014, I took part in an academic conference at Newcastle University on the theme of ‘One Hundred Years of Record Labels’, organised by Matthew Ord and Elodie Roy. Much of the discussion was around the ‘record company’ meaning of record label, but there was also space to talk about labels as physical objects on records. What follows is drawn from what I spoke about at that event, supplemented by thoughts I had and examples I collected after the conference.

What do record labels do?

A vinyl record is, in essence, a slice of polyvinyl chloride with a spiral groove scored into it on each side (usually), a hole in the centre and a label of 80-100mm diameter stuck surrounding the central hole to identify what’s recorded in the groove on that side. Prior to the vinyl record, in the first half of the twentieth century, this basic division between groove and label was similar, though the material the music was scored into was shellac.

The groove of the disc bears a direct causal relationship with the source of the sound. Sound itself determined the grooves and sound is what they mean. But the label also contains meanings. The groove is read by the needle; the label by the eye. The eye can perceive symbolic difference in the grooves but can do little with them; similarly the needle can do little or nothing with the label—with very occasional exceptions (later, Jack White, later!).

Here are some important things that a record label does:

• it marks difference at a basic level so the record user knows they are playing the disc and the side that they intended to play

• it advertises, reminding us, whether we like it or not, that recorded music is a commercial enterprise

• it identifies specific details that help manufacturers, retailers, collectors and archivists know which version of that recording they are handling

• it iconifies, connecting music to aesthetics, history and memory

• it represents sound even though it’s the groove that carries the sound

• it signals time and place and other aspects of where and when it came from

There are some other things that a record label does, which I’ll cover later on. But let’s move to another question.

What is on a record label?

'The Golden Bird / The Canary Polka' (Brunswick 78RPM disc, 1930) (left); The Folk Box (Elektra LP, 1964) (middle); The Electic Muse (Island LP, 1975) (right).

Historically, the main thing we would expect to find on a record label is information, akin to the contents page of a book. The information that’s typically provided has varied over the years. Richard Osborne, in a chapter of his book on the analogue record devoted to the label, offers the following initial list:

• title of the recording

• catalogue number

• artist details

• location and date of recording

• logo, such as the Recording Angel or later Nipper the dog (or, in my examples above, the Brunswick ‘B’, the Elektra ‘E’ and butterfly, and the Island ‘i’)

• later addition: information about writers and composers

• the manufacturing process (especially in early twentieth-century recordings, but also evident during the mid-century hi-fi boom, at which point the distinction between mono and stereo would also become important)

• copyright information: initially, this was more concerned with manufacturing processes and patents, later with copyright of the music contained on the recording

• a notable feature of the gramophone era: the identification of musical genre or style or whether the recording was spoken word, drama, sound effects—or, in the case of my first example above, an ‘ACTUAL CANARY SOLO’

Osborne also tells us that, on the earliest discs, the information was etched into the record itself, limiting the design options. From 1900, paper labels appeared, allowing the addition of decoration and colour and making records more desirable as items to sell. The label would be attached at the time of the record’s duplication, a process that continued into the following century.

The label works as the primary identifier of the recording in the case of most 78 RPM records, many 7-inch singles and many genres of 12-inch, including dance music, techno and reggae. As a result, they would be housed in plain or generic sleeves with cut-out holes to easy access to the information on the labels.

Although not the most obvious way of thinking about a record label, we can also identify it as the non-sonic part of the disc, the point at which the needle should stop, and normally does. This aspect—along with many of the other things I’m saying here about grooves, labels and speeds here—was challenged by the manufacturers of Jack White’s Lazaretto ‘ultra LP’ in 2014 when they added a playable under-label groove. Lazaretto, however, is the exception that proves the general rules about what the components of an LP do.

A needle meeting the record/label border (left) and the playable under-label groove on Jack White's Lazaretto (middle and right).

(For the other features of White’s ultra LP, see this video from Third Man Records.)

To return to that list of information contained on the record label, here’s a detailed example from Neil Young / Reprise, alongside a less detailed one from Lanterns on the Lake / Bella Union.

Record labels for Neil Young's Freedom (1989) and Lanterns on the Lake's Until the Colours Run (2014).

One thing I didn’t include in the list of label information above was instruction. As well as informing the user what side of the record they are playing, most labels also contain the simple but important instruction of what speed to play the record. For many record listeners, this instruction might seem unnecessary as the mid-to-late twentieth-century history of vinyl records established that singles mostly played at 45 RPM and LPs at 33 1/3.

Even in the heyday of vinyl, that wasn’t always the case. There were 12-inches that play at 33 due either to the length of the mix or for DJ functionality, such as the ‘special disco version’ of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ below. And the recent trend for issuing what would usually have been single LPs that played at 33 as doubles that play at 45 has precedents, such as the alternative format of Metallica’s Master of Puppets from 1987 (below).

Special Disco Version of Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' (above) and 45RPM version of Metallica's Master of Puppets (below).

Add to this the fact that label designers may omit the speed in the label’s graphic information—for aesthetic reasons, from forgetfulness, or due to an assumed obviousness at what kinds of records play at what speed—and confusion or disappointment can occur. On first listen, I found the Lanterns on the Lake album above rather sluggish and not at all what I was expecting from the reviews I’d read. Only when I played the digital version did I realise I should have been playing the LP at 45. It then became one of my favourites of 2013.

(Functionality aside, I do very much like the LOTL label for its minimalism and—in this particular edition—for its contrast with the white vinyl, marking it as a kind of ‘negative’ of a common division between black wax and light label.)

There are some obscurer—and, I suppose, often ‘hipper’—records/labels whose designers decide, for whatever reason, not to give their users some of the basic information. Certain labels and genres—electronic, dance, indie—seem particularly reticent about printing speeds or sides or sometimes any information. You’re just supposed to know, otherwise you’ve failed some kind of coolness test. 

I have to admit that I own a few records which I’m still not sure whether I’m playing at the right speed!

That said, there are some smart and (I think) still hip alternatives to labelling the numbers or letters of a record’s sides, such as on the album Soused by Scott Walker and Sunn O))), where the record’s sides are determined by the order of the letters of the album’s title.

Labels for the three sides of the 2014 album Soused by Scott Walker & Sunn O))).

Information as design

We might be tempted to say that all that is not information is icon, so that design becomes more important for some labels than factual information. But there are labels where the factual information is the design and reflects something of the ethos of the company, the music, or both. Take these examples from Disc, Folkways and Topic, which, to me, exude a sense of honest, ‘working’ music associated with the vernacular styles and political content to be found in much of these labels’ catalogues.

Many (perhaps most) labels combine the informative and the iconic. I like the Elektra examples below as examples of information design that is both straightforward and escapist. Some of the label’s output veers more towards the kind of ‘honest’ starkness of the folk labels above (reflecting, perhaps, Elektra’s investment in the folk music scene of the 1960s), while some seems closer to a hippie aesthetic. These labels also offer a reminder that consistent design from a record company links groups in interesting ways, informing our understanding of music history. Here, for example, a connection is forged between the Doors and Television. In this way, the label can become as iconic as the artists whose music it is releasing.

Elektra designs from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Iconic labels

What makes a record label iconic? The music, of course. Vee Jay, Blue Note and Motown are iconic labels because of the music and artists associated with them, and because of their contribution to the genres of gospel, jazz and soul music. But, when they are referred to as iconic labels, there is at least an implicit reference to the visual style associated with the record covers that house the discs and the paper circles glued to their middles.

One of my earliest experiences of an iconic label came with the Stiff Records singles I got into when I was around ten or eleven. It was mainly through being a fan of Madness that I got to know the label. By that time (the early 1980s), many of the 7-inch singles I was interested in were appearing in picture sleeves, but I remember seeing a lot of the generic Stiff sleeves from earlier releases such as the ones below.

Stiff single sleeves and labels.

The Two-Tone records that I also loved (having got into ska and reggae via Madness) were equally iconic with their black and white sleeves and labels.

2-Tone singles by The Specials, Madness and The Selecter.

I can’t really say whether early exposure to Stiff and 2-Tone planted a love of label design in me, but I know that these were the labels I thought back to when I started putting my 2014 presentation together. Since then, I’ve become aware of many more aspects of record label design that I find fascinating and I’ll be including some of these in future posts.

From the new records I’ve bought in recent years, I get the feeling that the era of iconic label branding previously used by both major and independent companies is mostly a thing of the past, or perhaps the preserve of a small number of indie labels. One of my favourites, and a label whose releases I’ve been buying consistently for many years, is the Portuguese indie Príncipe Discos, which focuses mostly on the Afro-diasporic electronic dance music of Lisbon that is collectively known as batida (‘beat’). (This is a music scene I’ve written about in my book DJs do Guetto.)

As always, it was the continued brilliance of the music that bonded me to the label, but it’s also a pleasure to collect releases that maintain a consistent aesthetic style. With Príncipe, this comes in the form of Márcio Matos’s paintings and lettering that adorn many of the sleeves of the releases and all of the labels. The examples below are from 2011, 2015 and 2020.

Márcio Matos’s designs for releases by Príncipe Discos.

Another area where I think the branded iconic label survives is in reissue labels, especially those that model themselves on famous brands of the past or adopt a pastiche style (whether in homage or irony). I plan to cover some of those in future posts. I’ll also share some examples of labels that I think do information design in cool and unusual ways as well as those who consider the label as a moving image.

When I gave my presentation on record labels in, I titled it ‘The Lure of Ephemera’. I wanted to capture the combination of the trivial and the essential that I experience when I think about these small discs of paper. There has been a lot of love shown for record sleeves over the years, recognising them as a vital twentieth century artform. I’d like to see that love extended to the miniature masterpieces at the centre of the disc.