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2020 · IllumiNation Records, Chicago

IllumiNation Records

A label’s own channel to its listeners, on the theory that renting one from an algorithm is not a distribution strategy.

01 · the problem

An independent record label lives on attention in the narrow window around a release, and that attention is entirely intermediated. Followers are not an audience the label owns, they are an audience it is permitted to reach when a ranking function decides to allow it. The roster and the release calendar were scattered across social platforms with no single place a listener could go and no channel the label controlled.

02 · what i built

A mobile and web app carrying the label’s artist roster and its release announcements in one place, so a listener who wants to know has somewhere to go, and the label can reach them without asking a feed for permission.

The roster in one place
Every artist on the label presented together, which is the thing a listener who has found one of them is looking for next.
Release announcements
Drops announced through a channel the label owns, rather than posted into a feed and ranked by somebody else.

Questions

What people ask

Why would a record label need its own app?

Because a release has a short window and social platforms decide who sees it. An owned channel reaches the people who chose to hear from the label, at the moment it matters, without a ranking function in between.

Why is there no screenshot or link?

There is no public trace of the label left to draw on: no live site, and nothing in the Protorix archive for this one. Rather than stage an image or invent a mark, the page runs on what can be said honestly and stops there.