Music institutions: RESEARCH

Music Institutions

Record Label: ‘Raverbaby’.

http://www.raverbabyrecords.co.uk/

The record label Raverbaby was first created in 2001 by Ian Hicks -better known as Hixxy or DJ Hixxy- who is a British Happy Hardcore DJ and musician from Portsmouth, England. Hixxy is well known for his own performances on the Bonkers compilation series. Due to these previous successful releases within the UK dance/hardcore scene, Ian Hicks found he was the perfect person to create a record label, which has been described as “the UK's number one UK Hardcore Label”, on the Raverbaby website. This record label has over 50 releases and has many significant artists signed up to it, who are prevalent within the dance/hardcore scene. Raverbaby itself was portrayed to be a renewal of the dance/hardcore scene, when Ian Hicks made the decision to continue with a scene into which he had invested so much energy, time and money. In previous years, particularly 1999, the hardcore scene had become tired with the absence of earlier creativity, and Hicks became disillusioned. By 2001, however, the hardcore scene experienced a considerable revival, with an influx of new events, tracks, DJs and most importantly Raverbaby, which gave the scene a much needed influence, increasing the scenes popularity exponentially. Consequently, within the dance/hardcore scene, Raverbaby has an extremely good reputation and is known for creating well produced, high quality tracks. The successful artists signed up to the record label Raverbaby include DJ Hixxy himself, Darren Styles and Ultrabeat. Darren Styles and Ultrabeat have enjoyed much success, not just in the hardcore scene, but have recently noticed an influx of interest outside the dance/hardcore genre which enabled both artists to recently release solo albums; which before would have been virtually unheard of within the competitive hardcore scene. Not only does the music record label Raverbaby produce and release successful products, it also runs events –aptly named Raverbaby- and these are ran all over the country, in far away places, such as Plymouth, and much closer to home, Birmingham. These events have proved extremely successful for the record label, with its 14th event anticipated to be run within Birmingham in a couple of week’s time. The events themselves feature successful artists, such as Darren Styles and Ultrabeat, who usually play to a vivacious crowd of 1000’s, frequently until 6 in the morning. These late night ‘raves’ allow the record label to earn a lot of much needed capital, which they can plough back into the business, to help release more successful artists and songs. Due to the record label also running events, the record label is globally renowned and also extremely financially stable, a rarity for a record label in such an ‘underground’ music genre. Overall, this means the brand of Raverbaby has been established successfully for over 7 years, which is promising for artists signed up in the future.
The success which Raverbaby has encountered is significant as it is one of the reasons why it would be perfect for my groups’ artist, ‘Sublime’. The artist ‘Sublime’ and the song ‘Walking in the rain’ is already of the dance/hardcore genre which means the record label would know exactly how to promote the artist effectively, who to target the brand of ‘Sublime’ to, and how to publicise the artist within the dance/hardcore scene. As Raverbaby has already released successful artists, such as Ultrabeat, this means the institution already has a good reputation from the demographic audience, for producing high quality music. Raverbaby has also already proved to be financially stable because it continues to run events which only increase in popularity, meaning if our own artist was successful enough, ‘Sublime’ could perform at these events alongside the other successful artists and DJs, giving her another media outlet which could provide more money for the artist and record label. Overall, I think this record label is perfectly suited to our artist because it is successful, has a good reputation from consumers and is renowned for its events which run all over the United Kingdom. Due to these factors, I think to sign ‘Sublime’ up to this record company has the chance to result in flourishing success, which in turn would earn money for both the record company, and the artist herself.


This is a review of the music institution which I recreated in order to make it more detailed in contrast to my previous first attempt. I have been using the half term as a time to go over my coursework before we start filming so that I have a thorough idea of how I want my final product to look like.