ABSTRACT
There are several dozen music labels in Poland which operate outside the mainstream of musical culture supported by state or commercial media and financial means coupled with them. Often informal organizations or teams of persons passionate about a particular field of sound art, they independently finance their publications, using primarily the Internet which they treat as the main promotional, communication, and distribution channel. Such activities sometimes transform into more formal organizational structures which take, on the one hand, the form of an association or foundation, thus allowing the use of additional funding; on the other hand, they become more commercial, taking on the form of companies with expanded scope of activity covering all production aspects related to releasing music – from editing, mixing, and mastering of recordings, through the preparation of sound carriers, to the creation and printing of graphic design. The objective which we set for ourselves in this chapter is to trace contemporary, independent music labels in Poland and the related manner of their activities, varying both in terms of the used technologies and the aesthetic choices associated with the presented work.
