Research and Planning- What role does the music label have in the music industry today?

In today's music industry some people believe that the music label companies are needed as much as they used to be. During my research i came across this article that i found very useful.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/may/13/record-labels-not-dinosaurs-music-industry

In this article the writer tells us that label companies in the past years have changed dramatically, being much smaller but more effective in promoting and marketing their artist. It also tells us that artists who have no knowledge in selling their music without a record company and don't know what they are doing suffer greatly. Overall from this article i have learnt that there is a great feud between social media an record companies as more and more artists are promoting themselves through sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Research shows that from the resent increase in digital sale, record companies have been seeing an overall decline in revenues. An example of this is in the U.S, revenue dropped by over half, from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $6.3 billion in 2009.

So overall the role that music labels have in the music industry today is to promote songwriters, live music and new up coming albums, It is also to financially help there costumers so they can get their music out into the public and get as many fans to get an income. 

For research into music labels and bands with in the genre i am looking at i have contacted Nuclear Blast, a label company that hires bands in the metal genre.

 I then went and contacted a similar band to Ravenface named Sylosis, who's label company is Nuclear Blast and asked them how they contributed to their own marketing and branding.

I am currently waiting for a reply.