News that Amy Winehouse is to launch her own record label Lioness Records has been met with groans all round. And not just because she seems incapable of organising anything other than a piss-up in the Hawley Arms. Historically, pop stars sinking their hard-earned money into record labels is often a sign they have too much of it and not enough to do - or a manifestation of delusion.
Many ventures fail because running a label is largely boring. It involves things like ordering bar codes, having meetings with distributors, liaising with pressing plants, booking advertising space and kissing the posteriors of journalists. It also involves taking phone calls at all hours from demanding artists who, whatever you do, will never be satisfied. Compared with noncing about on stage for an hour every night, it's really no fun. In fact, it's a lot like - look out! - a real job.
Success stories come from unlikely places. While the Beatles' tax-dodge Apple Corp involved itself with many interesting projects (Badfinger, Ravi Shankar, the El Topo soundtrack, and many other spliff-rolling hangers-on), commercially it relied on Beatles-related projects to stay afloat. Yet Mick Hucknall's Blood & Fire reggae re-issue label is, to those in the know, one of the best the genre has seen.
Only sometimes is it about giving something back: Mike Skinner's The Beats label closed (that Mitchell Brothers album didn't quite set the world alight), while his contemporary Dizzee Rascal's Dirtee Stank imprint still survives, recently enjoying a number one single, despite (literally) having a steaming turd for a logo.
Artists who create labels that stick rigidly to the scene that spawned them, and keep their costs low, tend to fare well. Punk labels like Alternative Tentacles (established by Jello Biafra) and Epitaph (established by Bad Religion's Brett Gurewitz) have outlived numerous major label imprints, while Goldie's drum'n'bass label Metalheadz was at its best when documenting a specific moment in a genre.
Meanwhile, some pop stars - P Diddy being a good example - reveal themselves to be businessmen masquerading as entertainers. Others have the full financial might and know-how of a major label behind them, like Madonna's Maverick, or Tricky's Brown Punk (co-owned with Island's Chris Blackwell).
Amy Winehouse is immensely wealthy and can no doubt pay other people to do the actual day-to-day work; she'll need them too, along with quite a bit of luck.
