A label is a name on a record. That is all it is. Apple. Elektra. Orange. Columbia. Atlantic. A name on a piece of plastic that tells you who paid for the pressing. The label does not make the music. The label makes copies of the music. The label is a copying machine with a logo.

I was on Apple Records. The Beatles' label. People hear that and they think it means something grand. It means John Lennon liked my music enough to put his label's name on it. That is what it means. It does not mean I was a Beatle. It does not mean I was famous. It means a man with a label heard a man without a label and said I will put my name on your sound. That is the entire transaction. A name on a groove.

Elektra Records signed me before Apple. Jac Holzman. The man who signed The Doors. He signed me because I was loud and strange and the Lower East Side was loud and strange and Elektra wanted to sell the Lower East Side to people who did not live there. That is what a label does. It sells a place to people who are not in the place. The record carries the corner to the living room and the label puts a price on the delivery.

Every label I was on went the same way. They signed me because I was different. Then they wanted me to be the same. The same as what sold last month. The same as what the radio played. The same as what the other artists on the label sounded like. But I was a street musician. I sounded like the street. The street does not sound like the radio. The street sounds like traffic and wind and a man yelling about marijuana while a cop writes a ticket. No label knows how to sell that. They sign it because it is interesting and then they shelve it because it is not profitable and then twenty years later somebody writes a book about it and calls it ahead of its time. Ahead of its time means the label was not ready. The music was always on time. The music was right on time. The label was late.

The street does not have a label. The street does not need a label. When I played on the corner there was no name on the music. There was no logo. There was no distributor. There was a hat on the ground and the hat was the entire business model. The hat collected the revenue and the revenue was coins and the coins were enough to eat and eating was enough to play another day. That is a label. A hat on a sidewalk. The simplest record deal in the world. You play and if they like it they pay and if they do not like it they walk and nobody signs anything and nobody sues anybody and the music keeps going because the music does not need permission.

The labels are gone now. Not the names. The names are still there. But the power is gone. A kid with a phone can put a song in front of more people than Elektra could reach in 1969. The label used to be the gate. Now the gate is open and the label is a brand and a brand is a name on a thing and a name on a thing is exactly what it always was. A label. A piece of paper stuck to a piece of plastic. The music was never on the label. The music was in the groove. And the groove does not care whose name is on the outside.