- 23-27 OCT 2024
- Manchester, UK
The World Music Charts 2022:
20 TOP LABELS OF THE YEAR
Since our first WOMEX Top Label Award in 2006, the record label business has gone through many transformations, some exciting and some undesirable. The market has never been more challenging as it stands today, and to tackle this we encourage inclusiveness. Since our 25th Anniversary in 2019, we wish to celebrate the independent recording world, the music label business and the media that brings the artists to the community as a whole, and not just as one particular winner.
The monthly playlist charts that we receive from our partners World Music Charts Europe and Transglobal World Music Chart who work with more than 100 journalists and broadcasters worldwide enable us to compile this list of 20 Top Labels of the Year. The eligible period for this year’s list was 8/2021 to 7/2022.
How do we qualify this list?
We compile the chart placing the independent labels in creative production. Counting the work of individual companies and their A&R teams, two or more labels in the same overall organisation/company are added together.
Different, autonomous A&R teams from different company locations are counted separately.
World Music Charts | Transglobal World Music Chart
Here are the 20 Top independent labels:
- Glitterbeat Record (Germany)
- Nordic Notes / CPL Music (Germany)
- ARC Music (UK)
- Ponderosa Music & Art (Italy)
- Real World Records (UK)
- Buda Musique (France)
- Riverboat Records/World Music Network (UK)
- bendigedig records (UK)
- World Circuit (UK)
- Kirkelig Kulturverksted (Norway)
- Analog Africa (Germany)
- Les Disques Bongo Joe (Switzerland)
- Segell Microscopi (Spain)
- Visage Music (Italy)
- Mais Um (UK)
- Asphalt Tango Records (Germany)
- Lusafrica (France)
- Naxos World Music (Germany)
- Homerecords.be (Belgium)
- Accords Croisés (France)