If you're running a record label in 2014 you need to stay on your toes. Modes of distribution are ever evolving. Vinyl sales are enjoying a resurgence. Tapes are cool again, CDs are sticking around for the time being, and the digital realm means you can gleefully ignore the physical format if you want to.

All of the labels in this year's top 20 navigated this landscape in their own way. Some are babies, some have been around for a decade or two—but they all have a special ingredient, something extra that makes them demand our attention and our affection. Most have a tight-knit roster whose sum is greater than its parts. Many have a well-honed visual identity, or throw killer parties, or oversee an interesting podcast series—or all of the above. The one thing we know for certain is that running a great label is rarely just about releasing great tunes.

20.
Mood Hut hasn't released a record since July, but that record was so good that its balmy, Pacific Northwest grooves kept everyone warm right up till winter. The Vancouver crew always sounds irresistibly relaxed, an energy that extends from the woozy BPMs all the way to the leisurely release schedule. If slow and steady wins the race, then Mood Hut are champions.
Mood Hut

House of Doors - Filter Feelings
19.
As we mentioned above, there's more to a label than the music. The artists, the artwork, the parties—they all contribute that all-important, you know, feeling. In 2014, no label captured the minds and moved the bodies of as many people as Innervisions. Don't get it twisted, they still released killer records—Recondite's Iffy, Culoe De Song's "Y.O.U.D," David August's "Epikur"—but really this year was all about Dixon and Âme pushing their deep house gospel further, wider and higher than ever before.
Innervisions

Culoe De Song - Y.O.U.D.
18.
Berceuse Heroique ended 2014 with an impressive shitstorm. The London label released a pair of long-coveted Loefah dubstep tunes in a run of 300 copies through Honest Jon's and Idle Hands, causing a Black Friday-like clamor in West London and Bristol. It was a feverish peak to a breakthrough year that saw the label put out grubby techno, dusty edits, fire-walking Greek folk (via its ΚΕΜΑΛ offshoot) and vintage broken beat. This was all underlined by a punkish, antagonistic approach that regularly used humanity's rotten core for artistic inspiration.
Berceuse Heroique

Max D - Chewy
17.
Public Possession has created its own little world, with an insular roster and perfectly snarky aesthetic. In 2014, though, the label resonated well beyond its home base in a Munich record shop. Conspirators Marvin and Valentino released heartily and riskily, with lots of faith placed in little-known producers. Supremely tuneful EPs like Bell Towers' Territory, though, spoke for themselves, and helped make Public Possession one of offbeat club music's freshest new imprints.
Public Possession

Bell Towers - My Love (Edit)
16.
Does Gerd Janson's excellence know no bounds? Not only did he source some of the year's classiest club weapons—from Genius Of Time, Redshape and Todd Osborn—he also gave us slow and crunchy weirdness from Maurice Fulton (er, Matsumi) and stunningly beautiful ambience by Suzanne Kraft. And that's before we even get to Running Back's 2014 pièce de résistance: Telephones's bittersweet, Seinfeld-referencing EP, The Ocean Called. After 12 years in the game, Running Back is a humble masterclass in the art of the record label.
Running Back

Mutsumi - Look Down At Your Feet Below
15.
The techno Token specialises in doesn't have mass appeal. It's often fast and pummelling, but is offset with moments of real delicacy and beauty. That it remains one of the genre's go-to labels is testament to the A&R skills of its founder, Kr!z. The sound he's sculpted for his label hits hard every time, and this year heavyweights like Surgeon, Karenn and Planetary Assault Systems joined the imprint's ranks. It's been going since 2007, but Token is still a label on the rise.
Token

Ø [Phase] - Perplexed (Rødhåd's Extended Mix)
14.
Wania hit release #100 this year with the sublime On Tempo / It Takes Time. Granted, they started at 99, then counted backwards to 96 before jumping to the century mark, with releases playfully numbered in between. It's indicative of DJ Sotofett and Fett Burger's empire-of-sorts, where even catalog numbers can get a little wacky. The tunes, however, were deadly serious, especially Sex Tags UFO's (legitimate) tenth release, cut with breakbeat-y anthems as sweaty as anything in the label's oeuvre.
Sex Tags Mania/UFO/Wania
13.
When Blackest Ever Black arrived in 2010, it lived up to the promise of its name with impossibly dark music from Raime, Regis and Tropic Of Cancer. Since then, it's let the light in a bit, and the results have been extraordinary. This year's stunningly varied output—from Dalhous, Cut Hands and Weekend among others—was challenging, surreal and emotionally complex, marking them as one of the most inspired independent labels out there today.
Blackest Ever Black

Killing Sound - Thousand Hands
12.
Francis Harris and Anthony Collins started their label with a "hands-on approach" in mind, which meant only releasing music from people they counted among their close friends. That policy lends Scissor & Thread's house music an emotional intimacy that really came to the fore in 2014. This included Harris's career-defining Minutes Of Sleep, which grapples with the death of his mother, and the haunting, DJ Sprinkles-assisted "Companion," to name just two unforgettable highlights.
Scissor & Thread

Frank & Tony - Bring the Sun
11.
At around 3:15 AM on the Friday night of this year's Unsound festival in Kraków, Oscar Powell, one of the two guys behind Diagonal, stood on stage in a crucifix pose with his head back and his eyes closed. In front of him about 200 people were completely losing their shit in a hail of strobes and club beats. This isn't an image you'd necessarily associate with a label that has built its reputation on experimentation and esoteric electronics—think: Prostitutes, Shit & Shine, Bronze Teeth—but one of our favourite surprises of 2014 was just how danceable Diagonal could be.
Diagonal Records

Powell - So We Went Electric
10.
Between three huge artist albums (tobias., Answer Code Request, Steffi) and a solo EP from Anthony Parasole, 2014 marked another stellar year for the Berghain-affiliated powerhouse. What made it a standout, though, was Ryan Elliott's Panorama Bar 06, which bypassed the shops and went directly to SoundCloud. The move could have felt like a downgrade for the vaunted series. But from the impeccable online presentation and impressive exclusives to the glorious mix itself, it was just the opposite.
Ostgut Ton

Makam - Girls Night
9.
At the ripe old age of 24, Ninja Tune is more than a decade older than any other label in this year's top 20. That they've managed to stay relevant shows their willingness to move with the times—they've weathered a music industry storm or two—not to mention some crafty A&R. In 2014 they issued a wide-ranging batch of albums from artists like The Bug, FaltyDL, Lee Bannon, Kelis and Illum Sphere, suggesting Ninja Tune has the legs to outlast many of its younger peers.
Ninja Tune

Romare - Roots
8.
Plenty of parties start labels to showcase residents and artists in their orbit. When you're The Bunker, Brooklyn's preeminent techno night, and your regulars include Voices From The Lake, Atom TM and Reagenz, your label arm is going to be quite something. Each contributed to The Bunker New York's inaugural year, but the label's trump card wasn't star power—it was A&R, with relative unknowns like Clay Wilson and Løt.te behind some of their key records.
The Bunker New York

Voices From The Lake - Sentiero
7.
2014 was a rollercoaster year for Hyperdub. The label tragically lost DJ Rashad, its brightest newcomer, and The Spaceape, one of its founding figures, in a year that also threw up many highs. There were tours of North America, Asia and Europe, a strong debut album, a run of stronger EPs (Ikonika, Kyle Hall) and, the tour de force, a four-part compilation series that summarised and expanded upon the label's prodigious last decade.
Hyperdub

DJ Spinn & Taso - Burn That Kush
6.
1080p is a quirky label, but behind Richard MacFarlane's humorous, internet-savvy presence was some of the best music of the year. And there was lots of it. From making rising stars out of unknowns like Khotin and Lnrdcroy to releasing Nissan-themed side projects (Torn Hawk) and solo piano works from more established acts (Babe Rainbow), we never knew what to expect from 1080p, but we could usually count on it to be something original.
1080p

MCFERRDOG - I Wanna See
5.
Already well known for fostering unusual collaborations and digging out diamonds in the rough, Matt Werth's Rvng Intl outdid itself this year. The label united crushing metal band The Body with dark ambient wizard The Haxan Cloak for one seriously heavy record, in addition to fantastic new music from Holly Herndon and Bing & Ruth. Even better was their run of archival material from Craig Leon, K. Leimer and Ariel Kalma, LPs which proved that looking into the past could be just as revelatory as seeing the future.
Rvng Intl.

Holly Herndon - Home
4.
We're familiar with the idea of the shock of the new, but in 2014 PC Music gave us the shock of the now. A.G. Cook's net label shook things up by championing music that reflected and responded to the world around it. The effects of a life spent online and hyper consumerism appeared to be smeared across the label's SoundCloud page, a hub for the super-glossy dance and pop sounds of GFOTY, Hannah Diamond, Danny L Harle and Cook's many aliases. PC Music was too sickly for many people's palates, but they simultaneously released some of the catchiest and most experimental tracks of the year—and when was the last time a record label sparked widespread philosophical debate?
PC Music

A. G. Cook - Beautiful
3.
PAN is one of only two labels to make RA's top labels list for the past three years running. (The other is Hyperdub.) Full credit, then, to Bill Kouligas, whose curatorial wisdom connects all kinds of wonderful left-field music. In 2014 PAN released Objekt's blistering debut album, Beneath's bass experimentation, Black Sites's slamming hardware techno, the cosmic percussion of Afrikan Sciences, a typically adventurous Lee Gamble album and M.E.S.H.'s sparkling Scythians, and it all somehow made perfect sense.
PAN

M.E.S.H. - Scythians
2.
In 2014 Dario and Marco Zenker continued to explore atmospheric techno, further honing the sound their label has spent the past seven years working with. But their strike rate this year was about as good as it gets—records from familiar names like Jonas Kopp, Stenny, Andrea and the founders themselves all ended up in the DJ bags of techno's biggest acts, while mysterious debutants Rupcy, Sciahri and Skee Mask helped solidify Ilian Tape as a truly essential techno label.
Ilian Tape

Stenny - Eternal Restriction

1.
Giegling
Kettenkarussell - Of Course
We all know the feeling. Sometimes you have one of those nights when everything is so perfect—the music, the people, the atmosphere—that it ends up seared into your memory, a series of fuzzy images you take pleasure in revisiting. Giegling is an artefact of that experience, inspired by four parties at a Weimar club from which it takes its name. This is why any given track from the label, whether it's techno, house, ambient or hip-hop, has the melancholic tinge of a memory—"like the feeling of seeing a sunset," in the words of Dustin, one of the label's core members.

Most great labels have some equivalent of this—not just a signature sound but an actual personality, something that's hard to put your finger on that ties all of the releases together. In 2014, with just an armful of records from the label's old guard, Giegling didn't do anything radically new, but they did reach a tipping point of sorts. With albums and EPs from Kettenkarussell, Vril, Edward, Traumprinz and DJ Metatron, that feeling they've been building for years reached something close to perfection.

This poll is decided by the votes of RA staff members and current contributors.