Ideal's exclusive focus on regional tejano music eventually resulted in the label recording nearly every tejano artist of note who was active during the label's existence. In the decades of the 1940s and 1950s Ideal was the clearly predominant record label for tejano music. Its output was highly influential in bringing conjuntos, female musicians, and orquestas to prominence within Tejano culture. The label's first recordings of Beto Villa were crucial in establishing the orquesta tejana as a Mexican-American tradition. Marroquín left his artists wide latitude regarding the material to be recorded, trusting the artists to know their audience. The initial audience for Ideal was the working class, but evolved to include Mexican-Americans of affluence. Ideal's location in Alice, Texas, more towards San Antonio than the Mexican border, was an ideal location to record a more sophisticated brand of tejano music called conjunto which appealed to the bilingual and educated descendants of earlier immigrants, in contrast to its main competitor Falcon, whose more rustic output was called norteña. An example of Ideal's more "sophisticated" music is Valerio Longoria, who pioneered the use of lyrics in conjunto music, as well as introducing Cuban-Mexican bolero into the conjunto tradition, and also Isidro López whose recordings for Ideal broadened the Tejano musical repertoire by fusing orquesta instruments with accordions, the addition of boleros, and "highly sophisticated" arrangements of rancheras and polkas.
