|
That is horrible.
I have managed to get the support of kind labels who give me complete freedom. We pay our own recording expenses (and we have our own studio, so this is pretty moot by this point), but the content is all under our control, as is the art. I have worked out different royalty agreements for different releases, but most of the time a smaller indie will tend to go for just "paying" us in a certain percentage of copies out of the pressing for us to do with what we will, which is fine. I have also waited for royalties to come in when a pressing sells out, which was nice as well, but took patience. To me, a "real" record label takes the financial risk of producing the product for its bands. If you have to put all that money into it, you might as well try going it on your own to start with anyway.
I would never go for a "deal" where I had to pay for production costs without artistic control; I don't know why anyone would. I would advise you to shop your stuff around and wait for something better; if nothing better comes along, just put it out yourself. There are a lot of distros and mailorder outlets available to go direct with.
I have gotten the 50/50 after label expenses deal that Bicorn mentioned as well. I found that completely reasonable.
|