Record Deals Explained: A Guide for Bands

From Boared to Death Records, a DIY punk label and recording studio in Cary, North Carolina, in the Raleigh Triangle.

Most writing about record labels is about major labels. Advances, A&R departments, 360 deals, a marketing budget with a decimal point in it. It is accurate, and it has almost nothing to do with the kind of label most bands will ever actually deal with.

This page is the other version. It covers how deals work, what the terms mean, how to approach a label, and how a release actually gets planned, written from the perspective of a small label that puts out punk records in North Carolina.

We have a bias and we will state it up front: we think bands should own their recordings, keep their publishing, and keep their streaming money. That shapes everything below. Where our approach differs from standard industry practice, we say so rather than pretending our way is the only way.

The honest answer first: we do not sign bands off cold submissions.

This is not because we are precious about it, and it is not a soft no. It is that a record deal built on five songs and no conversation is a bad deal for both sides. We need to understand where a band is trying to go before we can say whether we are useful to them, and a demo in an inbox does not tell us that.

What actually works, in rough order of effectiveness:

Play shows near us. We are in Cary and we are at shows across the Triangle constantly. Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Raleigh, Durham. Most of our roster we met because we were in the room. If you are on a bill with one of our bands, introduce yourself.

Book the studio. Boared to Death Studios is in Cary and a real share of our relationships started as a paid session. Working together on one record tells both of us more than any amount of email. There is no obligation in either direction and no expectation that a session turns into anything else.

Talk to us like a person. Come to a show. Say hello. Tell us what you are working on. That is genuinely it.

Then, if it makes sense, we talk about a record. We work project by project, so the conversation is usually about one specific release rather than a multi-year commitment.

What we are looking for is not commercial potential in the major-label sense. It is a band that is actually playing out, actually finishing songs, and actually wants to do the work. We would rather put out a record for a band with forty committed fans who show up than one with better numbers and no live presence.

Even though we do not work from cold submissions, plenty of labels do, and the checklist below is worth having regardless. Most submissions fail on presentation, not music.

What to include

• Two or three songs, not twelve. Lead with the strongest one. Nobody reaches track nine.
• Streaming links, not attachments. Bandcamp, private SoundCloud, unlisted YouTube. Never a raw file attachment and never a download that requires an account.
• Who you are and where you are. Band name, city, genre, in the first two lines.
• What you have already done. Releases out, shows played, who you have shared bills with. Concrete beats adjectives.
• What you are asking for. A specific ask ("we have an EP tracked and are looking for a label to handle the vinyl") gets a response. "Check us out" does not.
• One good photo. Not five. Not a collage.

What an EPK actually needs

An electronic press kit is not a design project. It needs: a short bio, two or three songs, a high-resolution photo, live footage if you have it, press quotes if you have them, and contact info. A single page or a simple link. If it takes more than one click to hear the music, it is built wrong.

Etiquette

• Address a person if you can find a name. Mass BCC is obvious and gets deleted.
• Keep the email under 150 words.
• Follow up once, after two weeks. Then stop.
• Do not send the same email to forty labels and hope. Send ten good ones to labels whose roster you actually listen to.

Timing

Approach labels when the record is finished or nearly finished, not when it is an idea. A label can help with pressing, promotion and booking. Very few small labels can fund a record that does not exist yet.

This is the section with the most confusion attached to it, so here is the plain version.

An advance is not a payment. It is a loan against money you have not earned yet. The label gives you money up front, and then keeps your royalties until that money is paid back.

The math that matters. Divide the advance by your royalty rate to find how much revenue the label needs to earn before you see another dollar.

A $20,000 advance at a 15% royalty rate means the label needs to bring in roughly $133,000 before you are recouped. Until then, your royalty statements read zero.

That is a simplified version, and real contracts add deductions that make it worse, not better. But the shape of it is right, and it explains the thing that surprises people most: an artist can have a record everybody has heard and still have never received a royalty cheque.

Typical major-label rates for a new artist run somewhere in the 12% to 20% range of the label's revenue, not of the retail price and not of gross. Independent labels vary enormously, with 50/50 profit splits being common once costs are covered.

Read carefully for what the percentage is of. A percentage of net receipts after the label deducts distribution, marketing, packaging and recording costs is a very different number from a percentage of revenue.

Recoupable costs are whatever the contract says they are. Commonly: the advance, recording costs, video costs, tour support, and sometimes a share of marketing. All of it comes out of your side before you are paid.

The important asymmetry: recoupable is not the same as repayable. If the record does not earn out, you usually do not owe the difference. But you also do not get paid. The label carries the loss on their books; you carry it in your bank account.

An option clause gives the label the right, but not the obligation, to put out your next record on the same terms. One-sided by design. A three-album deal with label options is not a three-album guarantee. It is one album plus two decisions that are not yours.

Look for: how long the option window is, whether the terms improve on later records, and whether anything releases you if the label passes.

Assignment of masters means the label owns the recordings, often forever. A licence means you own them and the label has the right to exploit them for a defined term, after which they come back to you.

This is the single most consequential line in any contract and the one most worth fighting for.

You should have the right to inspect the label's accounting. Most contracts allow it with notice and at your expense, and many limit how far back you can look. It is boilerplate, it is rarely used, and its absence is a bad sign.

• Perpetual assignment of masters with no reversion
• Publishing included in a recording deal
• 360 clauses taking merch, touring or endorsement income
• Vague or uncapped recoupable costs
• Options extending many albums out with no improvement in terms
• No audit right
• Pressure to sign quickly
• Any contract you are discouraged from showing a lawyer

We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. Have an entertainment attorney read anything before you sign it. A single consultation costs a fraction of what a bad clause costs over ten years.

Our terms are short because we removed most of the things that make contracts long.

• You keep your masters. Permanently. No reversion clause needed, because they never leave you.
• You keep your publishing. We do not administer it and do not take a share.
• You keep 100% of streaming, digital sales and sync. Not a split, not a share after recoup. All of it.
• No advances, therefore no recoupment. We do not front money against your royalties, so there is no debt to work off.
• No options. Each release is its own decision.
• No 360. Your merch is yours. Your tour income is yours.

We make our money on physical product and on studio time. That is the whole model. It means we only do well when a record genuinely connects with people, which keeps us honest about what we take on.

Neither is better in the abstract. They are different tools.

The advance. At a major, often significant. At an independent, usually none or small.

Your masters. At a major, typically assigned to the label. At an independent, it varies, and they are often retained by the artist.

Marketing budget. At a major, large but recoupable, meaning you pay it back out of your royalties. At an independent, small, but often not recoupable at all.

Radio and playlist reach. At a major, real institutional access. At an independent, limited and driven entirely by relationships.

Creative control. At a major, negotiated and often reduced. At an independent, usually retained.

Speed. At a major, slow, because many people have to sign off. At an independent, fast, because it is often one person deciding.

Attention. At a major, you are one of hundreds of acts. At an independent, you are one of a handful.

Risk to you. A major deal is career-shaping in either direction. An independent deal is usually low risk and easy to walk away from.

Choose a major if you have genuine commercial momentum, need capital you cannot raise otherwise, and want institutional reach that is impossible to replicate independently. Go in with a lawyer and clear eyes about what you are trading.

Choose an independent if you want to keep ownership, want decisions made quickly by people you can call, and value attention over budget.

Choose neither if you have distribution sorted, a working audience, and no specific problem a label solves. Plenty of bands do not need one.

The real question is not prestige, it is which problems you want to own.

Self-release makes sense when: you already reach your audience directly, you can front manufacturing costs, somebody in the band will actually do the admin, and speed matters more than reach.

A label makes sense when: you cannot or do not want to front pressing costs, you want press and booking help, you want a catalogue to be part of, or you simply want to spend your time playing rather than chasing quotes from pressing plants.

What a small label realistically adds: capital for physical product, relationships with venues and press, other bands to play with, and someone whose job it is to remember the deadlines. What it does not add is a marketing department or radio adds. Any small label promising those is overselling.

Honest cost picture for self-releasing. A short vinyl run, mastering for vinyl, artwork, and a distributor fee will typically run into four figures before a single copy sells. That is the number that decides most of these conversations.

Work through this before you sign anything.

1. Listen to their catalogue. Would you be proud to be on it? If the roster is not for you, nothing else matters.
2. Call two of their bands. Not the newest signing. Someone two or three years in. Ask whether they got paid, whether calls get returned, and whether they would do it again. This single step tells you more than the contract does.
3. Ask who does the work. At a small label it is usually one or two people. Find out who, and whether they have bandwidth for you.
4. Ask what they actually fund. Pressing? Mastering? Press outreach? Get it specific.
5. Understand the rights. Masters, publishing, term length, territory, what comes back to you and when.
6. Ask about the run size and what happens to unsold stock.
7. Check the timeline. When does it come out, and what has to happen first.
8. Get it in writing. Including the friendly parts. Good relationships survive written agreements; bad ones are where handshakes go wrong.

Most release problems are scheduling problems. Here is roughly how far ahead to start.

• Week 8: Master finished. Artwork done. Metadata locked.
• Week 6: Delivered to distributor. ISRC assigned.
• Week 4: Pitched to Spotify editorial via Spotify for Artists. Their submission window closes days before release, but four weeks out is a much stronger position than seven days out.
• Week 3: Press and blog outreach begins.
• Week 2: Assets to the band. Announce.
• Week 1: Pre-save live. Content scheduled.
• Release day: Everyone posts. Update all profiles and pinned posts.

Same spine, with a longer promotional runway. Usually one single three to four weeks ahead of the full EP, sometimes two.

Two or three singles staggered across the runway. Long-lead print press needs three months or more. If there is a release show, build the schedule backwards from that date.

Pressing lead times commonly run three to six months, and they move with demand. Vinyl is the long pole in every release schedule, and it is the thing most first-time releases underestimate.

Plan the digital release date around when the records will physically exist, not the other way round. A release show with no records to sell is a painful way to learn this.

• ISRC codes for each track, UPC for the release
• Metadata consistency across every platform, including apostrophes and capitalisation
• Splits and credits agreed in writing before release, not after
• Registering the songs with your PRO
• Canvas and artist-profile assets
• Someone actually owning launch day

Digital distribution moves your music to Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp and the rest. A label either works with a distributor or has its own arrangement. For a small label, this is administrative rather than magical: the same platforms are available to any artist through DistroKid, TuneCore or CD Baby for a modest fee.

What a label genuinely adds is physical: pressing, stock, mail order and getting records into shops. That is capital and logistics, and it is real.

Press outreach for a small label means a personal email to a writer who might actually care, sent well before release with a listening link and a reason to care. It is relationship work, and the relationships take years.

Realistic outcomes for a small punk release: local and regional coverage, genre blogs, college radio, podcasts. Not national magazines. Anyone promising otherwise is selling something.

Editorial playlist placement comes from pitching through Spotify for Artists and is never guaranteed for anyone. Independent curator playlists are worth pursuing on relationships alone.

Never pay for playlist placement. Paid placement services generate bot streams, which platforms detect, which gets your track removed and your artist profile flagged. This has ended more small releases than any amount of obscurity.

For a band at this level, marketing is: playing shows, posting consistently, having your links work, and having records to sell at the merch table. The unglamorous version is the effective version.

If you are reading this because you want to run one rather than sign to one:

1. Register the business. An LLC is the usual shape. In North Carolina, formation is $125 with the Secretary of State and there is a $200 annual report. If you operate under a different name than the LLC, file an Assumed Business Name Certificate with your county Register of Deeds.
2. Register for sales tax. If you sell physical product you will need a Certificate of Registration from NCDOR. It is free. Get a resale certificate too so you are not paying sales tax on your own inventory.
3. Open a business bank account. Separate from personal, from day one. This is the thing people regret skipping.
4. Sort distribution. A distributor relationship or an aggregator account.
5. Decide your deal structure and write it down. Before you need it, not during a negotiation.
6. Understand pressing. Get quotes, understand lead times, and size your first run conservatively. Unsold stock is a real cost.
7. Start with bands you already know. Every good small label starts as a scene with a bank account.

The honest part: a label is a small business with thin margins that runs on relationships. If you are looking for a profitable business, there are easier ones. If you want records to exist that otherwise would not, this is how.

Do you accept demos? Not as a route to signing. Come to a show or book the studio.

Do you take masters? No. You own your recordings permanently.

Do you take publishing? No.

Do you take streaming revenue? No. All of it is yours, along with digital sales and sync.

Do you do 360 deals? No. Merch and touring income are yours.

Do you offer advances? No, which is why there is no recoupment.

What do you actually make money on? Physical product and studio time.

What genres? Mostly punk and adjacent: post-hardcore, emo, post-punk, darkwave, pop-punk.

Where are you? Cary, North Carolina, in the Raleigh Triangle. Our bands are spread across the Triangle, Asheville, Sanford, Charlotte and beyond.

Do you work with bands outside North Carolina? Yes. Our roster includes bands from northeast Tennessee and further out.

Can we record with you without signing? Yes. Boared to Death Studios takes bookings from anyone, with no obligation attached in either direction.

Boared to Death Records — Cary, North Carolina.

The roster is at boaredtodeathrecords.com/artists. The studio is at boaredtodeathstudios.com.

Come to a show. That is still the best way.