When researching a record deal, investor, gig, manager, music publisher, booking agent, or anything/anyone else that can help your music career, it’s important to look at the other side of the coin. Looking at how you can help or allow the other party to profit as well shows you are looking at the complete and bigger picture.
Whether you’re leaning toward a record label or desiring to work from an independent standpoint, many of the same elements of the solicitation show up for both.
When asking for a record deal, you may thing you’re asking someone to sign you. In reality, however, it’s you who’s signing an agreement for a very large loan of money and services to help all the different aspects of your music career.
Someone who pays for the services that include recording to distribution, branding to promotion and marketing to advertising becomes a key part of your potential success. The money for touring as well as to pay the band hasn’t been taken into consideration.
Soliciting for funding is the same whether you want a record deal or you want to remain independent. Record labels don’t sign the best artist or the best song; they sign the people who demonstrate the least risk, have the most money-making potential, as well as enable the most profits possible.
This means that the more you showcase a reduced risk with a higher professionalism all held together with the music, you have a much better chance over those who want to be signed or solicit based only on a song.
The more you can create on your own, before soliciting to a record label or going to investors to handle the elements of what a record label does, the better your solicitations will be received across the board.