In the end, that great royalty rate is reduced to mere pennies, if you don't have a good attorney negotiating for you. Indie labels will deduct some of the same costs, but they may not be as strict as the majors. In the end, you may get the same amount of money from an indie as from a major, even though your royalty rate looks smaller. Don't get caught in the higher royalty rate trap. Something else you want to look at is the label's personnel.
Larger labels have loads of artists to worry about.
You may be put on the back burner because the new Mariah Carey album is coming out and the entire label is behind that project. I've heard many a story about this happening. Again, if you have a strong negotiator, you can have clauses in your contract preventing this from happening, but it's difficult to get the labels to guarantee that they'll put your stuff out. Of course, if you're the hottest thing out there, that will most likely not happen, but you can never be too sure. A label may give you the greatest deal for the simple reason that they don't want you competing with one of their current artists , so they'll sign you and shelf you.