My Music Journey With Music Labels
By: Paradox Israfil
Tags: Music Business, Music, Personal Development, Marketing, Artist

My Music Journey With Music Labels

My experience on how to make it as an indie artist with the help of label support ParaDox IsRafil Jun 17·5 min read

If you’re reading this article, chances are you’re interested in music business, you’re already working towards becoming an up-and-coming artist, or you’re just reading this because you want to see what goes on in my head. Regardless of your reason, congrats; you are already on the right path.

A little bit of background for you, I was not prepared to be an artist in any way, shape or form. Prior to working with a label, I had recently decided to become a solo artist in the past year. I’ve been songwriting for over 20 years of my life (I’m 27 now. I was self-teaching myself piano at 6.) and I never really pictured myself having a career in music until the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. I had lost my job at a coffee shop that I was working at in Manhattan, I’ve been collecting unemployment since until February 2021 with my first teaching gig, and I been working at a local coffee shop in the past few months and possibly facing my second wave of struggles with homelessness for the next couple of months. I’m not living a glamorous life or trying to do anything significant, however I do understand that a lot of my problems would be less severe if I started pursuing trying to get my music out.

I’ve tried working with one label prior (let’s just say they used to go by Sprout Records) and needless to say, there was a lack of artist support unless you were willing to invest ridiculous money on a social media algorithm and were willing to be basically a brand ambassador. Honestly, their sales pitch wasn’t far off from a pyramid scheme. Even to become part of the roster was so incredibly easy, I was on that on the roster twice as “PARADOX” and “ParaDox IsRafil” by accident, and they never made any attempts to remove the other account, and a huge part of our popularity, our worth and our market value based off of how many songs we released and generating as much plays as possible. I didn’t really like how everything was kind of pushed on the artist. That brings me to my first tip:

Do not settle on the first label that contacts you.

Seriously don’t do it. You always should put time and research on what you feel people and take a chance, but as long as you’re not signing a contract, don’t be obligated to stick it through. I canceled my membership after the first month with “Sprout Records” and tried my hand on another label, where it was ran by AI. The pros and cons of working with an AI music label (I will let you decide as a reader whether it’s a pro or con, because some of the things that can be considered pros to me can be cons to you):

Outside of a mandatory phone call (that I never got), you are not under the pressure of dealing with a higher up or any real human interaction

You get to learn how to run a label as an individual, so the process is not really kept secret

Using their resources, you get access to things like your own merch designs, choices of when and where to tour (you can even do performances from home), and you keep most of the revenue from tours and merch

Instructions are written and revised as the app is learning more about you as an artist and how to sell tickets with each show.

Your ability to make money depends highly on your popularity and your ability to perform coming into the label.

In some ways this wasn’t enticing idea because I don’t like to have people over my head for being the person to send me a paycheck. I like making my own money and I like that I have full control of what kind of show I can perform. Unfortunately, the options to advertise yourself as a songwriter is very nonexistent because the assumption is all artists want to be performers. Between touring with another artist (not my best choice, definitely emotionally challenging and an experience I’ll treasure nevertheless) then trying to tour on my own with other “professional” artists, I was emotionally drained to the point that I ended up ending the relationship with that particular label early.

After that experience which was back in April, I lost interest in working with a label, I wanted to focus more on just perfecting my craft. Interestingly enough, that’s when I got an email from the CEO of Beige Records. They found my music through SoundCloud shortly after a stranger that I met at the park shared my music on his Instagram. I haven’t reached out to that stranger since, but I still have his number. I think he inspired me to try again.

With Beige Records, they give you an opportunity that most labels don’t, which is excepting submissions. None of the other labels really even paid attention to my music, but I looked at their website and their artists. I even listen to some of them on my Spotify daily because the music is actually pretty decent. Their focus is to handle your distribution, promotion, and any non-music related factors to help you develop your artist image, and your only job is to send the music you want released. Also, depending on the membership you select, you can keep up to 100% of the royalties. This leads me to my next tip:

No matter what label you decide to pick, expect to pay something. Labels are not a free service.

I don’t know where people get this assumption that you can just make money, also understand that labels don’t usually handle contracts like that. In fact, the most that’s ever been advertised is maybe an artist grant. Be careful about those artist grants, it’s just another way to entice you to buy the product that they claim to sell. A label’s job is to help artist development, with the hope that the artist does well in their career and can fund into their label. The more the artist flourishes, the easier it is for the label to support the artist in return. That said, understand that the choice to work with the label does cost money of some kind or some kind of labor. Definitely labor if you’re job is to be an artist. What kind of artist you are depends on what kind of label works for you. I have yet to release music with Beige Records because I only started my membership last week, but I have yet to see any negative reasons to not work with this label, they give me unlimited access to a lot of resources and they allow me to re-release my music as much as I want to, but they’ve already been more proactive on checking on me and seeing how my music releases are going and ask for feedback. This label is located in Canada, so I don’t think I will see anybody or be able to contact anyone in person for a while, but they have a nice eclectic roster and they all sound very dope in their own way. I am really excited to release my own music soon this weekend, and I hope that within a few months time I can follow up on this article with more feedback working with the label.