Deal or no deal?

[chimpbass]

My band has recently been approached by the owners of a startup indie label who've expressed quite a bit of interest in signing us to a contract, but I'm not sure what to think about the whole thing.

On one hand, they seem excited about promoting us and have the financial backing to do it. This is quite tempting as we're currently strapped for cash (just finished an album, still in the red). I've seen evidence that they put that cash to good use and do an excellent job of getting the acts they've signed great gigs. They have a pretty progressive 21st century business model that relies less on record sales and more on ticket and merch sales. They also have a surprisingly professional staff for an indie label (legal, marketing, production).

There are, however some minuses in this equation, too.

They are brand-spanking new. They only have two other acts signed as of now, and neither are acts I want my band to be closely associated with. They also aren't very connected in the area (Denver). My band already has more contacts with booking managers, DJs, and other bands than they currently do. Finally, it would be a binding contract. If a better deal came along in a couple months, we wouldn't be able to take it unless the offerers of the better deal were willing to buy out our contract on top of it all.

My goal is to make music I'm proud of and make a living doing it. My current band has the potential to be a huge facet of achieving that goal for me, but I don't want to screw it up by allowing us to get into a bad situation professionally and contractually. Do you think taking a chance on signing with a label like the one I've described above will get me closer to or further from that goal?

[jmjbassplayer]

aargh

This is tough without having my eyeballs on all the nuances of the situation. You need to move ahead. If these guys have NO real successes, it could go badly. However, if you're strapped for cash, you need to make sure you have something else down the pike if you're going to turn this one down. Make sure the deal is at least good. If you really like the people involved, in spite of their relative inexperience, that would be a big deciding factor. If you are ambivalent about the people, and it really is just a money thing and you guys can do everything on your own, then why bother?

JMJ

[jimmy rocket]

That's a really tough situation. I wen though the same thing about 7 years ago. My band was well connected in our local scene, but didn't really have the money to move forward with the sort of recording/touring schedule we wanted, so we signed on as one of two bands on an indie start up.

The pros:

The label did allow us to record two great sounding records completely on their dime in studios that we wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise. (We were completely stoked to be recording where Less Than Jake had recorded "Hello Rockview")

We made some important contacts within the wider scene (LTJ, ALL, etc...) that ended up being very helpful

The label was pretty understanding two years later when the band moved to a bigger label (Mono Vs. Stereo records)

The Cons:

The label put a lot of their money out up front, and expected a lot of us in return in terms of touring. This put undue stress on our band relationships and ended in two of us leaving the band.

The label relied on our touring connections rather than developing their own.


Like JMJ said, it's a toss up sometimes. Keep your eyes VERY open going into this, but if it looks like something you can commit to, and it's mutually beneficial for the label and the band then good luck!