This is our bread and butter and what we have always wanted to focus most on.

Every release we do comes with some sort of physical release and an additional ‘goodie,’ which can be a guitar pick, a holographic sticker, or whatever we can think up.

We’d love to consider vinyl for every release, but due to the current turnaround for vinyl being close to a year and being as expensive than ever, we currently are only considering providing full budget for vinyl for few releases. Typically we will look to see how cassettes or CDs sell and then consider vinyl as a follow up a year or two later.

We pride ourselves in being able to come up with the physical art layouts based on the project art, but only if the artist is comfortable with us taking that on. Let us be the ones who handle the J-card templates and add an additional flare to make the physical copy stand out.

Everything in music involves some sort of budget. The items that follow this will explain further what goes into a budget, but the amount spent is based on mutual agreements between us and the artist.

Budgets for our projects have historically been anywhere between $1,000 to $10,000. We use this to pay for anything related to the release such as, but not limited to, studio sessions, mixing, mastering, artwork, photoshoots, music videos, physical media, marketing, music features, production, and more.

We hesitate to give a concrete number of budget even for individual items due to understanding that things always change throughout the release process and rates vary so much. Our focus is to try to spend within reason, but also not to pile up on expenses that makes it feel like full recoupment is unattainable.

All expenses incurred towards the release are to be recouped by the artist, so we focus on mutual agreement with the artist on any spend related to the release to ensure the total of the expenses doesn’t becoming overwhelming or uncomfortable for the artist. Once expenses are recouped, we split the profits of the release with the artist 70/30 (70% to the artist).

We strategize with the artist on what can be done in-house vs outsourcing, but try our best not to be cheap and sacrifice quality.

We’ve been a label almost ten years now and have learned a lot of what we do by trial and error and word of mouth, as most do in this industry. Our expertise doesn’t mean we know everything and we know the absolute way to release an artist’s project, but we are happy to work with the artist and figure out what works best based on our experience. Whether it’s choosing a certain amount of singles or releasing a music video, we’ll be discussing every point and all the pros and cons with the artist before moving forward.

An important strategy of a release will always be organization as well. We work alongside the artists we work with to make sure they have all their assets in a row, such as press photos, live performance videos, cover art(s), metadata, relevant marketing drivers, WAVs and MP3s of their project, artist bio, and more. Collecting these assets early on help us know what to focus on and begin to create the marketing plan for each release.

As mentioned before, we’ve been doing this for close to a decade. Almost at a total of 30 releases, we’ve worked with several different talented people to bring these projects to life and we’re not just talking about the music artists themselves. Depending on the artist needs, we’ve worked with mixing engineers, mastering engineers, graphic artists, videographers, photographers, biography writers, local screen print shops, studio musicians, and more to bring these projects to the finish line.

We work closesly with the artist to figure out what the marketing behind the project will look like. We check in with the artist to see what story they want us to tell about them and the project.

The music discovery climate is forever changing. Blogs come and go, Spotify playlists seem so ever elusive, and the value of radio can vary. Our goal with our artists is to ensure that we are continuing to build relationships with all curators, tastemakers, publications, and whoever or whatever else is out there sharing music. We have in-house help that does press for each project, curated to each artist and release.

Our digital distribution is powered by IDOL who assists us with DSP pitching, release rollout planning, official artist channel management, content ID, and more. We have an assigned label manager that we meet with every time we do a new release. They keep us in the loop on best practices with DSPs to ensure we’re setting ourselves up for success.

Working on and releasing your music can be lonely. A lot of the artists we work with don’t have a team on their side, so part of our role is just to help fill in the gaps. We’ll put in the extra work to book shows, look for sync placements, lend an ear to demos, send the artist grant opportunities, and whatever else may come our way that we feel will benefit the artists we work with.