First of all.. I havent made this.. I saw it on another forum and thought it could be nice to have here too (for those of who havent read it)...



It will cover:

Labels– What they are, how they work, which are bad/good, how to deal with them.
Contracts – Which are good/bad, most important terms explained.
Publishing - What on earth it is
Formats – Mp3,Vinyl,CD – the differences and quantities.
Distribution – How it works and how much it costs.
Sales/Charts – How many copies tracks sell and how to follow their success
Promotion – The different ways of promotion explained briefly
Problem situations & solutions – Typical issues producer may face and how to deal with them

Getting signed

Some tend to consider this as the ultimate goal of music production. It is not. It is not a competition how fast you can achieve it or how many times. It only matters when you truly think you have made a great track and want to share it with the world.

So many kids think getting a recording deal is something huge and makes all the difference. Often the label is just putting out an mp3 which ends up selling just a few copies. It is generally very over rated thing.

So take your time. Do music because you like doing it, and do the kind of music you like doing. You are only cheating yourself if you produce certain music just to get signed to a big label. Once you think you have made a good track, and honestly think it’s worth a release, you may start seeking a label for it.

Most important, don’t become arrogant. Keep those feet on the ground. Just because you can afford to pay one month’s rent and Daniel Kandi knows you by name, doesn’t mean you are anything special.

Briefly about EDM labels

They are companies and are here to make business. Usually run by 1-5 persons. Most common is “digital only” label. Around 10-100 new labels are formed each month, the same amount goes out of business each month.

A good label will offer a reasonable and fair contract, where the profit is equally divided between them and the artist. They will only sign tracks that are on the current standards and that they believe will sell well. They only sign the amount of artist they can handle. They will master the track by a professional to ensure the sound is up to the standards. They will market and promote the tracks with all the resources they have. They pay the royalties on time. They basically offer a loyal, long term relationship to the artists they sign.

It is just sad how many labels fail at nearly all of those tasks nowadays. This is why you see so many artists signing their stuff randomly all over the place. It is not healthy. Try to establish a loyal relationship with the label you sign your tracks.

Label types

Major (International media groups)

Emi, Sony, Warner, Universal. There are no other "major" labels. Together they control 70% of the market. They only release music by high potential artists. A typical trance artist does not interest them. If one of these have licensed your track on their distributed compilation it doesn't mean you are "signed" to them. It's not the same thing. So if you put them as your label on myspace, you are only lying to yourself.


Large/Medium (established indie trance labels)



Armada, Anjunabeats, Blackhole, Vandit etc. These are established and known names in the scene. Usually run by a big name Artist/DJ. Note that some of them sign a lot of new tracks monthly, so they may have very little resources to spend on individual tracks.

Small/digital only (less known & indie)

I am not going to name any examples here. They can be recently founded or own very limited resources. Not necessarily any worse than a large label! However there is lot of bad apples among these. Some are proper but some have absolutely no idea what they are doing.