How to Read a Record Deal

Record deals are not inherently bad, but signing one without understanding what you are agreeing to can set your career back years. The music industry relies on artists being too excited or too desperate to read the fine print. Your job is to be neither. Every deal has a few critical clauses that determine whether it is fair or exploitative: the term, the rights granted, the royalty rate, and the recoupment structure.

The term of a deal defines how long you are committed. Traditional deals often lock artists in for multiple albums over 5 to 7 years, with the label holding options to extend. This means the label decides whether to keep you, but you cannot leave. Modern deals increasingly offer shorter terms or single-project agreements, which give you more flexibility. As an emerging artist, avoid signing anything longer than one album or one year unless the terms are genuinely exceptional.

Rights granted is the most important clause. A traditional deal typically assigns your master recordings to the label. This means the label owns the recordings you make, often forever. Some deals offer a licence instead, where you retain ownership but grant the label exclusive rights to exploit the recordings for a set period. The best scenario is keeping your masters entirely and licensing them non-exclusively, but this requires negotiating power. At Noise, we believe you should always retain ownership of your work.