You really don’t talk about this even though everybody knows it. I was visiting a record label talking about some new projects and we came into a mutual friend who just signed a band.  It’s a good band, been around for three years and has played on smaller stages (demo stages) on bigger festivals. A good choice for our friend.

– The band was here before signing with ***our friend***  the record label boss told me.
– So why didn’t you sign them? You liked the music?
– Well they have no value so far. Their numbers are low and for a label like mine we need to make money direct so we are not developing any new acts, it takes too much time, cost too much money so we almost stop doing that.

This is the part the band wouldn’t understand, they have no value yet. Also this mechanism that always comes to a band when they work themselves to get a value. They work, and they work and they work and suddenly all the labels that before didn’t even respond to their mails, get very interested.

I have been in these situations a couple of times. Often getting frantic phone calls from the bands don’t know what to do. Who should I chose, I don’t want to lose things and the money we built up. In several cases it usually ends up that they take the most famous brand.  Get signed and nothing really happens. Usually the value was too low, but a bubble had been built up around them. A lot like a stock market crash.

Then you have the bands that only go against labels just to get the contract. And the value is zero. Of course after a while they get a contract, but since the value is zero, they just sign the paper. You can easy read this on this post.

http://ihuvudetpaenar.blogspot.se/2016/10/sign-deal-or-paper.html

How do you know your value?  You don’t and it goes up and down all the time. But don’t think you have to high of value in the beginning. And don’t overprice yourself when you rise. Think of that if you can draw five people to gig, you value is not that high. Can you draw 500 people yes you have a value. The value is set by the audience, and guessed by the label.