Record labels are a powerful force in the music industry — they always have. Hundreds of new DIY and indie labels are constantly popping up. Many of these labels do great work for artists; providing a bit of financial assistance and giving them a team and community to work. By exploit, we mean that the label will produce physical copies of your music, put it online through their distributor, and sell digital versions of the product. Record labels generally want to lock you into an exclusive contract for a certain length of time, so they can exploit your music for a set period of time. Often, artists will sign to a label under a specific pseudonym or artist. This leaves them free to do sideman work, feature on other people songs, and potentially pursue side projects. This is also called a release commitment. Advances are a sum of money paid to the artist upon signing the contract that will count against future royalties. This is an advance on the royalties they want you how much money a...