Barbarin Magazine BARBARIN MAGAZINE Vol 8 | Page 20

Record Deals VS Independent Artist Alz checking in... I'm gon tell you like this here, if you poppin and you suc- cessful with your business, what do you need somebody else for, Why when you getting every penny? If you come with a deal on the table, you think that you really gon get most of the money? If you don't need them then don't do it. That's the key, do it if you need it. Signing deals, that's really like throwback now. Instagram are making people millions. Streaming and singles is where it's at. They got people like Youtube, MyMixTape, Apple Music, Spodify, Tidal...you can download for free and I'm gonna still get a check... so what do you need Universal for? We don't need yall nomore, yall gonna be Summer 2018 going out of business in a minute, ya feel me. They really won't lose busi- ness because they pay people to do the work ten times harder than indepen- dent artist. Independent artist is basi- cally trying to find a way to keep them out of our business. We tryna keep them greedy business minded folks from taking advantage of capitalizing on what we trynng to do.You still got to respect their hustle because like he say, if you need them, you use them. They gon come at you and do all the work for you and they asking you in return to take forty percent of this deal and we gon take sixty percent, but that's only for a two album deal, that's cool. Becasue if that album sell ten million in sales, you still walking out there with four million dollars. So it's not hurting you to let them do all the work, because sometimes you gotta start from the bottom. We done been through so much, so may different times, dealing with so many different people like on the national and international level, that's wondering like what is going on with yall and why yall playing. We just realized that we don't need all them other cats, that's like we could've eas- ily signed to Universal or Interscope and let them burn us a long time ago and will still have us locked into a six or seven album deal. We're not planning on doing six or seven albums anyway. So if you don't meet the expectations as an artsit with the sales from the investment, you don't neccessarily get kicked off the label, you just will have to work your ass off on tour and selling merchandise. Therefore, if you don't make the quota that the label has put out, there is other ways to make the money back. Now if you just don't pop, sometimes it just doesn't workout, that's just what it is. No matter what, even if it's ten years down the line, you still signed on that dotted line.You still owe them people. Also, if you feel that you want to make some outside money without them knowing, you will have a letter at your door. That's why a lot of people be so stressed out and can't make moves. See that title shit, pres- ident, CEO's and artists & all, that is for that, we're partners, everybody eat. All that is for them purposes, to have it in black and white. We founded the company so of course we have the top titles, but that's nothing.