By Rich Kolodziej
When I started my band, my instinct was to pitch labels.
Every radio spin became a label email. Every piece of press became a label email. Every decent show, every better room, every small sign that someone outside our immediate circle might care became another little flare shot toward the castle.
That was the path I thought I understood. You make the music. You get noticed. A label finds you. The machine starts moving. Somebody with a job title and better shoes turns your little band into something bigger.
That was the dream. Or at least it used to be. But over time, I started pitching labels less — not because the band was doing less — it was the opposite. We were getting better opportunities. Better radio. Better press. Better shows.
But I was also learning how the business works and the more I learned, the less magical the label looked.
Labels Are Like Banks
Bob Hope once said a bank will lend you money if you can prove you do not need it. I used to think that was just a joke about banks, but now I think it may also be the business model for record labels.
They are not looking for a reason to believe. They are looking for evidence that belief has already happened somewhere else.
There is too much music in the system now for anyone to sort through it cleanly. The denominator has gone insane. Human bands. Bedroom artists. Fake bands. AI sludge. Royalty farms. Algorithmic wallpaper. Everybody shouting into the same burning room.
So labels watch socials and Spotify the way traders watch the NYSE ticker. Monthly listeners. Saves. Skips. Tour history. Engagement. Market reaction. The artist becomes a stock chart with a guitar.
Romantic stuff.
But the strange contradiction sitting inside the modern music business is that to get a label interested, you have to do a lot of the work you once hoped a label would do. Find the audience. Find the rooms. Find the radio people. Tell the story. Watch the numbers. And by the time they finally come around, you may already know how to survive without them.
The way labels reduce their risk is also the way they teach artists to need them less.
"The strange contradiction sitting inside the modern music business is that to get a label interested, you have to do a lot of the work you once hoped a label would do."
Being Signed Is Not the Same as Being Helped
There are labels that still add real value. Of course there are. Money matters. Staff matters. Distribution matters. Radio promotion matters. Press, sync, tour support, manufacturing, playlist relationships, legal help, strategy, access, and scale all matter.
A good label can still be a cannon. But a small label that fronts some recording costs, tells the artist to tour constantly, provides no meaningful booking help, no real press machine, no radio strategy, no audience development, no clear market plan, and no visible lift? That is not a cannon.
We have had a few of these offers, and at first, I was tempted. We would be “signed.” Then I looked around at friends who were already “on a label,” and I could see what that meant in practical terms. They still booked themselves. They still pitched themselves. They still carried their own draw. They still handled their own relationships.
Some labels front a little money. Then they also give orders. Tour more. Play here. Play there. Put this other artist on the bill, whether it makes sense or not. That is the difference artists need to understand: Being signed is not the same thing as being helped. Sometimes it just means you get to keep doing the work yourself, only now you are splitting the money with someone who thinks your terrible ideas should be replaced by their terrible ideas.
+Read more: "Why Independent Record Labels Must Professionalize to Survive"
How I Accidentally Became My Own Label
Somewhere along the way, the job split in half. On stage, I was still the artist, but off stage, I became something like management.
Mostly, this meant sitting at a laptop and trying to keep the artist from signing something stupid. Because when an offer came in, the artist side of me felt relief: "Yay, somebody picked us!"
But the management side had to ruin the party and ask: "Well, what are the terms?" I started thinking about what I wanted to spend our fan equity on. Because once people start following along, you owe them more than motion. You owe them judgment.
Then the annoying truth showed up wearing my shoes. I am an attorney. I know how deals work. I have negotiated with people who did not particularly want to be negotiated with; and I knew something artists sometimes forget, which is that just because you say no to an offer does not mean the offer disappears. Sometimes it just means the real conversation finally starts.
So I started doing the job under a different name. Just management representing an artist. They made an offer. I made a counter. Not because I was trying to be difficult. Because this was a business conversation. Management became the firewall between the art and the little grease fire of the business.
And then I realized what had actually happened: I had trained myself to do label work. Pitching the band. Booking the rooms. Watching the numbers. Building the story. Finding the curators. Negotiating the offers. Protecting the artist. I was doing the development work. Creating proof.
And somewhere in there, I stopped worrying so much about whether some label was ever going to pick us.
"That is the cruel little joke: If you want to do the art for a living, you eventually have to understand the business around the art."
I Wanted to Play Guitar. I Got a Spreadsheet.
A lot of us are already doing label work, we just do not always recognize it as label work. We book the shows. Build the bills. Make the posters. Pitch the writers. Send songs to radio. Watch the numbers. Chase the playlist adds. Answer the emails. Figure out which rooms matter and which ones only look good in a calendar app.
Maybe we do not have the staff, the budget, or the experience. But the work is the work. Do it long enough and one of two things happens: You either get better, or you keep paying for the same lesson in different costumes.
Nobody picks up a guitar because they dream of spending Tuesday night tracking program director changes at alternative radio stations. That is the cruel little joke: If you want to do the art for a living, you eventually have to understand the business around the art.
And once you start paying attention, the business stops looking like magic and starts looking like work. It also teaches you something artists hate learning: More is not always more.
Too many shows. Too many asks. Too many “big announcements” that are really just another Tuesday. Too many nights where the same friends are asked to prove they still love you by standing in the same room again. You played a show on Saturday night. Maybe you do not need the show on Sunday.
Being active is not a strategy. And not all appearances are opportunities.
+Read more: "Why College Radio Matters More Now Than It Has in a Generation"
How the Proof Gets Made
When I stopped pitching labels, I focused on the people and places that could make the proof labels were waiting to measure: Radio programmers, writers, DJs, bookers, promoters, festival buyers, rooms with a real identity.
A label may look at your numbers and ask, “Is there proof?” But the proof has to come from somewhere. Sometimes it comes from one radio person taking a chance. One writer making the argument. One booker putting you in the right room.
And if you do the job right, you pay that trust back. You show up. You play well. You follow through. You make the person who opened the door look smart. Then the next door gets easier. It's a few listeners here and there, a press quote, a contact, a better support slot, a better time slot; small bits of proof.
A chain of small permissions.
The Goal Is Choice
If you keep doing that, slowly, carefully, stubbornly, the audience stops becoming theoretical, it becomes real. The rooms get better. The press gets easier. The radio people remember your name. The festival booker wants to hear the next record.
And when the label finally turns around and says, “Now we’re interested,” you are no longer standing there empty-handed. You built the songs. You found the listeners. You earned the curators. You booked the rooms. You created the proof. You are bringing value into the room. So what are they really asking for?
And, what are they adding?
Rich Kolodziej is a Chicago-based attorney, artist manager, undercover rock-and-roller, and the author of the book No One Is Coming: Making Art, Finding Meaning, and the Freedom of Doing It Yourself. A former trial attorney with more than 75 jury verdicts, he now works in insurance claims while managing and playing in an independent rock band with his wife under an alias. His music life has taken him from Summerfest to SXSW to stages across the Midwest.
