This is less of a question and more of a warning to people potentially considering signing with this label. Not sure if these guys are even in existence anymore since I haven't seen anything coming out from them in over a year.
Back in 2015, I was searching for a label to pick up a release for an EP I had finished. After searching around for a few months and building up contacts I starting pitching to various labels including DLA and their sub-label for dubstep, DLA Black. I was very surprised when I heard back from them within the day of sending out demos. After negotiating with A&R reps Dave and Anna Steward regarding copyright, distribution, and proper release date, I was confirmed for a date and had contracts sent over. After settling with only a 5 year copyright claim with them as well as securing a beatport release and negotiating 50% net sales, I was on my way to sign and confirm all the information regarding the release.
Now, the fun part. While I did send them artwork I had paid for to accompany the release that worked with my visual branding and this was agreed upon, once teasers for the tracks were being published, another artwork was used and looked terrible. Now I won't really make this an issue cause it's relatively minimal so I let it slide.
Skip to the day of the release, nothing is posted on any site (beatport, soundcloud, spotify, their own website, etc...) I decided to reach out regarding this but no reply. A week later, still nothing. Three more weeks, still nothing. So I reached out to the president Josh as well as Anna's manager Chris and neither of them could get hold of the A&R. Josh was very helpful trying to contact Anna regarding this and was understanding regarding my situation. Took an additional week or so to get a hold of Anna and she said she was out of the office and would get back to me that week. Still no reply. I was tired of having my release sit in limbo after a lot of marketing and PR work on my end was put into it for a good release.
Decided to take a legal approach to this and talked to a Music Law professor of mine and we looked over the contract for things to potentially void the contract and to gain copyright back as well as independently release the material. While this was a big learning experience for me, he found a lot of holes regarding proper cataloging and voiding the release date as well as them not filing proper copyright for the material. After getting back to them regarding this I terminated my contract with the label and Josh was understanding of this as well and apologized regarding the people I was dealing with and lack of communication on their part. This whole ordeal tanked my release due to it taking about 3-4 months to get out on my own after a lot of promotion around a specific date.
All in all, a big learning experience of mine. Lot of dumb things like don't sign a contract without meeting with someone in person or have a lawyer look over your shit. Yeah, learning lesson. Anyone else have something like this happen to you?
Submitted July 27, 2017 at 07:10PM by equusmusic https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/6pzg26/should_i_sign_a_track_with_record_label_dirt_lies/?utm_source=ifttt