Record Deals Should Be Readable

The strangest thing about the music business, according to the people running broke Records, is that clarity is treated as suspicious. When co-founder and COO Brandon De Oliveira was asked about the company’s 50/50 splits, his answer made the rounds: “Why are we being judged for being transparent?”

For Andre Benz, the label’s co-founder and CEO, transparency is not a marketing line. It is a lesson from the imprint he ran before broke, called Lowly. The deals there were simple: fifty-fifty profit splits, short-term licenses, plain language. “Artists understood what they were signing, so they signed faster and trusted us longer,” Benz says. “That shaped everything about how we operate now.”

Most record deals, he argues, are not complicated because the business is complicated. “They are complicated because complication benefits the party that wrote them,” Benz says. “Long terms, vague accounting, recoupment buckets the artist never sees itemized. An artist signs at 19, blows up at 21, and at 25 is still trying to figure out where the money went. That is not a partnership. It is a maze with a logo on it.”

Broke’s position, as Benz describes it, is straightforward. The artist should own their product or know exactly the terms under which they do not. The math should be readable by a human being without a law degree. Royalty reporting should arrive on time and make sense when it arrives. “None of this is radical,” he says. “It is just rare, which tells you something about the industry.”

Transparency is also a competitive advantage, not charity. When an artist can read the deal in ten minutes, the deal closes in a day instead of a month, which feeds directly into how broke works: discovery to deal to marketing in under 48 hours. “You cannot move that fast if every contract needs three weeks of translation,” Benz says. “Simplicity is infrastructure.”

The philosophy extends to publishing, where Benz says artists lose the most money they never knew they had. Broke launched its publishing arm with Brennen Bryant, previously of Avex USA Publishing, running it from day one on the same principle. Around 6,600 ISRCs came into the company at launch. “The songwriter should see the statements, understand the statements, and get paid without chasing,” Benz says. “Every catalog gets the same readable accounting.”

Benz does not claim to have invented fairness. “Plenty of independents do honest work,” he says. “But the bar is embarrassingly low, and clearing it is a business strategy. Artists talk. Managers talk. Lawyers talk. A reputation for straight deals compounds faster than any marketing budget, because every artist you treat well becomes the reason the next one picks up the phone.”

The industry spent decades optimizing deals against the artist. At broke, the optimization runs the other way. “We optimized ours for the artist being able to read them,” Benz says. “So far, that has been enough.”

About broke Records: broke Records is an independent record label and music marketing company founded in 2023 by Andre Benz and Brandon De Oliveira. Operating under Create Music Group with offices in Los Angeles, New York and London, broke develops artists across hip-hop, pop, electronic and country, alongside its publishing arm, broke Publishing. https://broke.nyc