Full label services. Zero catalog ownership.
VL Records is the optional label arm of Vinylaunch — real label services priced at a capped percentage that lets you scale without compounding extraction. You always own your music 100%. Leaving is easy and affordable.
Why a label inside an artist-first platform?
A lot of artists want some label support — distribution, publishing administration, marketing, playlist pitching, catalog reporting — without signing away their work for decades. The traditional industry trade was: real services in exchange for the master and a long-tail royalty cut, structured so leaving is hard and expensive.
VL Records is the inverse. You get the services without giving up rights. You pay a percentage capped at a reasonable maximum no matter how big you get. And if you want to leave, you can — at a known exit fee scaled to your catalog size, never to your future earnings.
Structural commitments
Capped royalty fees
Tiered by sales volume, with a hard ceiling. Beyond the ceiling, the VL Records share does not grow — your share does.
100% catalog ownership
You own your masters and your compositions. VL Records administers; it does not own. No clause grants the label rights to your catalog.
Distribution & publishing
Standard digital distribution to all major streaming services, plus publishing administration. The platform’s broader rights-attestation workflow continues to apply.
Marketing & playlist pitching
Pitch list relationships and the platform’s discovery surfaces work for VL Records artists the way they work for any other artist on the platform — with the label adding deliberate, targeted outreach effort.
Transparent catalog reporting
Every revenue event is visible in your dashboard, with the same ledger transparency that applies to every other revenue stream on the platform.
Known exit fees
Leaving VL Records is structured in advance: a flat exit fee scaled to your catalog size (from $100 to a low five-figure ceiling). No royalty handcuffs, no escalating buyout. You leave with everything you arrived with plus everything you built.
VL Records is optional. Always.
Every artist on Vinylaunch is fully independent by default. Your catalog ownership, your crowdfunding rates, your direct fan support, your tour campaigns, your service-provider marketplace access — none of those depend on VL Records. The label is a service offered inside the platform, not a gate you have to pass through.
If VL Records is right for you, opt in. If it isn’t, the rest of the platform is exactly the same.
When VL Records launches
VL Records is scheduled for a later phase of the platform’s rollout, after streaming, the royalty calculation engine, and PRO/MLC reporting infrastructure ship. Specific rate tiers, exit-fee schedule, and onboarding terms will be published here before the service goes live.
For now, the page exists so you know the shape of what’s coming. If the model resonates and you want to be notified at launch, sign up as an artist on the platform — VL Records onboarding will be opt-in from your artist dashboard.