CASE STUDIES
Stories from part timer to empire.
Below you’ll find a few client highlights. You can see our full playlist of case studies here.
John came to us because, like many producers, he was stuck in the middle between part-time and full-time work. He had started to build a reputation for himself and had a book of clients but wanted to fully develop his business abilities so that he was confident he could quit his marketing day job and make the leap to full-time producing.
John Caviness
Nick Warner
Many savvy producers can go far on their own, but they go even farther with our help. Nick had been full-time songwriting and producing for 7 years, working with both indie and label clients. Unfortunately, things took a turn when StudioTime.io closed, which was where a large portion of his work came from. We helped him build out multiple new ways to acquire clients and build in retainer models so that he had more stability in the long term.
Mark Eckert
Mark was one of the first producers that Daniel ever advised, and along with a small handful of others, he was the catalyst for starting Dark Label Music. Mark started out as a Berklee alumni producer/drummer who built a solid freelance business for himself, traveling all over the world to work with clients and earning north of $3k-$5k per song on indie projects. He then leveraged that experience to launch a sync platform called That Pitch, which has helped many other producers and artists earn a living. We’re proud of him for that. Nowadays, Mark has numerous major label credits under his belt and is a leader in the market.
John McLucas
If you’re a producer on the internet, you have probably seen John. He is an incredible pop producer, songwriter, and prolific content creator. John came to us because although his business was generating around $80,000 per year, he wanted to scale it to 6-figures so that he could invest back into his bigger career goals - and that’s what he did. We helped John rework how he was working with clients, expand his offers, and scale to 6-figures. He was then able to hire others to take things off of his plate and focus on bigger projects. He ended up signing a management deal and gets to travel around the world producing and writing for larger projects.
Adam Clark
Adam Clark is a legend around Dark Label due to the size and speed of his transformation as a music producer. When Adam came to us, he had been an artist for a decade but had only produced 1 or 2 clients, which was very new by our standards. He was also trying to escape a restaurant job he hated. Within a handful of months, we helped Adam strategically make the shift to a full-time producer. Within a few years, he was recruited to sign a management deal with 3M and was moved up to New York to continue growing his career, working with a large roster of artists and being mentored by world-class producers.
Austin Hull
If you’re a producer who watches YouTube, then you most likely know Austin from his 200k+ subscriber channel, Make Pop Music. What you may NOT know is that before that channel became Make Pop Music, it was The Songwriting Team channel (Daniel’s production team). Daniel met Austin on Facebook and started offering some unsolicited advice because he was super impressed by Austin’s abilities and work ethic. Austin then started taking on many of the projects at Songwriting Team, and together, Dan and Austin launched Make Pop Music (after Dan had acquired a catalog of sample packs from a company called Woodshed Audio). Similarly to Mark Eckert, Austin was one of the producers who inspired Daniel to launch Dark Label.
Imad Salhi
Imad is a producer/songwriter based in London, working with both indie and major clients. Like many freelance music producers, he found himself overworked and underpaid (which is the recipe for burnout). He was stuck earning around $3,000 per month but working almost every waking hour of the day. Our mission was to first rework how he was operating his business, and within 6 months, we were able to help him double his monthly income and dramatically decrease work hours. He was able to invest some of that new income into hiring an assistant. We’re now working on helping him scale to six figures so he can build a full-blown production team.
Jay Rence
James Littier (also known as Jay Rence) is a freelance music producer from San Diego. For years, he had been working on his own music and had a small base of client work but was never able to fully make the leap full time. He was working at a bakery to make ends meet. During the pandemic, he had enough of his situation and came to Dark Label to make the transition to a healthy, full-time business as a record producer, which he did. James has been with Dark Label for a handful of years now and also helps out around the community by leading conversations and classes on networking and sales.
Tony Chetta
Tony Chetta is a Nashville-based producer-songwriter in the pop/alternative market. He came to us three years into being full-time, but had run into a big problem. All of his previous work had come via his personal network, which worked until it didn’t. Tony realized that he didn’t have much control over his business and things weren’t consistent. This put him in a financially scary situation, and he knew some changes had to be made. He came to us, and we helped him first get out of his situation and then apply new structures and strategies to ensure that he wouldn’t ever have to be in that position again.
Jesse Shirts
Jesse Shirts is an emerging pop, rock, and country producer and recording engineer based in Greenville, S.C. Before coming to Dark Label, he had spent 5 years trying to make production his full-time career but was struggling to know what to focus on. He thought that just working harder would yield results, but realized that working hard on the wrong things didn’t get him anywhere. He joined Dark Label and immediately landed a $5k project that kickstarted his full-time career. He was able to apply his driven work ethic towards strategies and approaches that actually work, and Dark Label helped him shift his market to one where artists pay more for production.
