How to Build a Team That Gives You Leverage Instead of Taking It

The Old Model vs. The Leverage Model

The traditional label deal is a bundle. You hand over masters, autonomy, and a chunk of your income, and in exchange you get engineering, marketing, playlisting, distribution, and creative direction — all under one roof, all controlled by one entity. The bundle is convenient. It's also the reason most artists on a major spend more time waiting than releasing.

The leverage model flips the structure. Instead of one entity owning the bundle, the artist owns the center and partners with specialists on each function. The artist becomes the hub. Each partner owns their piece. Nobody owns the artist. It's more work to assemble — you're building a team, not signing a paper — but the control stays where it should.

One artist running a clean version of this right now is Jase Pariah, out of Glendale, Arizona. Look at the stack around him and you can see the blueprint.

The Stack, Piece by Piece

The engineering partner. Jase has written with Marc Ellus, a platinum mixing engineer and songwriter. This is the person who makes sure the records sound like they belong on the same playlists as the major-label releases. You don't need to own an engineer. You need a relationship with one who understands your sound.

The playlisting partner. He's partnered with Sound Runners Digital, run by Sam Meeks, a former Capitol Records intern. This is the function that gets the music in front of ears. A good playlisting partner has the relationships with curators and the infrastructure to work a record — the thing labels used to gatekeep.

The production collective. The JV with SounHive handles the production side. A producer collective gives you access to a range of sounds and writers without each one being a separate negotiation. It also means the producers have a stake in the record working, not just a fee.

The creative direction. Through AVE, Jase is building the visual and creative infrastructure — content, visual production, branding, marketing — alongside the music. This is the piece most artists outsource last and regret it first. A coherent visual world is what turns a release into an identity.

The Principle Behind the Stack

That principle is what separates a leverage team from a label deal with extra steps. If you sign four separate deals and each partner owns a piece of your masters, you've just rebuilt a label badly. The leverage model only works if the partnerships are scoped to services, not ownership. Engineering is a service. Playlisting is a service. Production can be a JV. Creative direction is a collaboration. None of those require handing over the underlying asset — you.

How to Build Your Own Version

1. Audit the functions. Write down everything a label would do for you: engineering, marketing, playlisting, distribution, creative direction, A&R. Those are the functions you need to fill.
2. Find one partner per function. Don't try to find one person who does everything. Find a specialist for each. Look for people who are already doing the work for artists you respect.
3. Negotiate scope, not ownership. Every agreement should be scoped to the service provided. If a partner wants equity in your masters, that's a label deal. Walk.
4. Build the creative direction in-house if you can. The visual world is the piece most worth owning directly. It's also the piece that makes the rest of the stack coherent.
5. Keep the relationships warm. A leverage team is a network, not a contract. The strength is in the relationships, which means the work is in maintaining them.

The Work Is the Point

The leverage model isn't easier than a label deal. It's more work up front and less protection if a record underperforms. But the trade is control. You keep the center. You choose the path. You own the world you build around yourself. For an artist who'd rather build another entrance than ask for permission to use the existing one, that's the whole point.