ARIA Records Collective

Where serious musicians come to build something real.

ARIA Records is a collective for artists, producers, and hybrid creatives ready to do real work and build real music.

Apply to Join What You Get

The Cause

The best music comes from musicians who trust each other.

The Collective

Current Signed Artists

The artists and producers building inside ARIA Records right now. Each has a page. Open one to hear the work.

Diego Di Angelo, recording artist at ARIA Records

Recording Artist Diego Di Angelo Dark R&B. A vocal presence built for the studio and the stage.

LOSTK3V!N, producer at ARIA Records, hands and rings under red studio light

Producer LOSTK3V!N Beats, sound design and mixing. Release-ready, not loose.

David Early, hybrid producer and recording artist at ARIA Records

Hybrid Producer & Artist David Early Reggaeton, R&B, pop and rap. Behind the boards and in front of the mic.

ARIA Records was built on a single belief: when artists, producers, and hybrid creatives work inside a real network, with real equipment, real creative direction, and real relationships, the music they make is in a different class.

The studio is in Ormond Beach, Florida. The network is not. We work with artists wherever they are, and the room is there when you need a room. We are small by design and everyone here is working. If you are serious about your craft and ready to make music that actually moves people, whatever genre that lives in, this is your place.

What ARIA Offers

You bring the talent. We bring the infrastructure.

Every member of the ARIA Records collective gets access to the space, the support and the network that most independent artists spend years trying to piece together on their own. Then there is the software, which is the part nobody expects: thirteen tools of it, listed below.

DJ Studio 37 Recording Access

Professional studio time in Ormond Beach, covering tracking, production, mixing, and mastering, in a space built for contemporary music production across all genres.

Real Creative Collaboration

Work alongside other artists, producers, and hybrid creatives in the collective. Co-writes, joint sessions, and honest creative feedback from people who care about the music.

Creative Direction

The ARIA Records team has opinions and will share them. From sonic identity to release strategy, you get a creative partner who wants your project to be great, not just done.

Release Support

Distribution coordination, release planning, and support getting your music from session file to streaming platform in a way that reflects the quality of the work.

A Network, Not a Transaction

ARIA Records is a collective, not a vending machine. The relationships you build here, with the team and with other members, are the point. We grow together.

Serious about Their Craft

ARIA Records is not for everyone. It is for artists and producers who are deliberate about their sound, committed to quality, and ready to put in the work, whatever genre they work in.

What you are owed

One song. Four organisations. None of them talk to each other.

This is the part that costs independent artists the most, and it is not a talent problem or a marketing problem. It is that nobody is told the money arrives in four separate places, from four bodies you have to register with individually.

4 Separate registrations for one song: a PRO, The MLC, SoundExchange, and Content ID through your distributor.

$0 What three of the four cost to join. Free at BMI, free at The MLC, free at SoundExchange.

~1 in 5 Of the money paid out on your song is on the songwriting side, a separate cheque your distributor never sends you.

$424m Received by The MLC in historical royalties from 2007–2020, a large share of it still unmatched to the writers who earned it.

Every one of those registrations is free and you can do all of them yourself in an evening. We would rather you did. The handbook is the whole list, and it is public. What the toolkit below does is make sure it actually happens, for every release, permanently.

What signing brings

Thirteen tools, built because nobody teaches this part.

Software we wrote ourselves for the half of the job that has nothing to do with music: the deadlines, the registrations, the paperwork and the money. Most artists lose more to this than to anything about their records. Every member gets all of it, and it is not for sale and not public.

Plan and release

Release plannerPick a date and get every deadline between today and there, including the two most artists have never heard of: when it has to reach your distributor, and the Spotify editorial pitch. Miss either and the record comes out to nobody. It emails you before each one instead of after.

CatalogueEvery song you have out with the four things that decide whether it earns: registered with your PRO, registered with The MLC, a signed split sheet, and who actually owns the master. It counts the gaps so the list has an end.

RetrospectiveWhat actually happened in the first four weeks: streams, saves, playlist adds, where the listeners came from. Written down while it is still remembered, so the next plan is informed by the last one rather than by optimism.

Money

UncollectedFour organisations pay for four different things and none of them tells you about the others. This takes the real play counts off your own statements, sets them against the registrations your catalogue says are missing, and puts a range in dollars on each song. Ranges rather than a single figure, and it shows the arithmetic so you can argue with it.

What streams payReal ranges across seven platforms rather than a made-up per stream figure, minus your distributor's cut and minus your splits. It also points at the second cheque, the publishing side, that most independent artists never collect at all.

Royalty statementsDrop in the CSV your distributor sends. Every distributor names its columns differently, so you say which is which once and it adds the rest up per song, matches it to your catalogue, and shows what each release has actually earned.

Budget and break-evenWhat a record cost, line by line, against how many streams it needs to pay for itself at your own platform mix. It knows what you have already earned, because it reads it from the statements you imported.

Rights and people

Split sheetsWho wrote the song and who owns the recording are two different percentages, and confusing them is the most expensive mistake in an independent release. Fill it in, print it, everyone signs before there is anything worth arguing about.

CollaboratorsEveryone you work with and the identifiers a split sheet actually needs: legal name, PRO, IPI number. Nobody remembers those, so they get left blank and the sheet stops being useful. Write each person down once and it fills itself in.

AgreementsEvery producer deal, beat licence, feature and studio invoice with the terms pulled out, starting with the one everything else depends on: who ends up with the master. Anything that does not say gets flagged until it does.

Work coming in

Sync pitchesTelevision, adverts and games license independent music constantly and pay far better per use than streaming. It is almost entirely a follow-up problem, so this tracks where you sent it, what came back, and when to chase.

Show settlementA guarantee is what you were promised. This is the other number: the door against the guarantee, whichever is higher, plus merch, minus what it cost to get there. What you actually walked out with.

Quotes and ratesPrice production and beat work properly and send it as a document that prints, with the terms on it: exclusive or not, delivery, revisions, your points. Instead of a number agreed in a voice note.

Apply to join Try the free scorecard first Read the handbook

Applying does not need a released record. A demo or a rough mix is a normal thing to send. If what you want is the room rather than the label, that is DJ Studio 37, and it books by the hour at /book.

Your Workspace

This is where the music gets made.

DJ Studio 37 in Ormond Beach is the creative home of ARIA Records, a professional recording and production space built for artists who demand a cinematic sonic environment.

The live room seen through the control room window, an electronic drum kit under blue cove lighting

A Shure SM7B on a stand in the vocal booth beside a wall panel of XLR tie lines

The corridor into the studio, LED skirting washing the dark walls blue and purple

The control room from the piano side, a leather sofa and the mixing desk against the booth window

The studio lounge, black leather recliners against a lit green foliage wall

Inside the vocal booth: microphone and pop filter on a stand, headphones on a shelf amp, the control room through the window

Why we work this way

The maths most artists are never shown.

None of this is secret and none of it is a scandal. It is just the arithmetic of a standard deal, and almost nobody sees it written down before they sign one.

15–20% A new artist's typical share of their own recording. Everything recoupable comes out of that slice, not the label's.

$30k What an artist on an 18% deal with a $150,000 advance is paid on a record that generated a million dollars.

4 Separate organisations that owe you money for one song. Three are free to join and most artists are registered with none of them.

100% Of your masters and publishing that you keep here. There is no advance, so there is nothing to recoup.

The full arithmetic, with every step shown, is on the about page. What you can do about it, all of it free, none of it needing us, is in the handbook.

Three Paths In

Artists, Producers, Hybrid Creatives.

ARIA Records works with three types of creators. Each one contributes something the collective needs. Each one gets something the collective is built to provide.

Recording Artists

Vocalists & Performers

Recording artists and vocalists who are ready to commit to their sound and want production, creative direction, artist development, and collaboration support behind their voice.

Featured: Diego Di Angelo

Apply as Artist

Producers

Beatmakers & Producers

Producers who build catalogs, work with vocalists, and want to be part of a creative network where their beats find the right artist and their music finds an audience.

Featured: LOSTK3V!N

Apply as Producer

Hybrid Creatives

Multi-Talented Creators

Writers, engineers, DJ-producers, and multi-hyphenate creatives who bring more than one skill and want to work across projects inside a collective that values versatility.

Featured: David Early

Apply as Hybrid Creative

Start here

Not sure you're ready to apply?

Take the artist scorecard first. Eleven questions, about two minutes, and it tells you what stage you're actually at and what's costing you money right now. It's free, there's no sign-up, and no email needed to see the whole answer. It will tell you to do things we make nothing from, because those are usually the urgent ones.

Take the scorecard

Answers

Not ready to apply? Start on Answers.

An open board for musicians, producers, and engineers, wherever you are. Post what you're looking for, whether that's a vocalist down the road or someone to finish a record from another country, and find the people looking for you. It's free, you don't have to be signed to ARIA, and you don't need a password to join.

Open Answers

Ready to build?

If this sounds like where you belong, apply.

ARIA Records is not looking for a high volume of inquiries. We are looking for the right people. If your music is serious and your mindset is collaborative, we want to hear from you.

Submit a Musician Inquiry General Contact