An artist and record label license agreement is a contract that is used by an independent record company to enter into a contractual agreement with an individual, band or group so that the label can publish and market a pre-recorded master owned by the artist. In this agreement, the artist grants the label an exclusive right to value the master recording for an agreed number of years or duration. The rights to the label include the sale of audio products created by the Mastern and the posting of the Master on streaming music services. Like any good investor, record companies want to put their money into artists and projects that show positive returns. The music business is voluble. Consumer taste is hard to identify and it takes a lot of money to break an artist. For these reasons, the record company, regardless of its support for the artist, must always be willing to take that risk.