I think my best piece of advice as far is business is to NEVER, EVER, sign as an in house producer with any record label until you do extensive research on the label, and get your contract reviewed. Sounds like common sense, but you can get caught up in the moment if your not careful. I speak from experience. For legal reasons i won't reveal any names, but my company signed to a record label and we got screwed for the most part. We got low pay for our tracks, we've heard the demo songs by the writing team but never met the artist, the artist's project has never came out to our knowledge, and we are still owed money. We also found out that everyone except for 1 person we connected to thru this label were all phonies. Especially our manager. We have not been able to contact any of these folks for about 5 months. So i said all that to say, you really can do anything you need to do on your own. Just get u a good entertainment lawyer, do your own networking/marketing/sales, and be professional. Plan your work and work your plan. Trust me. It took biting into a few bad apples for us to learn this lesson. There is no quick way into this game without getting screwed. Take the long and consistent approach and your goals will manifest.