I love your deep analogies on the mastering business. Now that's love for your artform.
I'll lay it all out for you,
My band will be finished with our record in a month or so. Since we are recording at home we have the luxury of taking our sweet time, although I would rather get the record out sooner than later. If I move around, let's say 300 or so copies, and get some label attention then I don't really know if I want to pay to have it mastered. It seems at the level that my band is at, listeners, record companies, and so on are more focused on potential than how polished my record is. Sure they want to see that you can sell records, that you can make their investment worth while. If we were to get signed, not that getting signed to a crappy first deal is our main focus, but that were to happen... Wouldn't they have us in the studio recording our debut MAJOR LABEL RELEASE shortly after. From what I have seen, through my music biz virgin eyes, bands will spend a ton of money on an album only to shelf it and start all over. That is where the mastering question comes along. Just like a record company, I want to see the potential of the investment before I dump a lot of money into it. Call it lack of faith or whatever, but that why it is the music business.
Not that you care to know any of this, but I wanted to make my intentions clear before I pissed anyone else off.