Hello Steemit Community! My name is Chris and I am a Producer and a Music Industry Expert.

Little more about me:

In 2014. I opened up a ghost production company called Evione Studio. I started out small, ghost producing just to earn some quick buck, since I was just 18 at the time. I also made music for myself. I had 2 tracks, huge ones that I spent 2 months producing on a single track. One day, I uploaded the preview of one of those tracks on a Facebook group called „EDM Bedroom Producers“, after I posted the video of the preview, the video got over 200 likes, which I already knew by that, the track is going to be huge! 

So after a while, I've got a message on Facebook from a guy called De Karner (that was his Facebook name) asking me if I was interested in releasing that track on a record label in the UK called „Ministry Of Sound“. At that time, I researched on how big the label was, and I was like „Whoa! That's huge! Absolutely, I would love to sign that track to the Ministry Of Sound! “. So after we come up with the signing plan, I've gotten their official agreement to be signed as an artist on the label.

Everything was like a dream, there was even a signing bonus starting at about 20,000€, which is in my country's currency about 150,000 HRK (Croatian Kuna), and our average salary in Croatia is about 3000HRK so that's a lot of money. But there was a catch (like there's always one), and the catch was that the track must be released with a name De Karner – Away With Me ft. Ray Chris & Roberto Sipiano, and that I would make only 20% of the track that I made. I've got a little suspicious since I'll earn only ¼ of the track that I made. So I told him that I'll think about it since I was still in School at the time. Couple of weeks later, I got to know a music broker  named Mike Van Handerson, the music broker from Musicallstars Management (look them up if you don't know who they are). I've sent him the second track that I made out of the 2 bigger projects and he told me that the track is huge and if I would like to get bigger by getting on Spinnin' Records or any of the subs. At the time I knew how big of a success Spinnin' was so I said yes. 

He sent me the agreement and I asked him if I could read it thoroughly before I sign and do I need to sign it right away. He told me to take my time since it was a huge thing and being only 18 it's really a good life starting point for a young producer that lives in a small country (or is it?). After I read the contract carefully, I've noticed something unusual in the agreement itself, and everything looks perfect, the signing bonus which was 200,000€ bonus for new signing artists at that time, a good promotional campaign, tours etc. But there is a catch also. In short words, they start to own you as a brand. 

Yeah, you can forget about your personal life, about free time, about your music. After you are signed, you become their brand. All of the music you produce are theirs; they own the copyright, not you. So your music isn't copyrighted by your artist name but by Spinnin' Records itself. You cannot do anything with your music, you cannot even upload it, share it for free, play it somewhere like you want unless the label say that you can. And on the top of that you NEED to tour (it's not by choice), you need to produce music and you need to make them money until you pay off that 200,000€ that you owe them for that bonus + all of the money they spend on you on distribution, promotion, traveling etc. 

After that conclusion, I just said no to Spinnin and the Ministry of Sound and continue ghost producing for people. After that I sold the track to Mike and he got artists for it, you can look it up the track name is Danny Glover ft. GLOWINTHEDARK – Mug, on Spinnin' Records. The track for the Ministry of sound isn't released to this day and I'm planning on releasing it myself.  

So after the scandals for the releases I continued with my company Evione Studio.I had a good number of clients and I made some good money while I was finishing up school. I sold about 3 tracks a month, 300€ per track, was good at that time. Then after some while Mike messaged me again, asking me if I want to do ghost productions for major labels (Spinnin', Musical Freedom, Armada etc.), the catch is that I sell the track from my company Evione Studio, and I get to keep the money and they release it and earn the revisions that A&R and brokers get but I'll explain how that works later on. I said yes and we signed a non-disclosure agreement with him that I work for him now. 

That was insane, I could set the pricing to more than 300€ and still I would sell. And then I got in contact with few of the label owners that had pretty good labels, not like Spinnin' but I called them Medium labels. So I made up 3 packages that I would've sell my tracks, BASIC – which was the ordinary package that I did for 300€, 500€ was the MEDIUM which is a track on a medium label, and INFINITY that was a release on a major label. Now, in the non-disclosure agreement it was stated that any of business after the track was complete; I cannot take a part or know any of the details of that matter. So my job is only to get my part of the money for the track, and what happened after that I could not know. 

Almost 2 years passed, I did about 200+ tracks, made a lot of money, started to live on my own, didn't really cared about my music at all since I was in a good business, then later on in about February of 2017. I started noticing that some of my clients are messaging me on Facebook (I had a business account named Kristjan Mortex, it was called De Evione at the time I was still in charge, but after when Mike took in charge, he changed it to look more professional) asking what happened to their track, when is the track going to be released. So I didn't know what happened, so I asked Mike what's going on and he told me that he is over flooded with the releases that he must postpone some of the releases.

 Then I had some of my private stuff to take care about, I had my client base that I made money out of the ghost productions I sold for 300€, then in May of 2017. I started getting strange transactions from Western Union, MoneyGram and even on PayPal in the amount of 300$ for „Management“ services. I asked Mike what's going on and he told me that he hired 2 guys to help him do his stuff and that they opened up Evione Management and that they will help people kickstart their career for only 300$. That looked fishy to me, and it was. After some time later that month, Mike sent me a message and he told me that we need to think of a way to shut down Evione ASAP. I was shocked and ask him why? What's wrong? 

He told me that those 2 guys stole project files from Ableton and Logic, now I don't use those 2 DAWs but apparently you can buy project files for both only for educational purposes and they just rendered the tracks and sold them to people for 15,000€ a track under Evione Studio, promising them to get on major labels. They sold about 10-20 tracks each, stealing about 400-500,000€ from people around the world. They've got busted and ended up in jail for fraud. I couldn't believe what was going on, how could that happened?  

Then I realized that Mike was fired from being a broker back in 2016. Somewhere in October, and that he also scammed people under Evione Studio this whole time. After that I just left Evione for good, stopped doing ghost production under Evione Studio and made up a new account that I'm using right now.  

The whole point of this story is that you need to gain experience in something, every individual has his own path that he must to overcome to find out that the better future is coming for him.  

Now I'm in this music and social media business for over 7 years, I didn't spent my time implementing this on my music yet, since I don't have enough material to publish just yet, but when I do, I will definitely go on this road in the near future.

I'm really thankful for your time and I hope that I opened your eyes into a new segment of the music industry.

Take Care,

- Chris