I'm in the process of starting a label with a friend at the moment, it's a very small scale operation and we've only got one 7" lined up at the moment.

We've got most things covered but there are a couple of points we're stuck on and I was wondering if anyone on here could give some advice if they've put together something similar.

First of all the method for paying the artist. We're working with a 50-50 split of any profit we make. Is it best to treat each record sold as an individual item eg. if each one costs £3 to produce and we sell for £5 we keep £4 and send the artist £1 (probably more likely something like £10 once 10 records have been sold)?

Or do we keep all the money until we have made our expenses back and once that has happened split the profits evenly so we'd both then get £2.50 from each record, but it would take a while to get to that point?

My friend also suggested paying the artist in records so that we keep the amount we need to meet our expenses and profit and the artist gets the rest so anything they can sell goes straight to them?

The second question is do we need to sort out a barcode? We are going to try and get the record into a few shops so would they take it without one?