A fully transparent, community-funded record label. 🫡⚔️
The music
industry
is broken.
Middle-Class Musicians are becoming extinct.
Music streaming was meant to democratize music. But instead, it made the existing problems even worse.
By stripping artists of any physical products and only paying a fraction of a penny per stream in return… the only artists capable of making a living from their music were a handful of superstars with the backing of the major labels. Often times even those artists weren’t seeing a large % of the money due to predatory deal structures by their labels.
The “musical middle class” was effectively eliminated, leaving countless of the most talented artists without a sustainable path to build their careers.
So we decided to build an alternative.
We believe artists should own their own music.
So we leveraged our background in online education and community building to build the first fully transparent, community-funded record label that all artists can participate in.
We then use profits from these education and community programs to sign artists to 0% deals.
🫡⚔️
Meet the team:
Michael Gilbride - Founder/CEO
Michael Gilbride is a former Wall Street trader who quit his career in finance in 2020 to pursue his solo music project, "telco". After years of releasing and promoting his own music, Michael became the General Manager of the online music production school, Mastering.com, where he fell in love with education.
After years of building Mastering.com, Michael used his background in online education to build MAD Records, the first education-funded record label.
Rob Schustack - Head of Music Services
Rob Schustack is a voting member of the Grammys with over 25 years of experience in the music industry. He got his start working in A&R at Atlantic Records and went on to be involved in in both the publishing and sync side of the industry working with brands, bands and catalogs like Disney, Amazon, Google, Febreze, BMW, Wu Tang Clan, Ceelo Green, Nirvana, Hall & Oates, Aerosmith and many others.
Reid Sorel - Head Producer
Reid Sorel is one of the best emerging producers in Nashville, TN. Reid completed his music production degree at Belmont University in 2021 and has cut over nearly 100 records already with artists such as Twinnie, Camille Parker, and Dan Marshall.
Cole Ritter - Signed Artist
Cole Ritter, hearing the sounds of country, bluegrass and early rock and roll, was inspired to pick up the violin at the young age of 3. He has since been honing his craft into a diverse but cohesive sound that combines elements of Gritty Country and Rock with the dreamy, reverb-drenched sounds of Surf and Western Music.
Cole signed with MAD records in March of 2025.
How does it work?
Artists pay a monthly fee to join the MAD Records Community, where they’ll get access to exclusive opportunities for their music career, as well as our 10-Week Artist Development curriculum.
Most importantly, they get a real community of artists that are focused on helping each other, rather than competing with each other.
