At only 19 months of age, Owl Studios already has more than a dozen releases under its belt. Owner Al Hall, insurance slinger by day and hepcat by night, seeks to utilize unconventional methods to run his record label.

He hopes to garner a reputation for being artist-friendly and his goal is to utilize new techniques to sell records, creating profits for the musicians who might otherwise see little of that money through a contract with a typical, larger record company.

Hall's love for music started at a young age, though his only previous music business experience involved trying to promote African musicians' tours in the United States, something he said "didn't work."

Now prepped with a high-tech home studio and his personal research of the business, Hall talks about his love for jazz and his theories on contracts.

What was your first impression of the jazz community in Indianapolis?

It was the same impression I have now . . . that it is extremely talented. They tour the world, they have played with the major orchestras, jazz orchestras, of the world and they just happen to be here for whatever reason.

What services do you offer?

We have our own fully equipped studio. We do all the contracting here . . .. Then we sort of coordinate the studio time, the recording time, the mixing, everything that's involved with production, you've got to mix it and remix it and do all of the post-production things . . .. And then the actual physical marketing.

What was your main goal when you decided to start the business?

One of the things I've learned about the record companies -- most record companies make money. Most artists will not make money. The reason it's that way is because the contracts are written in a very Draconian sort of a manner, and always have been.

When we first signed up our first artist, Rob Dixon, I started looking on the Internet for all of the contracts you could possibly get and you can get thousands . . ..

I thought one of the basic philosophies of this particular part of the business is that I have financial capital, but the artist has artistic capital, and who's to say one's more valuable than the other . . ..

I took the contract and I red-lined it. So what we have now is a basic contract that has responsibilities for the two parties, but the main point is that from every dollar that comes in here we share, from the first dollar on.