Why El Diablito Turned Down Three Majors To Sign With SABOR

Marcos Féliz was sitting in a hotel room in New York when Atlantic made their final offer. He had already heard from Universal. He had already heard from Sony. All three deals were on the table simultaneously — a circumstance that would have been unthinkable eighteen months earlier when he was recording music in his bedroom in San Juan with no label, no manager, and no publicist, uploading records to streaming platforms and watching them accumulate millions of streams on their own.

One hundred and eighty million streams, to be exact. That is what Féliz — who performs as El Diablito — had generated independently before any major label called. He had done it without radio promotion. Without a marketing budget. Without editorial playlist pitching from a label with DSP relationships. Without any of the infrastructure that the major label system exists to provide. He had done it with his music and his phone and a TikTok account and the specific gravitational pull that comes from being genuinely good at something that a large number of people need to hear.

The majors noticed. Of course they noticed.

“I read every contract,” Féliz says, speaking by phone from Miami where he has been recording since March. “I didn’t let anyone summarize it for me. I read every page.”

What he read in the major label offers was, by his account, structurally similar across all three. Significant upfront advances. Royalty splits in the neighborhood of twenty percent to the artist after recoupment. The label owning the masters. A 360 clause that would have given the label a percentage of touring income, merchandise revenue, and brand partnerships. Terms covering multiple album cycles with options exercisable at the label’s discretion.

What he read in the SABOR Records contract was different. Eighty percent of net revenue to the artist. The masters stay with the artist, licensed to the label for a maximum of seven years. Creative control guaranteed in writing. No 360 clause. No ownership of name or likeness. An advance — the amount of which neither party has disclosed — with a recoupment structure that caps the label’s monthly recovery at fifty percent of the artist’s earnings.

“The advance number at the majors was bigger,” Féliz confirms, with the directness of someone who has clearly made peace with the decision. “I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t. But an advance is a loan. You pay it back from your own royalties at a rate the label controls. A bigger loan with a worse split means you’re in debt longer and earning less while you’re in it. I did the math.”

The math, as Féliz describes it, was not close.

But the deciding factor was not ultimately financial. It was a phone call.

“I called the SABOR number on a Saturday morning,” he says. “NiCalé picked up. We talked for forty-five minutes about the music, about Puerto Rico, about what I wanted my career to look like in ten years. Not what single I should release next. Ten years.” He pauses. “I called one of the major labels on a Friday afternoon. I got a voicemail. I never heard back.”

NiCalé Cruz, SABOR’s founder and CEO, does not comment specifically on the terms of Féliz’s deal but is characteristically direct about the philosophy behind them.

“We don’t offer artists less money,” she says. “We offer them a different structure for the same money. The difference is that our structure is transparent, the recoupment is fair, and at the end of it the artist owns what they created. That should not be a radical proposition. The fact that it is tells you everything you need to know about how the industry has been operating.”

El Diablito’s debut project under SABOR Records is expected in the third quarter of 2026. He will release it as the owner of his masters, earning eighty cents of every dollar his music generates, with full creative control over every decision from recording through artwork through rollout.

The major labels, by contrast, still have his voicemail.