Sort of. But not really.
It’s a light-hearted but genuine response to a number of perception problems in the music industries. In particular, the idea that being signed to a record label is what gives legitimacy to an artist – and worse, that having a record label deal is how you “win” at being a musician.
In fact, for many artists, being signed to a record label has caused far more problems than it has solved.
We thought that addressing that perception problem in a way that draws attention to the nonsense of the signed/unsigned dichotomy without causing you any of those sorts of problems would be a nice thing to do. And kind of fun.
So yeah… it’s a joke. Except that it isn’t.