Why did Life and Death even exist in the first place?
Because the gatekeepers said no. Romano had a record from a friend's project, Thugfucker's "Disco Gnome," that he believed in. He took it to Dixon. He took it to Damian Lazarus. He took it around the circuit of tastemaker labels he already knew from years inside the business. Everyone passed. So in 2010 he put it out himself with partner Greg Oreck, as the very first release on a new imprint called Life and Death. It went to the top of the Beatport chart and became one of the most played tracks of its year across genres.
That record did two things at once: it launched the label, and it launched DJ Tennis as a touring DJ. Suddenly promoters wanted to know who was behind Life and Death and book them. He was 40 years old.
"Sometimes people just can't see your vision and you have to prove them wrong."
What does he actually sign for, then?
Not your follower count. Romano is blunt that "almost every label" now wants a minimum follower threshold before they will even listen, and he thinks that is the wrong number to fixate on. He still looks at an artist's social presence, but for signal, not size: are the ideas good, does the person read as genuine, is there a point of view. He says he would happily sign someone with 500 followers and great ideas over a bigger account with nothing behind it.
What he weighs instead is character, appetite for hard work, willingness to take risks, and a plan. He is candid that he has met more talented people who went nowhere than untalented people who did, and that the deciding factor was almost always whether they treated it as a job or waited for talent to pay off on its own. He also prefers signing artists who are not yet popular, because the label can grow with them and build what he calls a crew, something a famous one-off signing will never be part of.
Why does an A&R who broke at 40 keep saying that out loud?
Because the whole shape of his career argues against the timeline most young producers torture themselves with. Romano spent roughly fifteen years tour-managing punk and post-hardcore bands, running a booking agency in Milan, working record stores and cooking in restaurants to subsidize a DJ habit that did not pay a cent for a decade. He points to Dixon as another who arrived late, and frames maturity as an asset: a producer's personal taste, the thing that becomes a signature, takes years to form. The message to anyone submitting demos is the opposite of the algorithm's: you are not running a sprint, and 25 is not a deadline.
