While Major Labels Were Closing Doors, This Texas CEO Was Building a Better One From Scratch…
Every entrepreneur has a origin story rooted in a problem that nobody else was solving. For Nina Nelms, the problem was one that independent artists across America knew intimately but had largely accepted as the cost of doing business: the music industry’s systematic crushing of creative freedom in exchange for resources, exposure, and the illusion of support.
Nina Nelms decided there was another way. In March 2018, she built it.
The traditional record label model has always operated on a simple and brutally effective bargain: we give you the machine — the production, the marketing, the distribution, the promotional infrastructure — and in exchange, you give us control. Control over your sound, your image, your release schedule, your creative choices, and a substantial portion of everything you earn. For artists desperate for a platform, the bargain has historically felt unavoidable.
Nina Nelms saw it differently. Her mission from the beginning was to revolutionize the music industry by providing independent artists with world-class resources, innovative platforms, and strategic partnerships — while preserving their creative freedom and authenticity. Not one or the other. Both. Simultaneously. Without compromise.
That is a harder thing to build than it sounds. The major label model exists precisely because resources and control have always been bundled together — because the people providing the infrastructure have historically believed that creative freedom and commercial viability are in tension with each other. Nelms looked at that assumption and rejected it entirely.
What She Built Instead
Nelms Music Planet launched in March 2018 and has established key business partnerships to enable and support artists’ success across multiple genres including Christian, gospel, inspirational, rap, hip-hop, R&B, contemporary jazz, pop, and country.
The range is deliberate. NMP specializes in developing up-and-coming talented artists with unique creativity not yet heard — which means the label is not looking for the next version of what already exists. It is looking for the artists who don’t fit the existing molds, whose voices haven’t found their commercial home yet, whose creativity is precisely the kind that conventional industry gatekeepers would look at and say: we don’t know what to do with this.
Those are the artists Nina Nelms knows exactly what to do with.
The Full Service Vision
What makes NMP structurally different from the typical indie label is the breadth of what it actually offers. The label provides artist development, artist management, music production, marketing, promotions, publishing, songwriting support, concert tour underwriting, and merchandising services — everything an artist needs to build a sustainable career, under one roof, without surrendering the creative autonomy that makes the music worth building in the first place.
That combination — full service infrastructure with zero creative compromise — is what NMP identifies as its core differentiator: being the only independent record label in the music industry providing artists freedom and flexibility to be themselves, releasing unlimited creativity.
The vision behind the label goes even further. Nina Nelms envisions a future where passionate artists, regardless of their financial circumstances, have access to world-class resources, platforms, and support to share their unique creative talent across the globe. That last phrase — regardless of their financial circumstances — is the one that separates a mission statement from a marketing line. It is a commitment to access. A declaration that the barriers the industry has historically erected between talented artists and meaningful platforms are not inevitable features of the music business but problems to be solved.
The Roster That Proves the Point
The proof of any label’s philosophy is in the artists it develops and the careers it builds. At NMP, the roster tells a story that is consistent with everything the label’s mission promises.
Tina Nelms, initial female artist signed to NMP in 2019, has seen her original song collaboration, “Turn It Around,” as recorded with A-list artist, Mali Music, earn second round ballot recognition for the Stellar Awards while her single, “Joy,” chart at number 7 in the holiday category on the Mediabase Chart. Leroy Thomas became the first male solo gospel artist signed to NMP in 2022, and has since seen his debut single, “Right Here Right Now,” chart at number 23 on the Internet Radio Chart, reach number one on the Urban Influencer Chart and number 69 on the Mediabase Chart. His most recent single’s video, “On Time,” earned second round ballot recognition for the Stellar Awards. Brianna Wyatt, newest artist signed to NMP in 2025, released her debut single “Masterplan” — a bold anthem of faith and praise — on Independence Day, July 4, 2025, and it is doing well.
Three completely different journeys. One label that gave each of them the platform, the resources, and crucially — the freedom — to tell their own story in their own voice.
The independent music revolution has been building for years, but the infrastructure to support it has lagged behind the rhetoric. Streaming democratized distribution. Social media democratized promotion. But artist development — the deep, sustained, relationship-driven work of helping a talented person become a fully realized recording artist — has remained stubbornly concentrated in institutions that extract as much as they give.
NMP’s mantra — Independent Music, Unlimited Creativity, Pure Authenticity, Global Reach — is not a slogan. It is a structural commitment, backed by real services, real partnerships, and a real track record of artists whose careers have grown under its roof.
Nina Nelms built the label that the music industry refused to be. And the artists she has signed — artists who came to her with extraordinary talent and nowhere to take it — are building careers that prove exactly why that label needed to exist.
The music industry said no. Nina Nelms built yes. Follow Nelms Music Planet on social media @nelmsmusicplanet. To learn more about Nelms Music Planet (NMP) or find out how you can support the record label, go to its website at https://www.nelmsmusicplanet.com