I know a couple people who've bought their way out of their record contracts, for variety of reasons ranging from:
* there wasn't enough money to go around
* their label didn't care about them / their label did care about them until their biggest fan left the company and then there wasn't even anyone who would call them back
* their label wouldn't give them the kind of tour support they needed
* they had to wait 9 months to release a record after it had been completed
* they couldn't think of a single reason to be legally bound to an entity that didn't have the will or the resources to help them in any meaningful way, beyond giving them a nice shiny logo to place in the bottom corner of their album cover
The old system is done. Who knows what will take its place, if anything. The goal among the folks in my scene is to find small labels with a focus on digital distribution and/or management with good ties to music supervisors for film and tv (that's how music is getting heard these days).
Don't waste your time trying to create music that's 'radio friendly'. Nobody listens to the radio anymore.
Ultimately, my advice is to find ways to produce and distribute your music yourself and then to keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it.