Music opportunity

If promised commercial success if you sign away some/all control over creative direction and your earnings, would you accept a record deal if you wanted your music 'out there'? Or would you hold off because you want to think back in retirement about how it was all from your hard graft, the glory being all your making, or that your output might have had a small audience, but at least it was authentic and true to you? Does Lady Gaga and her House of Ga (for her designs, clothes, etc.) deserve critical success if we learn that her direction is influenced by a money-funder? Just because someone takes the opportunity to get one's music more widely known, rather than languishing in the recesses of MySpace, does that make them a sell-out or realistic that music is (partly) about marketing?