I'm just a small guy in a bedroom, and I've pitched a song to the management of a multi-million selling client of theirs. They liked the snippet that I played to them over the phone, and they have requested a full demo. The artist in question is big in the USA and UK, and I think I may have out-written their best material.

So my question is how do I cover my ass in all of this when submitting my demo with regard to copywrite, and what kind of deal should I be looking for?

I've also got some songs suitable for other artists on their roster, but I haven't mentioned that yet. I am just looking for a breakthrough at the moment.

Thanks for any help or advice that may be forthcoming

Zen.

 

@ Zenarcist,

Try to find a good artistic agent and/or executive agent who will handle your personal interests toward all those who are/will be interested in your music creations.
If he's a good professional worthy of that name, he likely will deal and maximize the best of your creations, and make his best to find the best contracts/deals for you.


Good Luck !

 

thats a tuff one all i can say is don't trust any one

 

Open an account at this site: http://www.registeredcommons.org

You can protect any idea at this site for free(not more then 3 in a year) !

Upload a demo of the track you made.
You'll get a registration number for this song
and your idea is protected as your own with all legal rights.
In case they try to steal it from you, you'll have a proof that it was yours !!!

You can also go to an certifying notary and leave a sealed demo there.
With his certification your work is 100% protected too, but it will cost you some money.
You'll get a also some legal advice from a notary for that money.

Send your demo and don't tell them you have been smart enough to cover your rights.
It just looks like you don't trust them and it's not a good start for a business.

Don't search for an manager, you'll have to pay him and get less money in the end.

Good Luck

P.S. : There is also an third option, but too expensive...

 

Studio 555 advise is correct! I might add - Talk to a commercial lawyer - especially those that deal with music contracts. They might give you an initial free consultation. Dealing with copyright material shouldn't be as complex as if you're signing a record deal.

I live not too far from Hollywood and two lawyers have warned me that without a good contract the two-legged sharks in the music jungle can circumvent whatever legal process you might have. Let's put it this way! You might be the rightful owner of the house you're selling, but it is how you cut the deal with the potential buyer that determines whether you come out winning or losing. Before doing anything, I would suggest joining ASCAP or BMI and have your material immediately copyrighted at the Library of Congress (if you haven't done it yet). Check online for the proper procedures. www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-register.html

This is an article from Sound on Sound. Some of the things here might not be exactly what you need, but it will give you some ideas about what transpires in the music business:



Sound On Sound
Making Sense Of Music Contracts
Feature | Tips & Tricks

Even the most robust musician can be turned into quivering jelly at the prospect of having to sign a legal document — yet it's impossible to make much progress in the music business without signing contracts. Robin Morley guides fellow musicians through the contractual maze of management, publishing and recording deals, in an attempt to make things a little clearer...

Robin Morley
"Contracts of any sort can be terrifying things — music contracts especially so. Whether you're faced with an immense, War & Peace-sized tract from a major record label, or a one-page agreement from your local studio, the average musician (that's you and me) is likely to be flummoxed. Add to this the fact that you're dealing with something incredibly precious to you — your musical output — and panic tends to set in. It can feel like being asked to sign away your loved ones — which is why this article is here to help."

"I've signed many music-related contracts over the years, and have gradually learned to pick out and recognize the main points and what they actually mean. What follows is a little of what I've learned, in what are arguably the three most important contractual areas: management, publishing and recording deals."

"Almost everything in a music contract is (in theory) negotiable, provided that you have sufficient bargaining power, legal funds and patience. Negotiation can be a tedious and expensive experience, with letters and phone calls volleying back and forth from lawyer to lawyer until a compromise is reached. Rather this, however, than signing the first piece of paper shoved in front of you. Too many musicians have fallen for that one over the years."

"A final word of caution. I'm not a lawyer, and this piece is written as general information from my point of view: it's not intended as advice. You shouldn't rely on what I've written to guide you through your own negotiations, any more than you should attempt to rescue hostages after reading Bravo Two Zero. Seeking qualified, independent legal advice before signing a music-based agreement is so essential that most contracts stipulate, within their terms, that you take it. Contracts signed without legal advice have been ripped up by the courts for this very reason."

The Management Contract

It may not be the big, mates-impressing 'deal' that you always dreamed of signing but, in many ways, the management contract is the most important one you'll put your signature on. Why? Because in signing it, you're permitting someone else to represent you and paying them for the privilege. If that person is great at their job, you just got yourself a fantastic bargain. If they're useless, however, you'll be worse off than you were on your own — plus you'll be shelling out cash to them regardless, and will probably be too preoccupied with resolving the situation to be properly creative. A nightmare scenario. (See Which Manager? box for more information on choosing a manager).

So, you're lucky enough to be offered a management contract — what's likely to be in it? Well, there's no such thing as a 'standard' agreement in any area of the music business, but there are some elements which you can expect to see in some form or another and these include: activities covered, term, territory, commission, earnings and cashflow.

Activities Covered

In which areas of 'artistic endeavour' will your manager represent you? Everything? Just your musical activities or your musical activities minus that lucrative deal you already struck to write tunes for doorbells? It makes sense to limit the management contract to cover areas which your manager has experience in and to exclude areas in which you've already managed to establish yourself. Clearly, your 'bargaining power' will determine how lucky you are likely to be in getting your manager to agree to this...

Term And Territory

How long is the agreement to run for? It's important to understand the term 'options'. A management contract, for instance, might run for one year plus two options to extend it for a further year. At the end of each year it's down to the manager to decide, within a specified time limit, whether to continue. The more established and successful the manager in question happens to be, the longer the term they'll generally insist on. It's also possible to include 'performance clauses', whereby, for instance, you have the right to terminate the contract if your manager hasn't bagged you a recording deal within a specified period.

Territory is, literally, the proportion of the world in which your manager will represent you. Established, successful artists may choose to select local managers to represent them in specific areas, such as, the US for example. Most management deals, especially for less established acts, are worldwide.

Commission, Earnings And Cashflow

Commission is generally set at 20 percent of gross earnings (that is your total income from all areas covered, before the removal of tax and so on) although, like everything else, this 20 percent figure should be negotiable. Certain kinds of money advanced to you by your record company shouldn't be commissioned by management, such as: promotional video costs, recording costs, and contributions towards the cost of touring (so-called 'tour support'). Earnings from touring are a whole subject in themselves. As it's so easy for live outings to make a loss, your manager should usually only take his/her commission here after certain costs have been deducted.

Regarding cashflow, there are two main issues. The first concerns where all those hard-earned millions go as you earn them. The ideal setup, from the artist's perspective, is for all income to go to your accountant, and for the manager to invoice you for his/her share. This enables you to keep a tighter grip on exactly what's going where. The alternative setup involves all moneys going straight to your management, before being apportioned — a less satisfactory situation for obvious reasons! Any artist agreeing to this route would be wise to ensure their contract stipulates that the manager accounts to them regularly.

The second issue concerns management expenses, that is what your manager is entitled to claim from you to cover his/her outgoings on your behalf. These are usually restricted to travel and accommodation costs, where they directly concern your career. Traditionally, everyday outgoings like the costs of running his/her office come out of the standard 20 percent commission.

The Publishing Contract

Music publishing (the area of the music business which deals with your songs and songwriting, as distinct from your role as a performer) can be a source of great confusion for musicians. This is a potentially disastrous situation, given its huge earning potential.

In fact, publishing earnings from successful material can be so large that inequalities here, between band members who write the songs and those who don't, can end up causing immense friction within bands. (A legendary '70s rock drummer reportedly locked himself in a tape cupboard until the other band members agreed to put his composition on their next single's B-side...) To avoid such conflicts, some bands agree to split all publishing income equally amongst their line-up, but that's a matter for them.

What matters to you is that every time your song is used somewhere, you're owed a royalty. For instance, if it's pressed as a record, the record company pays a percentage of the record's 'dealer price' (the price charged to retailers) to the MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Society) for them to collect on your behalf. Such royalties are known as 'mechanicals.' If it's played on Radio One, a fee will be payable to you from the PRS (Performing Right Society) under an agreement between the PRS and the BBC... and so on.

You don't need a publishing deal in order to receive these royalties. All that you need to do is join the relevant societies and keep them up-to-date with your compositions, via special forms which they provide. Signing to a publisher, however, can provide many benefits such as less admin and paperwork for you. The publisher should register all appropriate information with all appropriate societies. Cash upfront is another such benefit. This takes the form of non-returnable advances, which are recouped from your songwriting royalties. A good publisher should be constantly looking for new uses for your material, whether through TV, cinema, or advertising (so-called 'synchronization rights') or through other artists (cover versions). This means more markets for your songs! If you're offered a publishing deal, you'd be wise to seek proof that the company takes this duty of exploitation seriously. Find out what they have achieved for other songwriters like you. A publisher who isn't proactive in this area is little more than a bank: a useful facility, but a considerable waste of potential.

Length Of Agreement

Among the main points of a conventional 'exclusive' publishing deal (one relating to your entire songwriting output throughout its duration) will be length of agreement. This could be anything from one year to five years, although the upper end of this scale tends towards the excessive — the Musicians Union, for instance, suggest a maximum of three years. Option periods, as outlined in the Management Contract section, may be involved, as may a 'minimum commitment' clause, whereby you're obliged to deliver a specified number of songs before the contract is fulfilled.

Your contact may also oblige you to provide a certain percentage of the songwriting on an album, if you are both a writer and performer. This is of particular concern if you use sampling in your work. Too many slices of your songwriting 'cake' being given away to those you've sampled may result in you failing to deliver this minimum percentage, without you even realizing it. Lastly, regarding territory, does the agreement cover your songs' copyright worldwide, just in the UK, or in the UK and other 'key territories'? These are all factors to consider...

Assignment Of Copyright

Assignment of copyright determines the period over which you 'hand over' your songs to the publisher. In theory, this could be anything up to and including their full copyright life (until 70 years after your death!) There's often room for negotiation here, however, beating the term down to the duration of the agreement plus an additional length of time afterwards called the 'retention period'.

As with management contracts, it's possible to introduce some form of 'performance' hurdle to a publishing agreement, whereby (for instance) if your publisher hasn't made appropriate use of your songs within a certain period of time, the copyrights revert to you.

Advances And Royalties

In return for your assignment of copyright, the publisher will pay you. There are no hard-and-fast rules here — the sums will depend on 'prevailing market conditions', as they say (in other words, try to seek out a deal when the industry is feeling healthy). Advances are effectively loans, to be recouped by your royalty payments before any further royalties are sent through to you. Unlike loans, however, they should be described in your contract as 'non-returnable' which means that if you don't manage to earn them back, the publisher has to write them off.

You might expect to receive royalties of around 70 percent of your material's gross income (the remaining proportion is the fee you pay to the publisher for their services). How exactly the publisher collects and calculates this gross income is a highly complex matter beyond the scope of this article: there are dozens of collection societies dotted around the world, not to mention overseas sub-publishers with whom your publisher may have deals in place.

Your contract should stipulate regular accounts (usually twice yearly, at the end of March and September), a 'right of audit', allowing you to examine the publisher's books... oh, and at this point you might just consider hiring yourself a good music business accountant too!

The Recording Contract

This, of course, is the one. The one which so many of us dream about. The one those spotty oiks must've been on the verge of signing in that legendary Kit-Kat advert ("You'll go a long way..."). The kind of deal which makes the news headlines when some giant US band re-signs to their label on a $10 million contract — even if that figure does include every advance they'll receive for the next 15 years.

Perhaps the day's not too far away when you'll be able to ask yourself "Do I really need to sign a record deal?" New Internet-based forms of distribution may render traditional record companies laughably irrelevant. In the meantime, however, we're stuck with 'em, so you must decide which type of company would suit you best.

For instance, are you a high-gloss pop act who need the kind of large-scale 'pre-launch' investment that only a major label could possibly provide (currently up to £1.5 million, according to some industry estimates)? Or would a small indie suit you better? If the latter is for you then what kind of overseas distribution arrangements do your ideal labels have in place? Do they have a network of licensees worldwide, or will they have to organise individual deals for you in specific parts of the globe? This piecemeal approach has advantages (each licensee is potentially more committed to you as an individual act) but it can be a long and frustrating process.

Whoever ends up proposing a deal for you is going to be stumping up a fair amount of cash in the vain hope that they, at least, will break even on you. (And the chances of that aren't great, I'm afraid — it's estimated that under 5 percent of all acts signed ever return that initial investment, let alone make multi-millions.) So you'll have to be prepared to sign away a fair amount in return, as far as your rights are concerned. Just how far you need to go is, as always, negotiable...

Which Manager?

Before you even look at a contract, how do you know if your manager is the one for you? Consider the 3 following points:
• Track record. Who has he/she managed before? What success have these groups/artists had? If you're looking for your manager to perform in particular areas (such as getting you a publishing deal, or handling your growing 'live' career), does he/she have sufficient contacts and successes in those areas to do the job well?

• Word of mouth. Try to speak to some of the manager's other clients (if he/she is uncomfortable about letting you do this, it could be a worrying indication in itself). How satisfied are your manager's other clients? Would they recommend that manager to you?

• Personal experience. A relationship with a good manager is almost like a marriage. Some are closer, more intimate experiences than others (certain managers, for instance, consider 2am phone calls about your existential angst to be par for the course whereas others would run a mile). In all cases, however, it's best to know all the other party's quirks and positive points before committing yourself.

A good manager should be prepared to work for you, on an informal basis, for long enough that you feel comfortable with them (although, be warned, this can have complex financial ramifications if he/she does any work of real significance during this time). If you feel twinges of doubt about them, take such feelings seriously. Life and your career are too short to make the wrong decision in this department

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PS: Hope you make lot's of money. Cheers! Hey, don't forget us here at AudioZ - ha ha
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May the force be with you and good luck!