Entertainment Law
A singer-songwriter who named Charlie, is 19 years old, and is enthusiastically motivated to become famous in the music industry. Meanwhile, Yani who work as the A&R manager at the Infinite Beats Music, which is a record label owned by Sure Success Sdn. Bhd. which also owns a music publishing company named Vista Music Publishing. Yani noticed Charlie’s potential during one of his performances and decide to offer Charlie to record and promote two original albums by Charlie and to publish his original compositions. Moreover, Charlie is also got introduced to Purple Haze who is a concert promoter by Yani. Purple Haze is introduced to Charlie to help him promote his concerts when he releases his first album. In addition, Yani also introduces Charlie to Alan who is a successful artist manager, and Charlie makes a decision to sign contract with Alan as his manager.
In this situation, Charlie needs to sign four types of contract with Infinite Beats Music, Vista Music Publishing, Alan and Purple Haze, to make his musician dream come true. First, Charlie needs to sign an Artists’ contract with Infinite Beats Music. Secondly, he needs to sign a Publishing contract with Vista Music Publishing. Next, he also needs to sign a Management contract with Alan, and finally, a performance contract between Alan who is on behalf of Charlie and Purple Haze.
First and foremost, an Artists’ contract is a legally binding agreement between an artist or a band with a record label where the recording label helps the artist to record, sell and promote the artist’s recordings. In this situation which is an agreement between Charlie and Infinite Beats Music. This contract enables Infinite Beats Music to exploit Charlie’s talents and performance in music recordings in return for royalties. The form of exploitation by the recording label usually achieved through artists’ public performances and broadcasting, physical sales for example CDs, cassette and vinyls, and also digital products’ sales such as digital downloads. This agreement is to bind the artists who are signed under contract to only record musical works for that record label exclusively. A notice ‘By courtesy of (the name of label)’, will be carried when the artist is doing guest appearances for other musicians’ recordings so that the recording label is able to receive some percentage of the sales. There are some things that are included in the Artists’ contract that Charlie and Infinite Beats Music must follow after both parties sign the contract. The most important things in a contract is the term which time period of the contract and the amount of recordings that the record label will provide within the term of contract. Infinite Beats Music must records and promotes two albums of Charlie’s original music compositions within the two years of contract that was offered by Yani.
Next, Charlie also needs to sign a music publishing contract with Vista Music Publishing. Music publishing contract is a legal agreement between a songwriter and a music publisher or publishing company. Music publisher or publishing company’s role is to help the songwriters to register their music composition to assign copyrights and help them to collect their royalties. For this kind of agreements, there are six types of agreements that the songwriter sign with the music publisher or publishing company, which are the Individual Song Agreement, the Co-Publishing Agreement, the Exclusive Songwriter’s Agreement, the Administration Agreement, the Collection Agreement, and the Foreign Sub-Publishing Agreement.
For the Individual Song Agreement, it is a legal agreement between a songwriter and a music publisher as the songwriter grants certain copyrights of his or her works to the publisher. Usually in this kind of agreement, the songwriter is paid once in advance. Next, the Co-Publishing Agreement which also known as ‘co-pub’ is one of the most common music publishing agreement. In this agreement, the songwriter and music publisher shares the copyright of a musical work based on the agreed split of the song’s royalties. In this case, songwriter is also the co-publisher and the music publisher is the co-owner of the music composition. Both songwriter and music publisher usually share 50/50 split of the royalties. Moreover, the Exclusive Songwriter’s Agreement is also known as Publishing Deal, is an agreement that all copyrights of the songwriter’s musical works are belonged to the music publisher for a certain period of time. Even though the songwriter is signing away all his rights of his works during a specific period of time to the music publisher, the songwriter still gets paid by the music publisher in advance against the royalties in the future. However, the songwriter is guaranteed a steady income from the music publisher because the songwriter is paid weekly or monthly.
In addition, the Administration Agreement is where the music publisher has the right for administering and exploiting the copyrights of musical works for a term. In this case, the music publisher will receive around 10% to 25% of administration fee from the gross royalties collected during the time period of the agreement. Next, the Collection Agreement which is a legal agreement where an admin needs to deal with the songwriters’ copyrights. But in this case, the music publisher no need to exploit musicians, his or her only job is to collect and disburse available royalties. Furthermore, the Foreign Sub-Publishing Agreement is somehow similar to Administration Agreement but the difference between these two agreements is that the local music publisher signs contract with a foreign music publisher to represent the catalogue in the foreign territory. The foreign music publisher who acts as a sub-publisher to represent on behalf of the local music publisher in certain foreign territories but the territories are often limited to group of countries.
After signing publishing contract with Vista Music Publishing, Charlie needs to sign a management contract with Alan, a successful manager that manages early careers of numerous of artists. Artist management contract is an legal agreement between an artist and a manager for providing management services during the term of contract. This contract includes the terms of authority, scope of representation, rights, and also compensation. The contents of an artist management agreements is usually simple an mutually beneficial to both parties which includes, job expectation, territory, term of contract, services of manager, rights and authority of manager, management fee, manager’s expenses, remuneration, recordings and performances costs, merchandising costs, post-termination commission, and also words of caution. Artist management agreements usually does not need to be complicated as long as the contracts covers the money, the term of agreement and also the division of labor. Before Charlie, the artist, signs the contract, he must have confidence in Alan, the manager and the contract must be mutually beneficial to both parties. This is because Alan, the manager has more experience in the music industry. The standard percentage of the manager’s commission is usually twenty percent of the artist’s income, the percentage should not be more than this unless there is a good reason for it. Among the twenty percent of the commissions usually comes from the album sales’ of the artist, the income from the deals they negotiated, and also from any advance label. Alan as the manager does not receive commissions from the royalties of Charlie’s musical works. The royalties should be only own by Charlie as royalties are given for the copyrights of the owner’s musical works. In this contract, Charlie has the rights to set goals for Alan to achieve within the period of the contract, such as helping the artist to get a tour sponsorship, helping the artist to earn an agreed amount of income within the contract term, helping the artist to get signed for recording agreement, and also helping the artist to get publishing deals. The artist can decide whether he or she wants to extend the contract with the manager after the contract has ended. The artist must bear in mind that do not let the manager to help signing deals on behalf of the artist. These are the things that Charlie must be checking out before signing the management contract with Alan.
Lastly, Alan, as the manager of Charlie, must sign a performance contract on behalf of Charlie with Purple Haze. Purple Haze is a concert promoter that Yani introduced to Charlie, in order to help Charlie in promoting his concerts once Charlie releases his first music album. Performance agreement is a legally binding agreement between the manager and the promoter during a specific amount of time period for events or performances. This agreement is also known as ‘engagement agreement’ or ‘booking agreement’. The most important elements of a performance agreement are the time and location of the music performances. When Charlie wants to held a live performance, Alan on behalf of Charlie must confirm the time and location of his performance with Purple Haze once both parties have signed the performance contract. It is very important that Alan needs to describe what he will do during his music performances in order to prevent conflict with the promoter Purple Haze on the performance day. Description of the performance which includes set breaks, length of performances, and anything else that are related to the performance must be clearly provided. One of the most important thing about this contract is the compensation. Alan and Purple Haze must discuss about the compensation which also include when the payment will be made and also the payment method. Next, the royalties and licensing for the performance must also be discussed and concluded in the contract. Large promoter or venue are usually easy targets for lawsuits but some smart performers have the permission or the necessary licenses when they are performing copyrighted music compositions. Alan on behalf of Charlie must be cautious before signing the performance contract with Purple Haze as Alan is managing Charlie’s live performances. Alan and Purple Haze must have mutual agreement before signing the performance contract.
In a nutshell, Charlie as a singer-songwriter must undergoes a serious of signing legally binding agreements with different people such as Infinite Beats Music, Vista Music Publishing, Alan, and also Purple Haze, in order to make a name in music industry. Even though the process of becoming an artist is a bit of complicated, but these agreements help artists to protect their rights in the music industry and make sure they generate income. It is good that Charlie signs the agreements with the parties mentioned so that Charlie could kick-start his musician career.
Bibliography
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What are common types of music publishing contracts?, Retrieved on 16 October, 2017 from https://law.freeadvice.com/intellectual_property/music_law/types_publishing_agreement.htm
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Maria La France, (2001, August), Performance Contracts, Retrieved on 17 October, 2017 from http://www.musicbizacademy.com/articles/perfcontracts.htm
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