Music Industry Contracts
One of the biggest problems I've personally noted with the music industry is the desire for exclusivity. The music industry typically tries to manipulate the economic equation by making music more scarce, so they can in turn charge more for it. Labels want to own the masters. Pubslishing companies singularly own the publishing rights (song writing). They all want to be the single source for providing a particular artists song. Likewise, managers provide a single interface for working with a band. Often times they want a contract setting the length of time they represent the band. This is obviously to protect their initial time investment where they can begin to make a lot of money if things with the band work out. This meant getting a huge payoff when a major gives the band advances as well as getting money from tours and licensing. The problem is often times a manager will have outlasted the bands needs and the payments are for things the manager has no relation with.
The root of this idea always goes back to a contract. The one system in the music industry that I appreciate is a lawyer's agreement. They effectively send you a description of what they'll do for you and that is that. If they don't do it, you find another lawyer. Pretty simple. There is no contract either! It is a simple agreement. I have no idea why everything doesn't work this way. Everyone is selling something in one way or another, so why not simply pay a commission? If a manager finds you a huge gig that pays well, the manager gets the money. If the booking agent doesn't book the show, nothing for them. If a label pays for your t-shirts to be made, then they get their share, otherwise, it is yours. If a publishing company finds you a placement, they get paid, if not, tough luck.
The current situation is that everyone wants a contract. When you are starting out, these contracts seem fishy and gross. You can tell that they are written in such a way that someone will do a minimum of work now and even less later. The opportunity usually has little chance of pushing forward your career, and in exchange, you provide the entity with money once your hard paid off! This is where the exclusivity is such a terrible problem. Someone wants to be the exclusive resource for some artist, even when it is better to move to a better resource. This is typically not entirely present in other industries. If I own a shop and another distributor approaches me to sell my goods, I can switch. If a sales person at a store doesn't make any sales, they don't get paid very much and can be fired. Contrast this to the music industry which effectively is saying a sales person will try to make a sale for three months and in turn gets 15% of the profits for three years off everything in the store.
My biggest frustration is that people have little incentive to work hard. You often have a very limited time frame to make things happen. If things don't work out, the contract protects the person who didn't make it happen from profiting from the artist, who might eventually find a way to become profitable through hard work and persistence. In our situation, we have worked very hard and put a lot of money into the music. We need to be repaid before others have because we've done all the work. Are we open to finding a manager or label or anyone that can help us? Of course we are! Do we want to give them a 3 year contract giving them 15% of everything we make? No way! If you want to profit from my band, you're more than welcome to do so under the simple terms that you get paid for what you do. If that is not enough money to make it worthwhile, then don't do it.
