Contracts and Agreements
Contracts and agreements are seen everywhere, it’s a part of our lives they come in many different styles whether it’s a 10-page tangible document or an oral agreement they help create a balance of respect, understanding and fairness in our busy lives as humans. For example, when you start a new job your employer will verbally tell you the rules, payments, wages,how the business operates and will expect you to follow the rules they lay in front of you. Once you understand what they want from you and both parties come to an agreement a contract will be written up in full detail or both parties wants. Which is a common practice for all of us, But when it comes to the creative industry things become a little more in depth due to the product being quite an emotion process and also involves a lot of different people during the creative stages.
Once you decided to become part of any creative industry full-time you have to be aware of your rights, Contracts, and agreements. Otherwise, you might see yourself lose money, respect, acknowledgment or even your career because you didn’t quite look into something as simple as band percentage, composition rights, copyright or even ownership. Contracts and agreements in the music industry are very widespread, due to the fact that so many people are involved when creating something and with audio, it comes in many different media uses too which have their own contracts and agreements. Below are a few different version of Contracts and Agreements you would encounter within the music industry.
Because of how in depth, this topic is I will just be covering things I have come across while being in a professional band. Everyone thinks being in a band is fun, easy and you’re just making music with your mates. But it can become a very tricky system which involves percentages and loyalties. These things only really apply once you start writing and performing music in a more professional manner.
Everyone thinks being in a band is fun, easy and you’re just making music with your mates. But it can become a very tricky system which involves percentages, royalties. These things only really apply once you start writing and performing music in a more professional manner. Because once you start writing and want to push your band’s career forward you have to then look into lots of outsourcing hire like PR, Mangement, Record Labels, Publishers, Producers, Engineers and much more to create an album, E.P or even something simple like a new single. But once you start to jump into these things you have to then work out all the rights and who gets what and come to some form of agreement. Because of how in depth this topic is I will just be covering things I have come across while being a sole member in a band and having to create agreements to do with royalties and rights within my band.
Writing (Royalties and percentage rights)
Once you start writing songs with your band, it’s always a good idea to look into getting ownership royalties. By default, your music becomes copyrighted and belongs to you as soon as you begin writing, which gives you the rights to do what you wish with that material. And that where ownership and Royalty agreements take place. There is a great company call APRA (Australasian Performing Right Association) which helps bands gain payments and royalties, the way this works is the band fills out forms that show a list of your songs and if your music gets played or used in any form of way, APRA will take record of the usage and pay the band their royalties. This also works if someone plays a cover of your work. But to claim any royalties you have to work out who is entitled to what. This is where it gets tricky and bands have to work out the perfect agreement. When it comes to working out royalties there is normally a few guidelines. The band has to break up a percentage of 100% to each member. But not every member is titled to the same percentage, the singer/lyricist normal get 60 to 70% due to the fact that their melody and lyrics is what most people will hear and remember and the other 30 percent is given out to the rest of the group. As George Howard explains
“When a song is released on a record/download, the writer, and only the writer receives a “mechanical royalty”; when a song is used in a TV show/movie, the writer, and only the writer receives a “sync fee/royalty”; when a song is played on terrestrial radio (i.e. not Satellite or Internet), the writer and only the writer receives a “performance royalty.” (Howard 2010)
I feel this is an unfair act within a band and leads to bands breaking up, which could avoid completely with a simple agreement between the band members themselves. I have dealt with this within my own band. When we first signed up to APRA we felt the system was unfair. Even know me and my partner wrote the songs and lyrics we felt it was unfair to the other members to get fewer royalties when they are 100% commitment to the band and help pay for PR, Recording and much more to help push the band’s future. We decided to base our royalties based on other bands in the past, we decided to share everything equally between each member meaning each member gets 25%. But we did come up with an agreement based around that, each member only gets 25% while they are active within the band. Once they leave they lose all rights to their equal percentage. Which makes the band more of a business which each member works for instead of ownership. As George Howard explains
“Put simply, this type of agreement — among other things, such as delineating decision-making processes, etc. — stipulates the division of all money, including money from the exploitation of a songwriter’s copyright. This can be done any manner of ways, however, the way that seems to work best is to create an agreement that allows all members of the band to share in the income from all sources so long as the non-writing band members are in the band. If any of the non-writing band members leave the band, they forego any future income — including income derived from the songwriter’s copyrights.” (Howard 2010)
(Howard 2010)
We have made this agreement due to the fact that we had so many members come and go during the duration of The Bear Hunt and felt that we would be unfair to ourselves if we didn’t make this agreement. Because myself and Bec (My partner) are the sole members and write 60% of the music.
References
Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australasian_Performing_Right_Association
Offical APRA Website
Howard. G. (2010). Agreements Between Band Members: Dealing Fairly with Member Who Don’t Write songs. Retrieved from http://www.tunecore.com/blog/2010/12/agreements-between-band-members-dealing-fairly-with-band-members-who-dont-write-songs.html
Lloyds World of Audio 