This Attorney Started A Podcast To Educate Creatives About Contracts

Music contracts are loans against what you produce as an artist

Believe it or not, record deals are not hard to come by. There are plenty of music recording labels looking to sign as many talented individuals and groups as possible, with or without legal representation. The problem is that these same labels provide a predatory avenue for artists without good representation.

Artists don’t realize that they are signing a promissory note that guarantees that the music label will get paid first and foremost for their investment before anyone else gets a share of the profits from the artist’s work.

Music streaming CAN BE lucrative but music labels have the advantage

When it comes to streaming, the big three—Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Music—take their 30% fee upfront. The artist’s music label will take up to 50%. What’s left is the writer, producer, and performer sharing the remaining 20% or less. Most streaming platforms only pay, on the high-end, $0.005 per streamed song for label-signed artists.

If you’re positioned with a mid-range music label, that happens to invest in a decent marketing budget for you as a new talented artist, you can expect up to 100k streams per day of your song. That’s $300+ a day for the label and around $100 a day for you, assuming you are also the writer and the producer of the song being streamed.

There’s no such thing as a bad deal. A deal is as good or bad as you negotiate.

As an artist, you need to flip the script on unfair contracts and make them equitable for both you and the music label. and that’s where Desiree Talley comes in. She’s a down-to-earth but no-nonsense entertainment lawyer who scrutinizes and negotiates contracts for her client’s best interest when it comes to money and long-term goals. She realizes that music labels need to make a profit. So negotiations are tough but not one red cent is left on the table that should go into her client’s pocket.