Ross Guberman [00:20:11] Yeah, I think part of that is really bracketing off, just as you are saying, words and phrases that a lawyer knows have substantive value. We didnt spend our advance on cars or jewelry, we bought a house. But as the music industry comes out of its 20-year tailspin, with streaming fueling new growth, artists arent satisfied with that arrangement, and many are demanding newfound power. Thats a sort of grey area, and I think its an important conversation to be had., Editors picks Kanye West had some more thoughts to share about recording contracts in a series of tweets on Sunday (Sept. 20). Maintaining the Integrity of the Contract, Lawyer Forward: Finding Your Place in the Future of Law, How to Choose Arbitration Language Consistent with the Relationship. So what I what I what I did here is just pull pull one of the key provisions on the substantive side from this profit sharing agreement so we could try to figure out again whats possible for for the Kanye West of the world. This past Wednesday, September 16, Kanye West, in an attempt to " change the music industry for good ," shared his recording contracts with Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam Recordings, and Universal. Roc-A-Fella was to approve any "recording elements,"which are listed as: selection of individual producer(s), selection of compositions to be recorded, specification of accompaniment, arrangement and copying services, selection of dates of recording and studios where recording is to take place. Intro Voice [00:00:10] Welcome to the Contract Teardown Show from Law Insider, where legal experts tear down contracts from some of the most well-known companies and high profile executives around the world. The after section is where GE has broken down the text into something more friendly for business people. Ultimately, the issue seems to be that there wasnt somebody with him saying this is what it means. Its its unfortunately the the words and phrases that are operative to. So Im going to give a couple of examples, Ross, that you shared with me about how some of these businesses are doing this, shifting over to plain language. on the Internet. The you know, the goal is not the same. Music. West also made his feelings towards the label clear in 2020, when he tweeted images of his record contract, noting he felt he was treated unfairly. However, the film has not yet been released. The . I have a lot of free articles and a lot of these before and after is also on Twitter. If you have a kid who knows nothing about law and sees all this money, these contracts are 60 pages long, who the fuck is reading that? Anokute says. "NEW RECORDING AND PUBLISHING DEAL GUIDELINES," he tweeted at 1:26 p.m. The Nike Air Yeezy 1 Prototypes beat the previous . I mean, shoot, producers can take $15,000 to $20,000 a piece on each track. Where you calling from? We get used to these things and then sometimes, theres a wakeup call . He is no longer signed to Def Jam, his longtime record company; his contract expired with his 2021 album, "Donda." And Ye . Kanye West continues his campaign against major record labels. The label additionally had the right to release one Greatest Hits album. Mike Whelan [00:16:08] in a brief. Thats not the game here, Noonan recalls as the mindset when negotiating contracts. 22% royalty rate for Kanye (and 78% for the record label). Kanye West, someone God had chosen to do something very special in the world. Advances are just loans!! Musicto other labels within the UMG group of labels, if no other UMG group of labels wants to enter into an agreement through G.O.O.D. Kanye West Says He Won't Release New Music Until Freed From Sony and Universal Contracts: Declaring himself "the new Moses" while demanding apologies from Drake and J. Cole. Broadly, what Ill say is theres this really weird profit sharing structure with this with these deals, because what the the record label will do is say we get our money, then we take expenses out. Its actually gotten a lot of press. Scooter Braun Projects is a talent management company that is more than just a company. Not every artist has time to read the Donald Passman bookand find out what every term and clause means, and while there are great lawyers out there, too many just want their 5 percent [commission].. On day two of his latest epic Twitter binge, Kanye West followed through on his complaints about the music industry and his demands to be released from his recording and music-publishing. Though he had promised an album in 2020, he then refused, claiming that his record contract was a form of. Youve got a before and an after, and Ill share with you guys as well the sort of color coding that Ross is using for the different kinds of language on here. So if Im a lawyer and Im negotiating with another side and youre very practical about these things, like although the plain language movement is nice, in theory, youve got to negotiate with somebody else who might like that archaic language. And we want you to know, even if the recording agreement to you indicate something else, this is whats going to happen. In this episode of the Contract Teardown show, guest Diana Isyanova shares three possible approaches. Now, with a click of a finger, your music goes wide to 7 billion people if you want it to. Report: Kanyes Anti-Semitic Rhetoric Led to Assaults, Vandalism, If you have a kid who knows nothing about law and sees all this money, these contracts are 60 pages long, who the fuck is reading that? longtime A&R exec Chris Anokute, Anokute manages several clients including Curtis Waters, who recently went viral through his TikTok hit Stunnin. While Waters was courted by many major labels,at Anokutes counsel, he signed a shorter-term 60-40 profit-split deal with BMG. What am I looking at here? Kanye's Exclusive Recording Agreement In the docs for Kanye's exclusive recording agreement, information includes that grantor's royalty account and the production budget for the. So theres this GE aviation series of rewritten contracts. Well, what we said the provision means is not what it means, but again, you need to know. His. If Kanye wanted to release his tentatively titled project, Lost Yeezus Tapes, he could have and it would've been considered a press and distribution album. Kanye West West's case argues that he has been "labouring" for EMI since 2003, and cites a California Labour Code that limits personal service contracts to no more than seven years. Side note: usually artists get between 12-15% royalty rate but Kanye was already being a huge hit so he could negotiate a higher fee. All Rights reserved. Mike Whelan [00:00:53] Hey, everybody. Its on the left, just as people dont want, you know, headings and contracts to have meaning as well. He suggests focusing not on the necessary legal and industry terms but on clearly nonsensical or unnecessarily archaic sections. So I have to keep it versus this is archaic and useless. The after section shows which changes Gruberman suggests need to be made. on September 21, 2020. KANYE WEST, an individual, and WEST . West made about a 100 posts and shared screenshots of pages from his recording contract. So its cut down on negotiation time and led to better, you know, better deals. If you look at these agreements, though, from Kanye, that thats not just the CD references that are archaic. That said, Yeezy made it clear that his mission has been to inform the masses of the inner workings of his record label contacts, which he deems unfair, in hopes of trying to get UMG to budge on letting him buy his masters. Theres a lot going on here. Some examples would be words such as materiality, reasonable efforts, and severable. In the process of that latter Twitter. Mike Whelan [00:17:41] an interpretive sca band and Im going to have to look for the domain name. I AM ON MY KNEES THIS MORNING," he tweeted before dropping the proof. Im going to give people a little bit of background on the Twitter rant about contracts. Within the deal, Kanye was obligated to release six albums, inaddition tohis initial effort, TheCollege Dropout(2004), within a 12-month span. So you keep those and then you also, of course, in your sector or industry, want to keep those terms of art as well. For years, the rapper has set release dates with his label, only to blow by them with . Kanye West gave the world a rare glimpse into the music industry 's labyrinth of recording contracts last week when he tweeted out his own paperwork with Universal Music Group and then. The papers indicate that he started on a royalty deal frequently afforded to upcoming artists, which later evolved into a more artist-friendly pressing and distribution deal that gave Kanye more of the profits and bigger budgets as he became a superstar. You need to have some consistency, trying to keep that in there while still, again, capturing the the legal the truly contract law based elements of the original, the proviso, the, you know, the preemption, the classic for the avoidance of doubt and so forth, trying to trying to preserve all that, but not going so far as to worry about sentence length just for the sake of sentence length. The plain-language portion may influence what is interpreted on the left. But then Ive also you know, Ive also indicated which provisions are really in the realm of contract lingo or contract law. On Wednesday afternoon (Sept. 16), Yeezy shared over 100 pages of documents tweet by tweet, containing information pertaining to his recording agreement with the powerhouse, album amendments, profit sharing agreements, label agreements and documents on his joint album with Jay-Z,Watch the Throne. Ross Guberman [00:08:11] Yeah, this is a big issue. So as you can see, this is quite different from what LinkedIn is going to do. See everything we've learned from his record label deals below. Kanye West had already been burning bridges in the music industry. Theyll follow their attorneys recommendation. So the tool, the tool were looking at brief catch, you know, there you go. Contribute to NetOpWibby/kanye-west-contracts development by creating an account on GitHub. Fine. Leave. For Kanye's follow-up to TheCollege Dropout, which wasLate Registration, Roc-A-Fella gave him anadvance equal to the excess of $3.5 million over recording costs. Who made this up so that record companies get 70 percent of the money? Join me and my friends. Uploaded by When your term ends, download it all. The equity is the Artists. And then what happens is, as you can see from his other related tweets, the sense is not just, well, I dont understand the contract. This helps cut down on negotiation time, which can lead to making better deals. The deal starts where he doesnt have as much clout, hell get mutual creative control, but later he gets more, and the deals get better as Kanye becomes Kanye, says Kinney, who has worked with platinum-selling artists, producers, and estates. We didnt spend our advance on cars or jewelry, we bought a house. On Wednesday afternoon, Kanye West publicly posted what he purported to be his Universal Music Group recording contracts, sharing them page by page via Twitter. West created his first Yeezy shoes with Nike in 2007, and then . But they were reluctant to strike a deal with the young producer/rapper. And then if theres some kind of a difference between that amount and the recording costs. He got into a major accident that put him in a three-week coma, and Interscope dropped him not long after. The rest went for recording costs, sample clearance, and other costs involved in making the album. Yeezy, West's sneaker and apparel business with Adidas AG and Gap Inc., is valued at $3.2 billion to $4.7 billion by UBS Group AG, according to a private document reviewed by Bloomberg. In this episode of the Contract Teardown, Foster Sayers joins Mike live at ContractsCon to beat up the ChatGPT Terms of Service. The deal. Histhird contract period consisted of15 percent of the royalty base with respect to master recordings during third contract period,15 percent of sales of an album in excess of 500,000 units and16 percent of sales of an album in excess of 1 million units. I do a lot of these kind of microlevel edits that people seem to like. If Im the lawyer there, there are terms of art. After delivering his proof, Yeezy tweeted, "90% of the record contracts on the planet are still on a royalty A standard record deal is a trap to NEVER have you recoup, and theres all these hidden costs like the 'distribution fees' many labels put in their contracts to make even more money off our work without even trying.". Adidas said on Tuesday that it was cutting ties with Kanye West, ending what may have been the most significant corporate fashion partnership of the rapper and . Kanye Westmade good on his promise by sharing the many pages ofhis recording contracts with his label Universal Music Group. Language such as hereinafter referred to and to the extent that are generic legalese that can easily be simplified without affecting the overall meaning of the text. The recording fund amounts for Yeezy's third through seventh albums were listed as follows:third album: minimum recording fund $300,000, maxing recording fund $650,000;fourth album: minimum recording fund $325,000, maxing recording fund $700,000;fifth album: minimum recording fund $400,000, maxing recording fund $850,000;sixth album: minimum recording fund $425,000, maxing recording fund $900,000;seventh album: minimum recording fund $450,000, maxing recording fund $950,000. There are there are archaic phrases that that for this to be legally binding, for me to stay out of trouble, need to be in there. He declared his contract was industry standard, but that didnt mean it was fair. Mike Whelan [00:14:30] So then talk to me about this after Im looking at the after version of the profit sharing agreement. Just email us at [email protected]. It would also give Adele the largest record deal for a British musician by surpassing . Right. I need every lawyer in the world to look at these," he wrote. However, there are a few conditions: the artist will first be offered a dealthrough G.O.O.D. Im seeing a lot of these highlights. Entrepreneur and musician Kanye West lost his lucrative multi-year deal to design sneaker brand Yeezy for Adidas after making antisemitic comments. Rewrite deals to be understandable from FIRST READ. Will we be seeing a President Kanye? I think this is also, frankly, probably closer to what somebody like Kanye West could demand. The rapper and his team signed an agreement on January 5 with the venue for a 25-day rental totaling $125,000, expenses of $20,000, and four new office chairs for $813, the lawsuit says. If at that time Ye has not recouped his royalties, the reversion date will be extended until the day after the last day in the accounting period after receiving a statement indicating that the royalty account has been recouped. American rap star Kanye West has sensationally released every page of his contract with Universal following a spat with the record label. ET. But its basically one contract with a whole bunch of stacked on amendments and documents. Kanye West gave the world a rare glimpse into the music industrys labyrinth of recording contracts last week when he tweeted out his own paperwork with Universal Music Group and then lambasted those agreements as exploitative and unfair, demanding his copyrights be returned to him. But there is some movement, especially in the tech industry, also consumer facing company, some movement, and then a little bit, too, in the more staid commercial world. Was the pissing on the Grammy to much? They will help you draft better contracts faster. Ye. Having the contract laid out in plain language can lead to fewer problems down the road. 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