“So, do you think I’m good enough to make it?”: The Scope of Duty in the Representation of Musicians
May 12, 2009 by BrentWoody · Leave a Comment
He’s twenty years old, oozes confidence and hipness and coolness and lots of other ‘nesses that haven’t been made up yet. He’s a musician. His demo tape is ridiculous. Everything about him promises multiple revenue streams, if the public ever gets the chance to react to him.
He’s forty-three years old. Two-hundred twenty-three pounds. Five foot four inches tall. He’s a musician. His demo tape is rough. It’s not rough; it’s scary.
You are a lawyer. Both of them visit your office within a few hours of each other. Both agree to pay your $5,000.00 retainer to perform work on various issues related to their careers in music. One of them asks you to shop the demo to major and indie labels at an hourly rate. The other only wants you to do copyright, trademark, contract and general business work. You are a musician, too. And you know, with reasonable certainty, that the hip twenty year old has the potential to go somewhere. You also know with equal certainty that the forty-three year old does not. If you take the forty-three year old on as a client, do you have a duty to tell him what you think about his talent and the odds of achieving his dreams of success? Should you listen to the demo tape before cashing the retainer check? Or is the talent level or your opinion irrelevant? Suppose later on the forty-three year old asks you to leverage your hard-earned major label connections to shop his scary demo. Do you risk your rep with your label folks? If not, what do you tell the client, if you’ve already billed $3,000.00 worth of work? “I thought it was okay to charge you a lot of money to set up a career that I knew was never going to amount to anything.”
Or, as my friend RJon Robins mentions in his comment on my previous post, suppose you’re a manager or other professional entertainment industry advisor? Are you duty-bound to advise the old guy that he’s not going anywhere? Or do you just perform the tasks that are requested, take the money and let the chips fall where they may, keeping in mind, of course, that Kenny G has sold a lot of records.
My thought is if the client only hires me to perform certain tasks related to setting up business structures for furthering her career and protecting her intellectual property, then whether she can sing or play is irrelevant to me. If a client is a plumber and I perform legal work related to his business, I don’t render an opinion on his ability to work on toilets and, thus, the prospects for his career, before I do the requested tasks.
I have encountered this as a producer, actually fairly often. Someone hires me to produce his project and along the way, asks me whether I think his music is any good. If I say “no,” maybe he doesn’t finish his project with me and looks for a producer who will “believe” in him. As a result, since I don’t want to lose the business, I learn to tap dance. And the really perceptive client will tell me that I have no future in tap dancing.
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Defining Success
March 18, 2009 by BrentWoody · 9 Comments
Technology has changed the music business. Or the music business has changed technology. Or economic realities have changed technology and the music business. And the law runs along behind, like a yapping dog, trying to keep up with all these changes, perhaps in the most cynical respect, trying to stay relevant, and from the most altruistic standpoint, hoping to protect artists and careers and businesses and consumers. And then there are artists – bands, solo acts, songwriters, film scorers, producers, studio musicians and more. And then music business people – labels, publishers, merchandisers, and so on. Whether or not it’s a brave new world, it’s without question a new world. I am blown away by how much is written today about music in the digital age. One blog after another articulates the various perspectives on yesterday, today and tomorrow on the emerging personal and commercial music landscapes. Brilliant. Insightful. Controversial. Informational. Whatever else this blog purports to be, I don’t really hope to add anything to those discussions. Honestly, there are better places to go.
I am an artist. About a hundred years ago, I sat across the console from a producer in California (who shall remain nameless, mainly because I can’t remember his name) and he told me that the song I had written was going to be a hit. I was twenty-one years old at the time and playing in a wonderful band in the Sacramento area, and as far as I can remember, I felt successful that day. No, I’m pretty sure I was successful that day. And I was pretty much successful the next day. And the next. And after a few more next days, we couldn’t get a hold of the nameless producer (maybe because we didn’t have enough money to keep paying him to tell us about our success, although I don’t really remember that either) and pretty soon, I wasn’t successful anymore. Truth is, not only did I not have a clue what I needed or wanted to be successful, I wouldn’t have had a clue how to get there, if I had known. So, a few soothing, complimentary comments from a no-name producer (and, by the way, I’m not knocking no-name producers – I’ve been one for years) were enough, at least for a few days, to bring me a level of success, if only a fleeting, emotional high.
Today, I think, it’s different. You, the artist, have never had a better handle on what’s going on with the business of music. You are more sophisticated then ever. You all have iPhones. What more can I say? And more than likely more of you have a clearer idea of what constitutes “success” in your lives, your careers and your families, than I did at twenty-one.
But it is also true that when I was twenty-one, even if I couldn’t identify it, the scope of what amounted to success was far more limited than it is today. To say that there are multiple ways to achieve success in music today, is merely stating the obvious. New ways to achieve success in any endeavor is a good thing. That’s obvious, too. But what isn’t so obvious, at least, to me, is how an artist determines what “success” looks like to her. Maybe it’s the same dilemma I had at twenty-one. Maybe it’s even more complicated, defining “success.” Because, while there are many more avenues to earning money in the the music business (and more pitfalls), there’s still that thing of the heart of the artist, that at the end of the day, even if there’s a good paycheck, may not feel successful.
Leveraging all the technology, information, economics and all else that provides opportunity today, won’t bring you success, if you don’t know what success looks like for you. Because real success lives in who you are as an artist, not in technology, not in downloads, not in fan bases, not in what you achieve. And that’s one thing that hasn’t changed from a hundred years ago (actually, it was about thirty years ago). None of us knows all the answers to these questions before we head out on the journey. But if we’re not thinking of these things along the way, we may miss those side roads that take us to vistas that no paycheck can replace. Indeed, we may miss the exit that would take us to a freeway that leads to our greatest dreams. We may miss the country lane – alright, alright.
In spite of the preceding bloviation, this blog is for your stories. Your mistakes, close-calls, failures and comebacks. Your no-name producers (please, no libel) and your dreams. We’ll also talk about your experiences in today’s (and tomorrow’s) music world. Labels, indies, uploads, downloads, the whole gamut. So, I’m wondering: What is “success” to you and how did you get there? Or how do you think you might get there?