Now, with a click of a finger, your music goes wide to 7 billion people if you want it to. And thats why the color coding comes in. 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. Welcome to Law Insiders Contract Teardown Show, where we bring smart friends like Ross Guberman over here to break down some contracts. So, yeah, there you go. 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. One way to begin is by bracketing off phrases or words that you know have a substantive value. Ross Guberman [00:03:18] And so Im the president of legal writing prose, so Ive been doing workshops and consulting on all different aspects of lawyer writing and judicial writing for a couple of decades now. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Is this incorporated in in any way? They are for your entire business. Kanye West signed his co-publishing contract with music publisher EMIwho is now owned by Sony/ATVin 2003, before the completion and release of his 2004 debut album, The College Dropout. Artists like Kanye feel that they are being cheated. 22% royalty rate for Kanye (and 78% for the record label). Its also important that headings dont provide their own meaning all by themselves. Ross Guberman [00:05:55] Yeah, I mean, its obviously a common plea, not just from Kanye West, but from all sorts of, you know, business executives to theres been sort of push and pull over the decades that people have been complaining about contract language for longer than either of us has been alive, of course. Ye went from $6.6 billion to maybe $400 million. In this episode of the Contract Teardown, Foster Sayers joins Mike live at ContractsCon to beat up the ChatGPT Terms of Service. Epic spent a fortune making that Karmin album. this summer, doesnt point the finger at any one entity or group for the nature of these deals. 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. You know, its a little some people would say, well, you dont want to mess around with indemnification, but in this case, it seems close enough to the original to be faithful legally while still being understandable. Why is a shift to plain language important? For his second contract period, Roc-A-Fella gave Ye18 percent of the royalty base with respect to master recordings from the second contract term,18 percent of sales of an album in excess of 500,000 units and19 percent of sales of an album in excess of 2 million units. Maybe even my own lawyer is not really looking at the language from my point of view. Mike Whelan [00:22:56] So, Ross, I appreciate your thoughts on this. They will help you draft better contracts faster. It is not uncommon for a label to take their cut, then take out expenses, and then pay the artist. Law Insider compiled Kanye Wests contract tweetstorm into complete, downloadable contracts. 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. Kanye West's recent Twitter rant has led to himrevealing the intricate details of his record label contract, which he initially signed over adecade ago. Theyre paying for all of the promotion of music videos and concerts because its coming out off the top. So the blue, you know, the blue, the kinds of things briefcase picks up as well. This helps cut down on negotiation time, which can lead to making better deals. Theyre not to be I mean, this is classic, completely unnecessary, archaic language you see in a lot of commercial agreements. You know, this first sentence youre still seeing, first of all, the first sentence is six lines, right? Looking back, I've thought many times about what makes Kanye Kanye. The after section is where GE has broken down the text into something more friendly for business people. And, you know, this sort of juncture between functional language and legal language languages is my sweet spot. 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.". So its cut down on negotiation time and led to better, you know, better deals. Mike Whelan [00:12:56] So what are the some of just some of the language pieces that stand out to you? West made about a 100 posts and shared screenshots of pages from his recording contract. #kanyewest #dramaalert #grammyWanna continu. Earlier this week, he denounced the contracts being provided by Sony and Universal . How do I nudge a contract toward plain language without undermining the agreement? Thats the name of my new band. A month ago, Kanye West had an emotional breakdown on Twitter. Like youre youre still youve got a complicated sentence with clauses. Theyll follow their attorneys recommendation. Ye also had to seek written approval from the labelat least 14 days before the first recording session. Record Companies have to buy into you, not loan you. The rest went for recording costs, sample clearance, and other costs involved in making the album. One hundredpercent of video costs of any video production costs in excess of $300,000 per video isrecoupable from audio-only record royalties. Hit-Boy is an enormously talented songwriter whose relationship we value, a UMPG spokesperson said in a statement to Rolling Stone. Somethings got a hold your drink place. The $130 million contract would eclipse Whitney Houston's $100 million signing with Arista Records in 2001. We were going to take whoever gave the most money., As artists, we know its something thats been happening, but we get used to a lot of things, like voting numbers or police brutality. Whats the best way to get in touch with you to learn these skills? However, the film has not yet been released. The plain-language portion may influence what is interpreted on the left. You should need NO ONE else to understand the business youre in. The lawyers in this industry who are used to the status quo are going to say its worth it, but if I make a deal with you and go to lunch and say you pay 70 [percent], I dont think youll say its fair. Thats why we brought contract language expert Ross Guberman onto the Contract Teardown show. Until then, Ross, I appreciate you being here. I wrote a book. Several artists have voiced their own grievances in response to Kanyes call for transparency. Thank you, Ross. If youre with a major you have invested your songs as shares in their power to get equity and deals. So the tool, the tool were looking at brief catch, you know, there you go. Its all made from events. See everything we've learned from his record label deals below. For Kanye, his 15% royalty rate on wholesale for each sneaker sold has netted him roughly $150 million pre-tax annually. So get rid of it. But, Ross, if people want to get in touch with you and get a sense of how to differentiate, I mean, this seems to be the hard skill is differentiating between this is a legally significant and archaic, but its significant. We don't know - still - who the next US president will be, but we do know who it won't be - Kanye West. Absolutely. Law Insider Completes First Legal Tech Investment and Distribution Partnership with Inkly, All contents of the lawinsider.com excluding publicly sourced documents are Copyright 2013-. Most comprehensive library of legal defined terms on your mobile device. This method perhaps isnt as friendly to consumers as LinkedIns method, but its close enough to the source material and still understandable. In 2012, the label released its debut compilation album Cruel Summer.In 2015, Pusha T was appointed the president of the label . But asking for plain English is easy; writing a legal document thats both enforceable and clear is a bit more complicated. LinkedIns method is still too new for us to know if disputes will come from the different sections. What contract language is unnecessarily archaic and what isnt? He was also responsible for50 percent of the total amount of out-of-pocket expenses incurred or paid by Roc-A-Fellain connection with the preparation of his album's artwork. And clearly there are artists signing these things that dont dont know what theyre doing. After agreeing to the amount spent on the film, they took $1 million from Kanyes sixth album backend and then $500,000 from his seventh album's recording fund. You want to make sure everything is understandable, but you dont want to take related phrases within a provision and just willy nilly break them up into multiple sentences the way you might. . Well see you there. 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. And so Kanye is at this point where hes like, dude, I got to have some other ways to make money. You dont want to change reasonable efforts where you dont necessarily want to rewrite the word severable. While Anokute points the barrel primarily at the labels dishing out deals arguing that these deals perpetuate the very inequalities for black artists that the labels have said theyre looking to change he acknowledges that labels alone cant take all the blame for unfriendly artist deals. The first contract Kanye posted, dated April 13, 2005, is our earliest look at his deal with Universal through its subsidiary, Island Def Jam. That was pretty awesome. For example, LinkedIn has made some effort to provide easy-to-understand language. The rapper has put out nine albums over 17 years through Roc-a-Fella Records. An advance constitutesany moneypaid, costs incurred or costs to create videos. Theres a lot going on here. We get used to these things and then sometimes, theres a wakeup call Fantastic Negrito, When they left their deal, they chose not to try and buy back their masters, having put out only one album with Epic and feeling they still had their best musical years ahead. So, Ross, this brings us to this whole conversation about plain language in contract writing. Whats the principle here? Moments later, Kanye shared screenshots of five files. . As far as the actual deal goes, Kanyes isnt particularly bad: Music lawyerswho spoke with Rolling Stone call Wests deal standard for an artist at his level. Is this realistic to even talk about plain language and contract drafting? 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. Music record label. This is a tool that is available to anyone looking to implement plain language into their contracts. We took the full. Due to a planned power outage on Friday, 1/14, between 8am-1pm PST, some services may be impacted. However, only 50 percent of video costscan berecouped from audio-only record royalties. Artists re-signing these stops. As usual, West's behavior has spurred an onslaught of speculation regarding a possible return to a business relationship with Nike. 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. But if Kanye West 's statements last year about slavery being a choice were out of bounds, he's taking more of a Prince-like tactic in his ongoing efforts to extract himself from his record. 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