An artist's attorney recently inserted the following sentence into a production agreement:

It was a nice try, but I shot that down as well as some other assanine stuff. I know that somebody else here recently dealt with this situation, where somebody wanted to give some of his points to the mixer. When your only fee as a producer is points, this is a bullshit practice. Don't you just love attorneys?

Anyway, I guess this is a good thread to talk about contracts and structuring producer deals, etc. or to gripe about similar experiences.

Nasty... I play in a band and we recently had a very 'informative' experience with a management/record/whatever deal and our lawyer.Although I can't really be bothered going into it in detail, you know how tedious these things are, but here's the overview anyways...
We are a band from Glasgow Scotland called LEXXI and after taking part in 'Emergenza' competition and coming 2nd in the international finals in Germany, we received a certain amount of interest from European companies. One such company offered us a management contract, which we were interested in so we got our lawyer to look over it. He pointed out a few issues that he felt we should look at, one being the management wanted to take 20% of gross from everything, including live. Everything we had read or been told was to never let management do that. So we stuck to our guns and the company went away to think again. Then they came back with this 'new way of thinking' agreement, which we were also interested in. This was basically a partnership agreement in which after costs we would split the profits 50/50. Hmmm... they were offering to be manager, booker, record company (possibly) and we just couldn't work out if it was a good deal.(yes, this is the overview!) Our laywer said we shouldn't touch it, everyone else was pretty dubious about it, but it was soo tempting. Our first contract offer, the guy got what we were doing, it was what we wanted... but it wasn't right for the band. Frustratingly we turned it down, much to the mngments dismay and are concentrating our efforts on uk and things are going well!
So, what did we learn? That lawyers (even though they cost a fortune!) really only want what's best for their client. Also, stick to your principles and if you're good enough then don't settle for the first thing that comes along and it'll all be ok. I hope!
Also hope I haven't bored y'all too much!
http://WWW.LEXXI.CO.UK
Craig

I had a record label (Restless) offer us a standard contract as artists once: It said "we own the group's likeness and name" - even AFTER the contract was up. Whoops! How did that get in there?

They played dumb, but it was obvious they were "trying"... Imagine signing away your band name and image forever!

Was that Moog Cookbook?

Okay, this is something I know a bit about, and my first question is...who the hell did this attorney think was going to actually interpret this agreement? (putting aside the question of its merit for a moment) Yikes!!! Plain english, people.

In any event, the point that a lawyer's only interest is his or her client is absolutely correct. Don't forget that. All that said, though, the client's interest is most likely in making a good deal, and that may mean that the lawyer (if they're good -- something of a caveat here) will agree to some favorable terms, if the deal is still one that his or her client would want to make. Everything's negotiable...but what you can actually negotiate depends on how much market power you can demand. Bottom line: money talks. To me, those two words pretty much sum it all up.

All that said, J.J., everyone "tries" if they can think of it. That's pretty much the name of the game. YMMV -- or not.

Cheer,
Mark

OMFG, I'm cracking up. Too funny.

Yes. Moog Cookbook. Terrible record deal, but we were fully aware of it going in... unlike most artists. We extracted some of our own blood from them over time...