Key Categories of Music Law: Money, Rights, and Handcuffs

I think if I was to boil what I do as a music lawyer into three chunks, three categories, it would be:

1. Follow the Money
2. Follow the Rights
3. Follow the Handcuffs

Follow the Money

The money bit sounds really obvious. You know, look at how your money gets to you and how it's being calculated. Unfortunately, that is one of a few areas that unless you're very experienced, you won't necessarily understand the language.

Important Points:

• Be aware of how third parties can take a bite out of your financial cake when you thought you were getting the whole cake.

Follow the Rights

Following the rights is a slightly easier one to grasp and an easier one for me to explain. Most deals in copyrights will either:

• Take the copyright for good in perpetuity
• Take it for a more limited time (a license period)

General Principle:

• If you're an artist, you want them to have it for a shorter period of time, the license period.

Important Advice:

• If you ever see an assignment of rights in perpetuity (that is forever), try to push back and narrow it to a shorter period of time.

As someone who had hit records a while ago and has now got the rights back, I can assure you it's a valuable commodity to have because it keeps generating income.

Follow the Handcuffs

The third category is following the handcuffs. This can sometimes be drafted in contracts in quite a complicated way.

What Do the Handcuffs Represent?

• The metaphorical handcuffs in a contract can indicate whether the contract is exclusive to the person signing on the other side.
• They may stipulate that you cannot supply particular services to anyone else.

Factors to Consider:

• Whether or not that exclusivity is reasonable is very much dependent on the facts.
• If someone is giving you a lot of money for an exclusive record contract, it may be reasonable for them to expect you won't release records elsewhere.
• Conversely, if the deal isn't very valuable and they include language that unnecessarily restricts you, that would be hugely unreasonable.

Conclusion

These are the three things to at least think about. These are the questions to ask, even if you find the legal language a bit dense and difficult to understand.