(Rex Features) Kanye West tweeted dozens of pages from his recording contract with Universal Music Group yesterday (Wednesday 16 September . We didnt spend our advance on cars or jewelry, we bought a house. So youre seeing some attempt by LinkedIn. Ross Guberman [00:01:18] If it works, right? Ye's business manager's inability to . XXL has taken a deep dive into Kanye's record contracts. The Nike Air Yeezy 1 Prototypes beat the previous . Ross, how are you today? 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. And thats, you know, damaging conclusion from many perspectives. Theres even a reference to a so-called PDF I guest. Every audio file, every asset, every deal stored WITH the money. 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. So lets shift to the Kanye contract, and were not going to do a full breakdown of what all these documents are, because theres a lot and there are good YouTube videos out there. I do a lot of these kind of microlevel edits that people seem to like. Before we do, Ross, I want you to tell me about yourself. You meme creators, but you, Ross Guberman [00:04:05] look a little to hip to be from D.C., though, and. Right. 1990 Kanye's mother, Donda West, helps a then 13-year-old Kanye pay to cut his first record in a basement studio. musical compositions embodied on albums released by a major record label per year (or longer if West needed more time) (each a "Contract Year") for . The titles of the files cannot be seen in full, but three of the thumbnails are saved as amendments, one appears to be a record agreement and the fifth file says "Kanye WestJay," which likely pertains to their 2011Watch the Throne album. Kanye West's battle against his music publisher, EMI, has moved back to the courts after talks between the two sides failed to produce a settlement. The 43-year-old rapper has conceded after his. That was pretty awesome. Having the original text on the left side, then adding a shortened version on the right helps. not charge for contracts we cannot understand or track. Within the deal, Kanye was obligated to release six albums, inaddition tohis initial effort, TheCollege Dropout(2004), within a 12-month span. Some of the phrases are unnecessarily complicated. Kanye West had some more thoughts to share about recording contracts in a series of tweets on Sunday (Sept. 20). The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time But there theres a lot you can do there, as the GE example has shown. We were broke college kids right after the recession. . 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. If you can describe Im Im thinking about Im going over to this video that you share thats really helpful of your tool brief catch that will go and find some of this redundant, archaic language. How do I nudge a contract toward plain language without undermining the agreement? Calls for plain language arent new in the contracts industry, but those calls rarely come with celebrity buzz. When your term ends, download it all. We have been engaged in an ongoing dialogue with Hit-Boy and all the concerned parties to address his concerns and will continue to do so until a reasonable solution is achieved.). Mike Whelan [00:00:53] Hey, everybody. It is a family. Right, right. Kanye West had already been burning bridges in the music industry. W aiting for a Kanye West album can be an excruciating, interminable experience. Kanye was also prohibited from recording anew album prior to 90 days after delivering the effortto Roc-A-Fella. The split can be 80/20 in the artists favor. I AM ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS PEOPLE ON THE PLANET AND UNIVERSAL WONT TELL ME WHAT MY MASTERS COST BECAUSE THEY KNOW I CAN AFFORD THEM BLACK MASTERS MATTER.". Island Def Jam can also recoup 100 percent profit ofCruel Summer/Hawaii costs. Many young artists dont realize how recoupment works, in which a label fronts the money for artists advances and expenses like recording and marketing, to be paid back to the label through royalties later. Ye asked for $12 million, and $8 million would be paid promptly after the full execution of the 2012 amendment. You got a bunch on the left in a very short sentence on the right. Some are asking what took so long. Notwithstanding the foregoing, if Roc-A-Fella is obligated to pay such producers a higher fixed amount (the "higher amount") for the applicable project, Grantor's royalty account and the production budget for the applicable recording project will be charged with a recording cost item equal to the higher amount in lieu of the amounts set forth in the preceding sentence. We were lucky because we were careful. The deal. Getting Out Our Dreams, LLC c/o Carroll, Guido & Twenty-two percent of royalties were to be given on both the sixth and seventh albums. You want to get in and get as much as you can is what we were told. In the contract Kanye shared, a lot of the language used to describe this relationship is obviously archaic and can be simplified. Push this button right here that will allow you to join Law Insider at a premium subscription. Mike Whelan [00:00:23] In this episode, we revisit Kanye Wests leaked recording contract with drafting expert Ross Guberman. ), Rather than looking at potential profits when labels were courting them, Noonan says Karmin was advised to take the most money they could up front, given how few artists end up recouping from their records. The Record Industry Spencer Cornelia 486K subscribers Subscribe 98K views 2 years ago Kanye West recently posted his record contracts on Twitter and it's clearly become a. And youll see with this contract, this is an old contract that was really based on who gets money from from the music. 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. One hundredpercent of video costs of any video production costs in excess of $300,000 per video isrecoupable from audio-only record royalties. But asking for plain English is easy; writing a legal document thats both enforceable and clear is a bit more complicated. Of that, two-thirds ($8 million) was an advance for him to keep. Mike Whelan [00:01:20] Pretty classy nightstand, Ross. I will never work for a major record label again, Anokute says. What contract language is unnecessarily archaic and what isnt? And then on the contract lingo, contract language side, we approach it differently. Moments later, Kanye shared screenshots of five files. 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. Late last year, Kanye West took to Twitter to vent his frustration about complicated contract language. And Im going to share a few images. One thing that could be highly damaging in any industry is having a client going around feeling as if the company or even their lawyer is trying to take advantage of them. Right. West made about a 100 posts and shared screenshots of pages from his recording contract. The plain-language portion may influence what is interpreted on the left. Well see you there. 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. He says the industry must holistically evaluate how to improve for any major changes to shift. 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. Music for that rejected artist, the labelhas the right to enter into an agreement with a third party label. Advances are loans with 75% interest rates (or worse). Oct. 25, 2022 Updated 11:22 a.m. Kanye West leaked his recording contracts on Twitter. on the Internet. As Kanye West escalates his battle with Universal Music Group, the Chicago rapper decided to share the entirety of his record contract on Twitter. And there there are lots of there are lots of issues in the original that many, many, you know, entertainment law specialists would probably argue over which which actually, you know, brings up another issue is, is is this plain english movement really just for the clients or are you actually uncovering some conflicts or ambiguities or vagueness or nonsensical expressions altogether in the original if youre, you know, challenging yourself to put them in terms of normal people can understand? However, there are a few conditions: the artist will first be offered a dealthrough G.O.O.D. Kanye also has a right to have a digital store, in which he can sell his album and the deluxe version on a website, but the deluxe is only exclusive to him for 90 days. Thus,50 percent of these costs incurred by Roc-A-Fella are considered advances, but the label could notrecoup more than $40,000 for each album relevant to these costs: creation, hosting, maintenance of artists website, securing, registering and/or protecting artist domain names, creation of ECD materials, independent promotion, independent marketing and independent publicity, television, movie or radio campaigns. Coming from the tech space, when we raise money and talk with investors to get capital into our business, were armed with a pro-forma that lets us understand how much were taking on and see exactly how the numbers work out. Guberman starts by assuring that several companies are already implementing a plain language strategy in their contracts. In September 2020, "Kanye West Record Deal" started trending. Contract #1 [PDF] Contact #2 [PDF] Contract #3 [PDF] Contract #4 [PDF] Contract #5 [PDF] Contract #6 [PDF] Contract #7 [PDF] Contract #8 [PDF] Contract #9 New Recording and Publishing Deal Guidelines [ PDF] Found online, don't shoot the messenger. Mike Whelan [00:22:56] So, Ross, I appreciate your thoughts on this. 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. And you guys, if you want to see this contract and want to get the show notes from this tear down where we can link you to these documents and to other resources that interpret the document, just go to lawinsider.com/resources. 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. 22% royalty rate for Kanye (and 78% for the record label). Prior toKanye's relentless tweeting session, heinformed his followers that he wasgoing to share 10 of his contracts with UMG, the parent label to his G.O.O.D. Right. 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 has posted dozens of pages of record contracts, and a video of a Grammy being urinated on, in a lengthy string of tweets criticizing the music industry. Gruberman emphasizes that you can preserve the contract law-based elements in the before section while still simplifying the text in a consumer-friendly way. 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-. If you push this button, youre going to save big. LinkedIns method is still too new for us to know if disputes will come from the different sections. A pair of shoes designed and worn by the musician Kanye West have sold for $1.8m (1.3m) at auction - the highest amount ever paid for trainers. When youre awake to this, you cant be the perpetrator anymore.. For that LP, there was a recording fund amounting to$2.5 million. The remaining$1millionwas to be paid upon completion. 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. So lets tear it down. Right. $20.99 Used. So tell me, is the language on the right? (Epic did not respond to a request for comment for this story. We get used to these things and then sometimes, theres a wakeup call.. this summer, doesnt point the finger at any one entity or group for the nature of these deals. Kanye West continues his campaign against major record labels. Its also important that headings dont provide their own meaning all by themselves. 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. Theres no more independent plants, no more putting all these CDs in a truck and shipping them from store to store across the country, Chris Anokute, founder of entertainment company Young Forever Inc. and a former A&R executive for labels including Capitol and Island Def Jam, tells Rolling Stone. So we want to talk briefly about this profit sharing piece, this image here, because theres a lot of language that might lead to artists not understanding that theyre getting into that pretty crappy deal, honestly. 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. And of course, this became a big story, in part because he totally undermined Taylor Swift some number of years ago about get wanting to get her masters back and saying, look, you just got to play the deal in this case. Right. A Lawyers role is to IMPROVE deals. The artist owns the copyright in the recordings and songs and leases them to the record label/publisher for a limited term. This is what were going after. Thats not the game here, Noonan recalls as the mindset when negotiating contracts. Having the contract laid out in plain language can lead to fewer problems down the road. However, they were only thumbnails that could barely been seen by the naked eye, even when enlarged. No, but nobody wants clients to to conclude that. Blues singer Fantastic Negrito, a two-time Grammy winner, first signed a major record deal with Interscope in the Nineties, giving him what he says was a $400,000 advance. 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. What do you see? All contents of the lawinsider.com excluding publicly sourced documents are Copyright 2013-. The first agreement in the series was around the time PDF were new. Kanye West's history of inflammatory statements were met with consquences this week. Leave. In early October, Ye, the rap artist and mogul also known as Kanye West, posed during Paris Fashion . Lets get back to the show. 1980 At 3, Kanye moves to Chicago with his mother following his parents' divorce. Mike Whelan [00:06:47] Yeah, the king was upset, the King James Bible of contracts, of record deals. He ended the spree with, 'Whew that was a lot guys," and then tweeted a video of himself peeing on a Grammy award. Ye by Kanye West (Record, 2018) (9) 100% agree - Would recommend. But they were reluctant to strike a deal with the young producer/rapper. Well see you guys next time. So, you know, theres a lot in contract language thats really just generic legaleese the same kinds of things you see in other documents. How can you rewrite a contract to be understandable without losing the original intent? Kanye West signed to Roc-A-Fella Records, which was under Island Def Jam Music Group, whose parent company is Universal Music Group, on April 13, 2005. Theres this site, my my other company, legal writing pro. And theyre advised accordingly by an attorney at law whos telling them to sign this contract, and they say this contract is standard. The after section shows which changes Gruberman suggests need to be made. You need a business manager to read how you did? Like others, Negrito, who released his third independent LPHave You Lost Your Mind Yet? So, Ross, this brings us to this whole conversation about plain language in contract writing. 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. It would also give Adele the largest record deal for a British musician by surpassing . His. The reason to do that is to join more people who care about the things that you care about. If you are interested in being a guest on Contract Teardown, please email us at community@lawinsider.com. Fine. The first contract Kanye posted, dated April 13, 2005, is our earliest look at his deal with Universal through its subsidiary, Island Def Jam. Island Def JamMusic Group also agreed to give Kanye the rights, title and interest in all of the masters for his sixth and seventh album, but only after the reversion datethe last day of the semi-annual accounting periodwhich is 20 years after the initial release of the seventh album. Ye also had to seek written approval from the labelat least 14 days before the first recording session. Ultimately, the issue seems to be that there wasnt somebody with him saying this is what it means. Epic spent a fortune making that Karmin album. Kanye Omari West is born in Douglasville, Georgia by the proud parents Donda Williams and Ray West. At no point was Kanye allowed to object to a track being on the record if it achievedTop 100 chart success on any national trade publication at any time prior to when the Greatest Hits album was released. Like youre youre still youve got a complicated sentence with clauses. Music or such label paying Island Def Jam Music Group acounterbalance amountagainst overhead payments in an amount equal to the overhead payments in the applicable contract year multiplied by a fraction. 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. Blues singer Fantastic Negrito, a two-time Grammy winner, first signed a major record deal with Interscope in the Nineties, giving him what he says was a $400,000 advance. See BBC report here. "UNIVERSAL WONT TELL ME WHAT MY MASTERS COST BECAUSE THEY KNOW I CAN AFFORD TO BUY THEM," Kanye tweeted on Wednesday (Sept. 16). Is it fair? Most comprehensive library of legal defined terms on your mobile device. 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. 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. We need plain English contracts. These are the documents that were talking about. If Im the lawyer there, there are terms of art. The Record Label / Publisher is a service provider that receives a share of the income for a limited term. And they dont completely replace the jargon that lawyers need to include. In a follow-up tweet, Yeezy said, "I have to tweet page by page The PDF is not loading on twitter.". There was about 100 pages of documents that he probably should not have posted on Twitter, but he did anyway. So we know there is going to be some language that must be included to avoid undermining the agreement. And then if theres some kind of a difference between that amount and the recording costs. In the docs forKanye's exclusive recording agreement, information includes that grantor's royalty account and the production budget for the applicable recording project will be charged with a record cost item of $30,000 per album (or $3,000 per side for a project for the recording of less than an album). The once hesitant label has now hit the. GOOD Music (stylized as G.O.O.D. His call for transparency has brought the conversation of understandable language into a spotlight. You want to get in and get as much as you can is what we were told. He created the first-of-its-kind editing plug-in BriefCatch. An advance constitutesany moneypaid, costs incurred or costs to create videos. Oct. 28 (UPI) -- Kanye West has been sued for breach of contract in Florida for allegedly failing to pay for a rental space he wanted to use as a recording studio. Looking back, I've thought many times about what makes Kanye Kanye. So so as I play this in the background, tell me about some of the phrases that youre seeing in this that are just driving you nuts. (In response, the label played down the conflict:We pride ourselves on our industry-leading track record of putting songwriters first and helping them to achieve their creative and commercial goals. Ross describes a counselor that can thread this very tough plain language needle. We get used to these things and then sometimes, theres a wakeup call . After the advance was recouped, 15 percent of royalties were to be given to both artists. Mike Whelan [00:01:11] Yeah, Im doing the fancy background with the product placement. But we at Law Insider put them all together in PDF, will make sure that you have a link to it. Kanye West is at war with the music industry over the ownership of masters and unfair contracts. Music, is no. Kanye West vs. The you know, the goal is not the same. According to West's court papers, he's been "laboring" for EMI since 2003, when during the recording of College Dropout he signed a "lopsided" contract with the music publisher. Obviously, we cant share the whole thing, but well make sure that you have a link to the whole thing in the show notes over at LawInsider.com/Resources. Music; a backronym for Getting Out Our Dreams) is an American independent record label founded by rapper Kanye West in 2004. 25. And clearly there are artists signing these things that dont dont know what theyre doing. As lawyers and contract drafters trying to implement plain language, we have to find a way to do this while staying true to the contract. 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 don't know - still - who the next US president will be, but we do know who it won't be - Kanye West. Right. And, to an extent, they're not wrong. Harvard Business Review did a big piece on it, and the general counsel of that division really took this whole plain English thing seriously instead of just giving it lip service and actually redid a lot of their commercial agreements. Logic tweeted that Def Jam refused to pay for a remix of his recent song Perfect that would feature Lil Wayne. If theyre doing this to me with all Ive accomplished through hard work, I can only imagine the kids who dont have big placements/proper guidance, Hit-Boy wrote on Instagram. Theyll follow their attorneys recommendation. So we know recouped doesnt mean the same thing. Those are four ways to keep the conversation going. Theyll follow their attorneys recommendation. The before section has all the original wording, complete with legalese. They have before and after sections. Another example is General Electric. 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. Mike Whelan [00:17:41] an interpretive sca band and Im going to have to look for the domain name. 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