Recording Rap
As I write this article we are almost half way through the summer. The recording department has seen $645,000 on contracts year-to-date. We are on track with our recording totals and will surpass the $1,000,000 total we did last year.
Our jingle department has doubled since last year thanks to Rene Barge, John Martyn, Steve Roitstein, Alberto Slezynger and Gregg Wiktorski. Keep the contracts coming!!! I’d like to thank Dione Chandler for all her hard work in processing all of our recording checks.
I’ve had quite a few inquiries regarding the Demo contract. This is the easiest contract to use to document your own recordings and for people who are helping to produce unsigned artists. The artist (or whomever is paying for the project) becomes the "producer" upon signing the contract. The contract is its own Collective Bargaining Agreement. The verbiage on the back of the contract states, "A Producer may sell, assign, lease, license or otherwise transfer title to a recording produced under the terms of this Agreement to any person, firm or corporation, provided that in advance of any such sale, assignment, lease, license or transfer: the Producer obtains from the other party a Buyer’s Assumption Agreement made expressly for the benefit of the American Federation of Musicians as representative of the musicians involved." This protects the musicians from future use, and once the Buyer’s Assumption Agreement goes into effect, the Producer is not liable for any further payments for that particular recording. The Producer makes the Pension contribution for the musicians and the contract is then logged into the AFM system, which is monitored for future use.
I had a musician that had his music on the Internet. He had a call from a television show that asked him to use part of a song during the opening credits for a particular show. He called me for advice. Not having any contract in place, there was little we could do to guide him as to protection for its use. Please call me if you have any questions on filing contracts.
I will be representing our Local at the Latin Grammy’s on September 11th and will update you in the October newsletter.
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