Recording Contract

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chuchosay

New member
I finished recording a band a while back and I have been working on mastering their CD. I proposed a contract for them to sign. The only substantial term that they had to agree with was the following:

No editing in any way can be performed on the Master, or any part of the Master, by the Artist or any third party without expressed written permission. Any duplication of the Master must be made in whole.

Anyway, they did not like this term to say the least. Is this asking too much? Does anyone know what professional studios do?

Basically, this was put in the contract to keep a recording label from using part of the recording I made. I don't want some third party taking advantage of the work I did to make a profit.

Any suggestions as to what I should include in a contract? Is a contract necessary at all?
 
I can see where the band would have a problem with this wording. If they hired you to record their original songs, then you were working as a contracter. The work you do still belongs to the band as their original work. Once they pay you for the recordings and go on their merry way, your agreement with them is fulfilled.

This is the same thing as an employee who works for a software company and does programming at home. If he/she writes a piece of software that sells big, guess what, the company can claim this as their own, since they hired the programmer for his/her talent.

Of course, if you are part of the band and have a vested interest as part of the talent, then you have some rights to the work. If they hired you to do the recording, and pay you an agreed upon price in full, then you would have no claim to the final results.

As an engineer, you are selling a service. That service is to provide a representative reproduction of the band's music at a quality that is acceptable to the band. Granted, you may need to work miracles to reach an acceptable quality. You may even need to make the band sound a lot better than they really are, but the bottom line is that your talent as an engineer is not what is recognized as the final product.

In other words, if the band wants to send the recording to Bob Ludwig to remaster, then don't try to stand in their way. It is their music and they have every right to do what it takes to get the sound they want.

The contract that you should have with them is a service agreement that describes the services you provide and the price that you agree upon. This can be a simple form that you can put into your word processor and fill in the parties names. There are a lot of examples from studios all over the Web. If you have trouble finding one, let me know via email and I will send you an example.
 
Great Job answering this question sonic.....

I would personally tell you to get fucked if I saw that in the contract.............You provided a "work for hire" and really once your services are rendered and you've been paid you should have no rights to the material.............................
 
Sorry, have to agree with them, can't say much more about it. It is normal you ask permission for duplication of your mastered work and so one, but you can't stay in there way if they want to remaster it, or do some other stuff with the mastertapes. Just imagine they are offered a place on a compilation CD, than they have to come whining to you to get permission.

Even if you really don't want to work with a band who doesn't want to sign this, you had to let them sign the contract before you started working with them.
 
chuchosay said:
Basically, this was put in the contract to keep a recording label from using part of the recording I made. I don't want some third party taking advantage of the work I did to make a profit.
Click to expand...

IMO, this seems more like a ploy at retaining some ownership of their music. Its true that when you've produced/engineered/mixed/mastered their music, the recording becomes a combination of your work and their music, but WTF are they paying you for if they don't own the finished product, which is what your contract seems to imply.

Also, any contracts should be brought up well in advance of recording or the later mixing/mastering. Its total BS to expect them to sign anything after the fact. If you're not going to budge on this just give them the multitrack masters, refund their money for anything done after tracking and move on.

Read this thread for a more professional take on a similar situation. This is a little different because the guy was 100% willing to let the record company have the finished masters, but didn't want to give up his expertise through all his Protools data. IMO, I can totally see his side of the situation, and I think he should probably receive some kind of compensation for releasing all the editing, mixing, routing, effects, etc.
 
Did they pay you anything or did you do the recording on spec?

I was going to propose some similar deals to musicians that I really liked if they wanted me to produce and record them for free. In that case I would expect part ownership of the recordings since I would be investing my time and equipment.

If they paid you hourly there really is no special arrangements. They pay you for the time and you give them the masters to do whatever they want with.
 
if you also produced the album, then your name should be credited as producer and it is not uncommon for a producer to take a small cut of the royalties, or even maintain some creative control over the property. But this should have been worked out BEFORE the project was cut through a lawyer. If it wasn't, you're done.

If you were a carpenter I hired to build a house, this would be similar to the carpenter asking me to sign a document that I could never redecorate his work. Think about it. Your position is silly. And if the band signs that, then so are they.
 
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