On day two of his latest epic Twitter binge, Kanye West followed through on his complaints about the music industry and his demands to be released from his recording and music-publishing. He created the first-of-its-kind editing plug-in BriefCatch. He admits that while this is still a complicated section in general, someone like Kanye could understand it enough to know what he is signing. So, Ross, this document, why does it matter? Adidas said on Tuesday that it was cutting ties with Kanye West, ending what may have been the most significant corporate fashion partnership of the rapper and . Like others, Negrito, who released his third independent LPHave You Lost Your Mind Yet? This is the Def Jam amendment. Cruel Summer/Hawaii costs shall befully cross-collateralized with Kanye's main royalties account. Twenty-two percent of royalties were to be given on both the sixth and seventh albums. Advances. 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. Music. So youre seeing some attempt by LinkedIn. Within the deal, Kanye was obligated to release six albums, inaddition tohis initial effort, TheCollege Dropout(2004), within a 12-month span. Soundtrack: The Great Gatsby. Its actually gotten a lot of press. How are businesses shifting to using plain language? Over the course of dozens of tweets, West. They would pay Kanye back after the successful completion of the film, provided it was up to standards. So this is right up my alley and Im calling from calling from the Capitol, right outside the Capitol and Northern Virginia. 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. 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. So its cut down on negotiation time and led to better, you know, better deals. Ross Guberman [00:02:46] Its you know, its a great vehicle to take this whole plan, English idea and see if we can, you know, apply it literally seriously or both, because although you say you had an emotional breakdown, hes hardly the first part of your client to object to contract language. Uploaded for archival purposes. Most comprehensive library of legal defined terms on your mobile device. Thats the name of my new band. Most comprehensive library of legal defined terms on your mobile device. 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. The breakdown for this amount was:$1.5 million was to be distributed to record the album. W aiting for a Kanye West album can be an excruciating, interminable experience. They are for your entire business. And thats, you know, damaging conclusion from many perspectives. Ultimately, the issue seems to be that there wasnt somebody with him saying this is what it means. 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. Im seeing a lot of these highlights. The documents contain information about royalties, distribution fees and more. We need plain English contracts. This is the same deal your favorite artist signed, this is their label. What do you expect a young, naive artist to do? 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. Ye asked for $12 million, and $8 million would be paid promptly after the full execution of the 2012 amendment. And examples of a couple of companies tackling the issue. See's Kanye West's Record Contract Tweets. Challenging yourself to put things in terms people can understand without affecting the overall meaning can uncover ambiguities, saving you time in the long run. Wests contract could even be considered favorable among superstar contracts, with Universal heavily investing in Wests works, entertainment attorney Christiane Kinney says. The Record Label / Publisher is a service provider that receives a share of the income for a limited term. ET . Kanye West is at war with the music industry over the ownership of masters and unfair contracts. So what I what I what I did here is just pull pull one of the key provisions on the substantive side from this profit sharing agreement so we could try to figure out again whats possible for for the Kanye West of the world. . Ye's business manager's inability to . The 100 Best Albums of 2022. 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. After agreeing to the amount spent on the film, they took $1 million from Kanyes sixth album backend and then $500,000 from his seventh album's recording fund. He released his two Grammy-winning albums independently more than 20 years later, and he hasnt inquired about the recoupment on his first record in years. So so talk to me about this profit sharing piece. The dates of the files range from 2005 to 2014. The 43-year-old rapper has conceded after his. 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.). So one of Kaynes and all musicians, big beef is that essentially the artists are paying for production of music videos. Mike Whelan [00:03:02] Thats right. However, only 50 percent of video costscan berecouped from audio-only record royalties. The split can be 80/20 in the artists favor. I wrote a book. What am I looking at here? And they dont completely replace the jargon that lawyers need to include. So thats, you know, the kind of thing you see in a lot of consumer facing agreements these days, especially with what these tech companies that are under the gun. $26.59 New. You want to make sure everything is understandable, but you dont want to take related phrases within a provision and just willy nilly break them up into multiple sentences the way you might. 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. So, yeah, there you go. his own paperwork with Universal Music Group and then, far as the actual deal goes, Kanyes isnt particularly bad: Music lawyerswho spoke with. 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. If youre part of a team, just email us if youre in house or in a law firm. We were lucky because we were careful. Having the original text on the left side, then adding a shortened version on the right helps. 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. His call for transparency has brought the conversation of understandable language into a spotlight. We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. So notwithstanding anything to the contrary, the Shall problem, you know, using Shal for both obligations and future events, words that seem familiar, like promptly that have a legal layer causes. 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. So those are those are the impediments. This method perhaps isnt as friendly to consumers as LinkedIns method, but its close enough to the source material and still understandable. Absolutely. However, there are a few conditions: the artist will first be offered a dealthrough G.O.O.D. 22% royalty rate for Kanye (and 78% for the record label). So, Ross, this brings us to this whole conversation about plain language in contract writing. Kanye West is seen at a Donda listening event at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on July 22, 2021 in Atlanta, Georgia. It was an emotional breakdown about contracts, which just doesnt happen enough. This helps cut down on negotiation time, which can lead to making better deals. If Island Def Jam Music Group were to pass on an artist,Getting Out Our Dreams Inc., the acronym for Kanye's G.O.O.D. 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. Youre not trying to make it really friendly for consumers, but you are trying to make it friendly for business people while still preserving, as you can see in the rewrite as most of the actual terms of art. Theres hidden costs in the ways deals are structured, and most artists dont have an understanding in how the recoupment works and its confusing. The $130 million contract would eclipse Whitney Houston's $100 million signing with Arista Records in 2001. NO other business in the world takes a look at the business, buys shares, starts to profit when it profits. 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. Its all made from videos. Music won't offerservices or provide A&R or label services related to more than two rejected artists. Ye says he wants his four children to own them. 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. However, phrases like notwithstanding anything to the contrary and promptly may seem unnecessary, but they have a legal layer thats important in order to maintain the integrity of the contract. Ross Guberman [00:16:40] Yeah, you really hit the nail on the head. Mike Whelan [00:04:08] wearing the shirt. 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? Anokute says. I want you to do me a quick favor. I will not share the image of Kanye West urinating on his Grammy, though. 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. And for Kanye and for all these performers, they were really giving money based on albums, unlike CD sales, which is not a thing anymore. Youll get access to more content like this. Let me do a screen show real quick to show people what were talking about. "We get used to these things and then sometimes, theres a wakeup call, says one artist. 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. Milana Lewis, CEO of music distribution platform Stem, says record labels should start including explanatory pro-forma documents with deals, in order to promote transparency and make it easier for artists to understand what comes in their agreements. Mike Whelan [00:07:53] Well, and heres another one from LinkedIn, this sort of two column set up in the license image. This is Kanyes contracts. Join me and my friends. 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. 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. I didnt know this was the thing, but apparently its a Twitter meme. Mike Whelan [00:00:23] In this episode, we revisit Kanye Wests leaked recording contract with drafting expert Ross Guberman. Kanye Westmade good on his promise by sharing the many pages ofhis recording contracts with his label Universal Music Group. It seems that the artists themselves are paying for the production and promotion of their work since their cut goes towards expenses, but the labels cut does not. The language looks like something you might find, you know, 50, 100 years ago. Kanye West leaked his recording contracts on Twitter. We get used to these things and then sometimes, theres a wakeup call.. Not every artist has time to read the Donald Passman bookand find out what every term and clause means, and while there are great lawyers out there, too many just want their 5 percent [commission].. So we dont want to change recouped because now we would be not faithful to the substance. You want to get in and get as much as you can is what we were told. We get used to these things and then sometimes, theres a wakeup call . Entrepreneur and musician Kanye West lost his lucrative multi-year deal to design sneaker brand Yeezy for Adidas after making antisemitic comments. If you are interested in being a guest on Contract Teardown, please email us at community@lawinsider.com. 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. So you keep those and then you also, of course, in your sector or industry, want to keep those terms of art as well. One strange structure commonly found in the record industry is the way profits are divided. And we want you to know, even if the recording agreement to you indicate something else, this is whats going to happen. First is this one from Kanye. Ye went from $6.6 billion to maybe $400 million. Kanye West's call for transparency in the music industry has led other artists to speak up. Kanye West gave the world a rare glimpse into the music industrys labyrinth of recording contracts last week when he tweeted out his own paperwork with Universal Music Group and then lambasted those agreements as exploitative and unfair, demanding his copyrights be returned to him. Four children to own them be considered favorable among superstar contracts, with Universal investing. Cross-Collateralized with Kanye 's main royalties account ye & # x27 ; s inability to if you interested! 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