Re: film music rights, licensing ...OT

["L.A. Angulo" <labaloops@yahoo.com>]

Hey Mark,
thanx,you know as ignorant as i am of all of this
legal stuff ive been very lucky till now.When i was
with this Band we recorded our first CD in a cellar
with a moblie studio.The whole thing costed us about
3,000.- eur. back then and we sold more than 10,000
copies.The second CD was more complicated,it was
recorded in switzerland in a proper studio,pro tools
etc.with an initial budget of about 5,000.-eur. which
at the end turned to a 15,000.- bill!to top it all off
the CD didnt sound quite right when we received tha
master,then they told us that was jsut a standar
mastering and it would cost us x-tra to remaster it
ready for the pop market and that a possible solution
would be to bring in a professional producer to add
the essential pop radio formula who we even met with
and wanted to charge another 10,000,-eur. for his
work.Thats when we started to smell what was going
on.This Swiss studio charged us for every little glass
of water and coffee we had during the sessions and
worst of all we couldnīt deduct this heavy expenses
when it came time to pay our taxes in germany,and at
the time we were playing a lot and earning a lot so we
got heavily taxed,a complete disaster.But the selling
our first CD saved us and we paid every cent and came
out clean.
Then i ended up remastering the CD with my limited
abilities myself and even went to Berlin on a packed
train with no seat reservation for 7 hrs. all of this
at my own cost and did some final intro remixes and it
turned out well enough that the band was happy and is
also selling quite well.Then as we were getting all
this record label offers to distribute for us and
blah, blah, blah it was all "1 for you 19 for me" so i
convinced the band to create our own label and sell it
through the internet and at gigs.There were some heavy
disagreements,specially from our bass player who we
had to fly to Hamburg which wasnt cheap, for cheap
talks with a label which at the end was another one of
those pirate contracts where it says their only
obligation is to make the CDs available in the cities
we play, but they are not responsible for any
promotion,posters radio,etc.because thats something we
would have to do our selves.But they wanted a contract
for not less than 10 years with this terms and a cut
of every CD we would sell ourselves,get it?
so our bass player got to go to Hamburg,visit her son
and bring nothing but a plane bill of about 800.-eur.
because she wasnt going by train which takes 8 long
hours from here;-)
Then as i suggested creating our label,we had to find
somebody to finance it for us,so another band member
suggested his boss,who said he would finance us
provided we include his business logo in every copy of
the CD indefinetly.So then again i protested(which
they hated me for) and got my parents to lend us the
money with no interests or any obligations involved as
long us we paid them back as we could.
The story goes on...but with all the naive going on i
am glad that most choices were made right and came out
debt free,it is always very tempting to fall into the
fake glories,look at me now being tempted by this
again;-)
Luis







--- mark francombe <mark@markfrancombe.com> wrote:

> Luis,
> 
> As a musician who is often making music for film
> productions here in Norway,
> there is one golden rule. NEVER GIVE AWAY YOUR
> MUSIC. You can of course
> charge nothing for it, many producers will simply
> not use your music if
> there is a charge associated, they want it for
> nothing.
> SO its simple, say to the guy, of course you can use
> my music, cut it,
> shorten it , play it backwards if they want, but you
> must have a credit that
> simply says Original music copyright Luis Angelo
> 2008. DONE!!!
> 
> Of course an army of lawyers could easily break and
> twist this into what
> ever they want, but assuming that the producer is
> reasonably honest, then
> this should do it.
> 
> If you want a slightly more water tight contract,
> then a simple licensing
> contract would suffice. This should say that you
> license the work to them
> for use in this specific production (including its
> promotional material -
> dvd menus, trailers, websites, teasers etc), but may
> not be used further or
> in any other context. And that this agreement should
> cover all territorys.
> 
> Then payment for the piece can be anything from a
> bottle of whisky to
> percentages of the profit to nothing!
> 
> hope this helps, great to hear you got something out
> of iTunes, me?? I never
> sell anything that way ha ha
> 
> Mark
> 


www.myspace.com/luisangulocom


      
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