C-P-M-G

How to Become a Record Producer The Music Business Think of the music business as a spider’s web. All around are dotted the carcasses of unwary flies, some formerly fat and juicy, others so small that they were eaten up and spat out in an instant. The flies in my phorical web are musicians, songwriters, arrangers, producers, managers, A&R people, record company executives, music publishers, record, cassette and CD manufacturers, pluggers and marketers, DJs, radio stations, record shops, royalty collection agencies and others. That pretty well covers the whole of the music industry (except the music journalists who are far too agile ever to get trapped!). So what kind of beast is it that sits at the centre of the web, growing fat at the expense of all the other poor creatures who have no option but to succumb to his deadly embrace - the music business lawyer of course! You may have realised this already, but nothing happens in the music business without a lawyer being the go-between in the transaction. A few enlightened souls have discovered that it really is possible to do business on a handshake between honourable people, but for the vast majority, the only way is the legal way. A record producer will definitely need to have a music business lawyer to examine his contract with a record company. The consequences of not doing so could be dire, from a potential loss of all royalties (royalties are often known as ‘points’ in the business, points being a percentage of sales revenue) through to responsibility for budget overruns and possibly even worse. The emphasis here has to be on a getting advice from a specialist music business lawyer. In the past, record companies have dreamed up all kinds of schemes for protecting their own interests against the interests of the creative people who actually earn the money. Although there seems to be a much more responsible attitude developing in the record companies these days, all the old clauses are pre-loaded