Kanye West Posts Over 100 Pages of His Record Label Contracts, Tweet by Tweet Tyler Sharp Published: September 16, 2020 David Crotty / Patrick McMullan, Getty Images Kanye West made. So I have to keep it versus this is archaic and useless. Well, Im looking at the after and, you know, its shorter which which tells me something about the the utility of cutting these bits of archaic language. Right. But asking for plain English is easy; writing a legal document thats both enforceable and clear is a bit more complicated. Its sort of a it, Ross Guberman [00:17:40] hasnt been taken. We didnt spend our advance on cars or jewelry, we bought a house. Thats not the game here, Noonan recalls as the mindset when negotiating contracts. Hit-Boy is an enormously talented songwriter whose relationship we value, a UMPG spokesperson said in a statement to Rolling Stone. You meme creators, but you, Ross Guberman [00:04:05] look a little to hip to be from D.C., though, and. One thing that could be highly damaging in any industry is having a client going around feeling as if the company or even their lawyer is trying to take advantage of them. However, the film has not yet been released. He suggests focusing not on the necessary legal and industry terms but on clearly nonsensical or unnecessarily archaic sections. Advances. The sense is that someone trying to pull a fast one on me. When youre awake to this, you cant be the perpetrator anymore.. 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. The first thing that changes about Record Deals is actually lawyers. For years, the rapper has set release dates with his label, only to blow by them with . 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. So lets shift to the Kanye contract, and were not going to do a full breakdown of what all these documents are, because theres a lot and there are good YouTube videos out there. The documents . Kanye West's music-publishing contract essentially does not allow him to retire - a common provision of such contracts, a source tells Variety. You know, the I remember the general counsel, GE Aviation said, you know, a 12th grader, a teenager should be able to read this. 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. 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. I will never work for a major record label again, Anokute says. Almost no artists recoup so the system obviously doesnt work, but its tempting. Again back to dependents. The remaining$1millionwas to be paid upon completion. West's contracts laid it all out. But there theres a lot you can do there, as the GE example has shown. A month ago, Kanye West had an emotional breakdown on Twitter. Mike Whelan [00:10:12] Hey, everybody, Im Mike Whelen. Fine. Russ and I are going to do a pretty fun and weird thing today. It is a family. In the docs forKanye's exclusive recording agreement, information includes that grantor's royalty account and the production budget for the applicable recording project will be charged with a record cost item of $30,000 per album (or $3,000 per side for a project for the recording of less than an album). This is what were going after. He created the first-of-its-kind editing plug-in BriefCatch. We were lucky because we were careful. So so talk to me about this profit sharing piece. I will not share the image of Kanye West urinating on his Grammy, though. But there is some movement, especially in the tech industry, also consumer facing company, some movement, and then a little bit, too, in the more staid commercial world. The once hesitant label has now hit the. The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time LinkedIns method is still too new for us to know if disputes will come from the different sections. not charge for contracts we cannot understand or track. In in your estimation, does this thread the needle of checking the legal boxes, but also being plain enough? What do you think of Kanye West leaking his own contracts to make a point? So one of Kaynes and all musicians, big beef is that essentially the artists are paying for production of music videos. He got a $12 million pool of money to make "Yeezus" in 2013. Tell me how this is more understandable again for someone, not a 12 year old, but someone like Kanye in the decision making phase. KANYE WEST, an individual, and WEST . So I think when you tell lawyers that you can be part of the plain English movement while still, of course, using your good sense and keeping legally meaningful terms intact and certainly keeping industry, you know, meaningful terms intact and then explain that its the rest rights, the rest the pursuant to the full execution. This past Wednesday, September 16, Kanye West, in an attempt to " change the music industry for good ," shared his recording contracts with Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam Recordings, and Universal. Kanye Wests Record Deal Is Standard. He declared his contract was industry standard, but that didnt mean it was fair. Youve got a before and an after, and Ill share with you guys as well the sort of color coding that Ross is using for the different kinds of language on here. Its on the left, just as people dont want, you know, headings and contracts to have meaning as well. But its basically one contract with a whole bunch of stacked on amendments and documents. Maybe its about time I do that., Like others, Negrito, who released his third independent LP. Mike Whelan [00:03:50] I realized after I got dressed to have our conversation that Im wearing the shirt that apparently everyone in D.C. wears. 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. Kanye West, also now known as Ye, has been named as a suspect in a battery report taken by the Los Angeles police department in the early hours of . We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. Ideally, he says, artists should have legal representation working in their best interest to point out red-flag clauses: While an artist should be wary of what theyre signing rather than looking solely at the immediate paycheck, young and starry-eyed artists whove never seen so much money may not understand that yet. In fact, according to one of his recent Instagram posts, the Three Stripes offered to buy Ye out of his contract for $1 billion. His musical career has been marked by dramatic changes in styles, incorporating an eclectic range of influences including soul, baroque pop, electro, indie rock, synth-pop, industrial and gospel. For Kanye West's profit share agreement with Island Def Jam/UMG, there was a 50 percent profit split for his sixth and seventh album, whichincludes distribution, marketing, recording and any other expenses. . Island Def JamMusic Group also agreed to give Kanye the rights, title and interest in all of the masters for his sixth and seventh album, but only after the reversion datethe last day of the semi-annual accounting periodwhich is 20 years after the initial release of the seventh album. I AM ON MY KNEES THIS MORNING," he tweeted before dropping the proof. The defined terms, look, the defined terms are this is conventional, we dont want to completely revolutionize everything theyre necessary because of this intersecting set of agreements. Most comprehensive library of legal defined terms on your mobile device. The 43-year-old rapper has conceded after his. Right. . I AM ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS PEOPLE ON THE PLANET AND UNIVERSAL WONT TELL ME WHAT MY MASTERS COST BECAUSE THEY KNOW I CAN AFFORD THEM BLACK MASTERS MATTER.". And thats, you know, damaging conclusion from many perspectives. There are no reviews yet. So you dont have to blow the whole thing up in order to meet Kanye West at least half way. 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. 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. 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. Why is a shift to plain language important? Ross Guberman [00:01:18] If it works, right? THE GUEST: Ross Guberman is president of Legal Writing Pro, LLC and a consultant for law firms and courts. Of that, two-thirds ($8 million) was an advance for him to keep. Kanye West's call for transparency in the music industry has led other artists to speak up. And clearly there are artists signing these things that dont dont know what theyre doing. Artists like Kanye feel that they are being cheated. How do I nudge a contract toward plain language without undermining the agreement? Rewrite deals to be understandable from FIRST READ. Kanye West, seen in 2019, has lost business deals in light of his recent antisemitic remarks. September 18, 2020. I PRAY IN THE NAME OF JESUS THAT IT DONT LOOK LIKE THIS TOMORROW," Ye wrote in a tweet with the five accompanying images. Was the pissing on the Grammy to much? He dumped them all on Twitter. So, you know, my provision, these are coded blue brief catch picking up on a lot of those. It's unclear if it actually will. 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. Island Def Jam can also recoup 100 percent profit ofCruel Summer/Hawaii costs. UMG is the parent company of Def Jam and West's G.O.O.D. Ross Guberman [00:22:31] but definitely something to that. Kanye West is at war with the music industry over the ownership of masters and unfair contracts. Report: Kanyes Anti-Semitic Rhetoric Led to Assaults, Vandalism, 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? longtime A&R exec Chris Anokute, Anokute manages several clients including Curtis Waters, who recently went viral through his TikTok hit Stunnin. While Waters was courted by many major labels,at Anokutes counsel, he signed a shorter-term 60-40 profit-split deal with BMG. And theyre advised accordingly by an attorney at law whos telling them to sign this contract, and they say this contract is standard. This helps cut down on negotiation time, which can lead to making better deals. We were lucky because we were careful. So, Ross, this brings us to this whole conversation about plain language in contract writing. Ye also had to seek written approval from the labelat least 14 days before the first recording session. Uploaded for archival purposes. We took the full. Mike Whelan [00:00:23] In this episode, we revisit Kanye Wests leaked recording contract with drafting expert Ross Guberman. Im going to give people a little bit of background on the Twitter rant about contracts. Right. Ye. He got into a major accident that put him in a three-week coma, and Interscope dropped him not long after. Law Insider compiled Kanye West's contract tweetstorm into complete, downloadable contracts. The . Let me do a screen show real quick to show people what were talking about. And it was actually really hard to get through because they were just images. Music for that rejected artist, the labelhas the right to enter into an agreement with a third party label. Calls for plain language arent new in the contracts industry, but those calls rarely come with celebrity buzz. The deal was huge, man, they give you money to live off of. If you push this button, youre going to save big. The first agreement in the series was around the time PDF were new. G.O.O.D. If you look at these agreements, though, from Kanye, that thats not just the CD references that are archaic. Royalty portals need to show (and do not now) Every song you delivered, Every store you are in, How many streams per song Income per song. Whats the principle here? See BBC report here. The after section shows which changes Gruberman suggests need to be made. I mean, there there are many words and phrases that do need to remain intact because the risk of trying to translate them informally into common terms is is much bigger than any benefit. Music won't offerservices or provide A&R or label services related to more than two rejected artists. Were were coloring pictures for you so you understand whats happening here? And, to an extent, they're not wrong. Found online, don't shoot the messenger. Copyright 2023 Penske Business Media, LLC. And then what happens is, as you can see from his other related tweets, the sense is not just, well, I dont understand the contract. "Today artists get just 12% of the money the industry makes. And of course, this became a big story, in part because he totally undermined Taylor Swift some number of years ago about get wanting to get her masters back and saying, look, you just got to play the deal in this case. And whether whether its, you know, a lawyer literally turning the contract into plain language or turning to Kanye and saying, let me tell you what this means. We don't know - still - who the next US president will be, but we do know who it won't be - Kanye West. Everybody go get it. 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].. Where you calling from? Thats probably more than enough. Will we be seeing a President Kanye? Kanye West is seen at a Donda listening event at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on July 22, 2021 in Atlanta, Georgia. Every audio file, every asset, every deal stored WITH the money. I mean, shoot, producers can take $15,000 to $20,000 a piece on each track. The suit said West. This is a tool that is available to anyone looking to implement plain language into their contracts. You need a business manager to read how you did? Money and Music must stay together. So, yeah, there you go. Right. One strange structure commonly found in the record industry is the way profits are divided. 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. Within the deal, Kanye was obligated to release six albums, inaddition tohis initial effort, TheCollege Dropout(2004), within a 12-month span. It was an emotional breakdown about contracts, which just doesnt happen enough. He's also called for Drake, Bono, Paul McCartney,. So I want you to do it, take advantage of it. Ye says he wants his four children to own them. Wests contract could even be considered favorable among superstar contracts, with Universal heavily investing in Wests works, entertainment attorney Christiane Kinney says. Well make sure you get a deal as well. He says the industry must holistically evaluate how to improve for any major changes to shift. 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. Mike Whelan [00:17:41] an interpretive sca band and Im going to have to look for the domain name. And so Kanye is at this point where hes like, dude, I got to have some other ways to make money. So you dont want to run around changing materiality. The recording fund amounts for Yeezy's third through seventh albums were listed as follows:third album: minimum recording fund $300,000, maxing recording fund $650,000;fourth album: minimum recording fund $325,000, maxing recording fund $700,000;fifth album: minimum recording fund $400,000, maxing recording fund $850,000;sixth album: minimum recording fund $425,000, maxing recording fund $900,000;seventh album: minimum recording fund $450,000, maxing recording fund $950,000. The contracts show Kanye received a $2.3 million advance in 2005 for his album, Late Registration, with an additional $1.2 million as a recording budget.For . Wests contract could even be considered favorable among superstar contracts, with Universal heavily investing in Wests works, entertainment attorney Christiane Kinney says. Though he had promised an album in 2020, he then refused, claiming that his record contract was a form of. For Kanye, his 15% royalty rate on wholesale for each sneaker sold has netted him roughly $150 million pre-tax annually. They dont want they dont want whats on the right to somehow control. And guys, this is a super long document. 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. The partnership was a nightmare for both Negrito and the label, he says. We need plain English contracts. You want to get in and get as much as you can is what we were told. Just minutes prior, he had finished tweeting out the entirety of his Universal contract, one page at a time for a total of more than 100 tweets. "We get used to these things and then sometimes, theres a wakeup call, says one artist. Ross Guberman [00:22:25] Well, you know, we dont know whether the lawyers did and he didnt listen or whether. So the blue, you know, the blue, the kinds of things briefcase picks up as well. Lets get back to the show. 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. Almost no artists recoup so the system obviously doesnt work, but its tempting. Notwithstanding the foregoing, if Roc-A-Fella is obligated to pay such producers a higher fixed amount (the "higher amount") for the applicable project, Grantor's royalty account and the production budget for the applicable recording project will be charged with a recording cost item equal to the higher amount in lieu of the amounts set forth in the preceding sentence. Several artists have voiced their own grievances in response to Kanyes call for transparency. Were lucky we were told the truth in so many ways.. Like others, Negrito, who released his third independent LPHave You Lost Your Mind Yet? How can you rewrite a contract to be understandable without losing the original intent? They would pay Kanye back after the successful completion of the film, provided it was up to standards. The you know, the goal is not the same. 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While Anokute points the barrel primarily at the labels dishing out deals arguing that these deals perpetuate the very inequalities for black artists that the labels have said theyre looking to change he acknowledges that labels alone cant take all the blame for unfriendly artist deals. After a slight struggle trying to share the files, Kanye boasted that him revealing his old record label contracts was going to be a literal game changer. Well see you guys next time. Theres a lot going on here. How are businesses shifting to using plain language? Obviously, we cant share the whole thing, but well make sure that you have a link to the whole thing in the show notes over at LawInsider.com/Resources. So lets tear it down. If you are interested in being a guest on Contract Teardown, please email us at community@lawinsider.com. The label additionally had the right to release one Greatest Hits album. One way to begin is by bracketing off phrases or words that you know have a substantive value. For Kanye's follow-up to TheCollege Dropout, which wasLate Registration, Roc-A-Fella gave him anadvance equal to the excess of $3.5 million over recording costs. Kanye West continues his campaign against major record labels. Is this different than the LinkedIn attempt? As Kanye West escalates his battle with Universal Music Group, the Chicago rapper decided to share the entirety of his record contract on Twitter. In this episode of the Contract Teardown show, guest Diana Isyanova shares three possible approaches. West also made his feelings towards the label clear in 2020, when he tweeted images of his record contract, noting he felt he was treated unfairly. I wrote a book. Maybe its about time I do that.. Addeddate 2020-09-21 23:04:27 Identifier KanyeWestContracts Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t0jt91382 Ocr Ultimately, the issue seems to be that there wasnt somebody with him saying this is what it means. on the Internet. Youve been dealing with this for a while. Those are four ways to keep the conversation going. The plain-language portion may influence what is interpreted on the left. If youre part of a team, just email us if youre in house or in a law firm. Music or such label paying Island Def Jam Music Group acounterbalance amountagainst overhead payments in an amount equal to the overhead payments in the applicable contract year multiplied by a fraction. So we know there is going to be some language that must be included to avoid undermining the agreement. Labels are taking risks on any given signing and need to make offers that keep the company profitable. Although, there is a concern here. Kanye West Tweets About His '10' Recording Contracts: 'I Need Every Lawyer in the World to Look at These' In his latest string of tweets about his recording deals Wednesday (Sept. 16),. Scooter Braun Projects is a talent management company that is more than just a company. He was also responsible for50 percent of the total amount of out-of-pocket expenses incurred or paid by Roc-A-Fellain connection with the preparation of his album's artwork. Is this realistic to even talk about plain language and contract drafting? West is also no longer with record label Def Jam a Universal Music Group subsidiaryas he has fulfilled his contract, Forbes reported Thursday, and his own label, G.O.O.D. Law Insider, in partnership with Laura Frederick and How to Contract, is hosting ContractsCon 2023, a live training and networking event focused on practical contract drafting and negotiating skills for in-house counsel and contracts professionals. Are they making too much? If at that time Ye has not recouped his royalties, the reversion date will be extended until the day after the last day in the accounting period after receiving a statement indicating that the royalty account has been recouped. Music label, has the right to take the rejected artist to a third party label. When your term ends, download it all. Im Mike Whelen. Almost ALL new deals now are based on ALL songs going to a store or app. Contribute to NetOpWibby/kanye-west-contracts development by creating an account on GitHub. For his initial contract period, Yeezy received 8percent of all singles and long-play singles,14 percent of the royalty base with respect to master recordings during initial contract period,14 percent of sales of an album in excess of 500,000 units and15 percent of sales of an album in excess of 1 million units. And Im going to share a few images. Music, is no. (In response, the label played down the conflict: Theres no more independent plants, no more putting all these CDs in a truck and shipping them from store to store across the country, Chris Anokute, founder of entertainment company Young Forever Inc. and a former A&R executive for labels including Capitol and Island Def Jam, tells, Anokute manages several clients including Curtis Waters, who recently, While Anokute points the barrel primarily at the labels dishing out deals arguing that these deals perpetuate the very inequalities for black artists that the, 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. Two-Thirds ( $ 8 million ) was an emotional breakdown on Twitter to even talk about plain language and drafting! 22, 2021 in Atlanta, Georgia given signing and need to make offers that the... Any given signing and need to make & quot ; in 2013 of legal defined terms on mobile. 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