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"Record earning" deemed oxymoronic

Can record deals ever be fair?

By Terry Noone & David James

The chief executive and chairman of EMI, Alain Levy, recently penned an article in the Financial Times citing a conversation with a newspaper editor who was "terrified" of the online world. "That is exactly how we in the record industry felt five years ago," writes Levy. He cites what he regards as the competitive advantage of record companies: "Getting a record deal is as important as ever to musicians - not only because of the investment a record company commits to you, to the production of your record, to marketing spend in 70 countries, but because someone will work hard to generate all kinds of income out of your work."

It sounds good, but there is an obvious difference between what happens to journalists and what happens to musicians. Journalists are employed; even when they are just casuals or freelancers, they are paid and treated as an up-front expense. Musicians typically enter into a joint venture arrangement whose main characteristic is a lack of equality. They are often not paid, and routinely finish their contract in debt. When inexperienced teenagers strike an alliance with a large corporation; the outcome is wholly predictable.
Witness the following comment from Stephen Grant, a lawyer with Nanscowan Grant solicitors (see the sidebar for more of this interview). It was in relation to some advice given to two young musicians, Steve Mackay and Heath King from a band called "Flow".
"I can tell you no, I was not engaged by [the record company] I was paid by the guys from [the band]," he says.

Look a little closer, however, and the money trail becomes quite interesting. Grant says: "The funds that I was paid were paid by way of an advance against their recording and publishing deal. And that's quite a common situation that occurs with a number of recording artists… but I'm completely independent from them and the advice I provide to them was absolutely on the basis of it being independent and I have no connection otherwise with any of the recording companies that my clients … that any of the recording artists are involved with."
It looks suspiciously like the advance came from the record company. It certainly was not seen by the musicians. Is it an advance paid against a recording and publishing deal that hasn't even been signed yet? Grant, with perhaps unconscious irony says: "I think recording and music industry contracts in some ways in Australia and throughout the world are, I think, unfair and unreasonable in some ways."
No argument there. Neither is it news that musicians rarely if ever get a good deal when negotiating contracts. Unfortunately, the signs are that things are getting worse. Management contracts in which 20% of the gross earnings of artists go to the manager are increasingly common. Such a deal makes it virtually impossible for musicians to make any money at all and usually leaves them in debt. To add insult to injury many of these contracts tie up musicians for years with no chance of renegotiation until their careers are effectively over.
Recording and publishing contracts are similar. Unfair royalty splits, extremely long terms and no effective termination or performance clauses - and once signed, musicians just have to cop it sweet. Most publishing contracts give the publisher a hefty slice of royalties from any source for the privilege of collecting them.
Formerly, publishers would plug compositions and generate income. Many contracts actually state that the artist has engaged independent legal advice before signing the contract. On a musician's income, this is less than likely to be self-funded. So who often arranges the legal advice? The record company, of course.
None of this should be a surprise. When young musicians, with little or no business knowledge, attempt to negotiate a deal with a big company, or, worse, a global corporation, it is hard to imagine how the result could be equitable.
So what about a really radical idea for a record company? Employ musicians. Give the artists some residual sharing of any rewards, but make sure the bulk of the gains and the risks are borne by the entity most able to bear it - the record company.
This is not about to happen any time soon. It is an unfortunate side effect of the war over file sharing and digital piracy that the record companies are used to owning what musicians produce while the pirates regard it as free, with financial rewards going elsewhere. If there is concern shown for musicians by either side, it tends to be an afterthought. But at least with less money around, there might be fewer funds available to hire lawyers representing your interests.

Terry Noone and David James are definitely not funded by any record company. Oh, you mean does the record company pay them...um... yeah...well, that's different....

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Far better to show these insincere qualities to the outside world than to frighten the horses of public life by continually demonstrating the psychological and moral blackness that lurks deep, but not too deep, within.

One thing I am sincere about, however, is loving a particular woman. I have been married to this girl for many years, and she grows more beautiful with age, which is a remarkable thing, considering what she is married to.

At times I am convinced that she, too, is not doing a complete Walter Cronkite act when she professes to feel similarly towards me. I know, however, that there is another person who stirs her in a way that I will never be able to do, unless I somehow miraculously straighten my hair, master several musical instruments, begin writing classy poetry that rhymes and learn how to move women on all sides of the English-speaking world.

Even Bruce Springsteen's wife loves him. He is Jackson Browne.

The above is only a partial list of Browne's accomplishments. If my wife were writing the column, she may add harmony and melody, a lovely singing voice, a gorgeous face that never ages, the ability to draw together some of the world's most interesting musicians and an amazing facility with song lyrics.

For myself, I think Browne's lyrics come under the heading of classy poetry that rhymes. To successfully fill this category is no small accomplishment in the rather long historical era we occupy, in which it is widely believed that a necessary condition of classy poetry is that it should never rhyme.

That is, of course, bollocks. But it is culturally powerful bollocks, and therefore no surprise that today, it is popular songwriters, and popular songwiters alone, who are able to create the verbal images which speak most powerfully to the modern soul. (One example, plucked randomly from Browne and suggesting, I think, the adult search for intimate love:

Everyone's just waiting to hear from the one
Who can give them the answers
And lead them back to that place in the warmth of the sun
Where sweet childhood still dances.

Browne does this, and does it well. From my observation, he does it particularly well for women.

There is no jealousy about what I'm saying here. Not much, anyway. I bought my first Browne album, The Pretender, on vinyl, years before I met my future wife. This fact now causes strange moments to occur, when, from the other end of the house, I hear her singing Browne, and I know all the words.

There are times when certain Browne lines -- "we'll fill in the missing colors in each other's paint by number dreams" is one -- vividly brings to mind the faces of friends, long gone, with whom I once held long, agonised conversations about love and the future, as Jackson rotated in the background.

The Pretender, I must note in passing, holds one of the best proofs in existence of the artistic non-corniness of rhyme, when Browne strings together a remarkable six lines with words ending in "end-er", to match the title of the song. Not one of the six is forced. Great couplet-eers like Dryden and Pope would take their hats off to this. If you do not believe, listen to the song again.

You may gather from all this that I am not seriously, or even significantly anti-Jackson Browne. Tolerant as I am, I do not even object to Browne's Californian liberal politics. For example, I enjoyed the No Nukes concert and movie package which he helped inspire in the 1970s, and though the threat of nuclear conflagration appears so far to have been be over-rated as a civilisational danger, with the likes of Osama bin Laden hanging around, you never really know. Browne's politics, though, are more anti-American than anti-Osama, in a George Clooney-Motion Picture Academy kind of way.

But Browne is better -- unapproachable, in fact -- when he concentrates on his core business, which I would define as lyrically moving women. As someone else has told me, he really understands women. Songs like Sky Blue and Black prove this, with their evocation of such realities as the place in a relationship where "the touch of a lover ends And the soul of a friend begins." You mean, it ain't just all about sex?

What kind of a man writes songs like this? JB does.

So here is the critical question. When Browne performs these songs, is he being sincere? Or is he just faking it? Can a man sing with the same passion about love's tragedies, life's hopes and the unquenchable desire for life that he expressed in his 30s, when he's nearly 60?

I can't answer this question, but I hope to form an impression one way or the other, when I see him perform in April. I'll be there with my loved one.

I want to keep an eye on her.

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