There is a long chain of activities involved in the process of the production, distribution and reproduction of a piece of music, and a bit of it has nothing to do with the record label itself, but knowledge is required to achieve success in the biz. There are 3 main components when we look at it in the widest sense- the artist and their music (software); the means of transmitting or distribution to the customer; and the method by which it is played (hardware). The diagram at the beginning of this leaflet shows it in the widest sense! So, you need a little explanation of the specialist terms and conditions that come along with the diagram? Don't worry! That's what we made this booklet for! We will use the diagram as our foundation, build the house through the leaflet and you can put the roof on it!.
Artists.
The relationship between record companies is often stereotyped as antagonistic, with the record companies seen as being the hostile party. I put this down to a lot of bad publicity from the media and the high profile that is given to record company Vs. artist court cases, the most recent one being George Michael Vs. Sony records.
There are many different artist contracts that labels offer to artists, many have traditional clauses within the 75-100 page contracts. To any budding artists reading this, if you are offered a recording contract, I would get a music lawyer to look over it, not someone who deals with divorce because they're £100 pounds cheaper because you will find yourself divorcing the label if this stage isn't carried out correctly!.
The most common type of contract offered by majors' (this term will be explained later) is the contract where they give the new artist a sign on fee (advance) and most of the deal is based on the number of records sold. This advance can be anything from £150,000 to £60 million in the case of Mariah Carey when Virgin signed her after her contract with Sony ended.
