Darrin McGillis Productions

A band is a business. The more you treat your band like a business, the more likely you are to succeed in the industry. There are essentially three forms a business can take. First is a sole proprietorship. If you are a solo artist, this is the route to take. However, if you are a band, this form is unavailable for obvious reasons. Therefore, your choices are between a partnership or a corporation. There are a few other forms businesses can take, limited partnerships, limited liability companies, etc., but they are too complicated to address here. A corporation is an interesting concept. The way it works is you create a company which is owned by stockholders. This stock is not traded on the Stock Exchange, but owned by the band members. In the entertainment industry, a band which incorporates forms what is know as a loan-out corporation. What the corporation does is contract with other parties for your services. For example, if you have a loan-out corporation and you get a record dea...

Sampling is the use of portions of prior recordings which are incorporated into a new composition. Sampling has become an integral part of many genres of music today. When you sample someone's song without permission, it is an instant copyright violation. It is the unauthorized use of copyrighted material owned by another. Sampling without permission violates two copyrights-the sound recording copyright (usually owned by the record company) and the copyright in the song itself (usually owned by the songwriter or the publishing company). If you want to use a sample legally, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. The copyright owner is usually a publishing company or record label. Remember that you must obtain permission from both the owner of the sound recording and the copyright owner of the underlying musical work. The fee for a license to use a sample can vary tremendously. The fee will depend on how much of the sample you intend to use (a quarter second is a mino...

Work for hire is a special term used in the United States Copyright Act. Normally, when a person or group creates a copyrightable work, whether a song or a computer program or a sculpture, the person or persons creating the work have a copyright in the work. Thus, the creators can exploit the work and receive money for their creative energies. A work for hire is when a person creates a copyrightable work but does not own it. How can this be? The Copyright Act allows for the copyright to go not to the creator but to the person who hired the creator to make the work. The law treats the creator as if he did not even participate. The employer owns the copyright and it is as if they created the work themselves without any help from the actual creator. Musicians should be very careful of work for hire contracts. Under a work for hire contract, you have absolutely no right in the music you create. There are legitimate times when work for hire contracts are acceptable. If you write music f...

Contracts are the life-blood of the entertainment industry. This article addresses many of the dangers and misunderstandings about contracts within the music business. First, always get something in writing. Second, make sure you understand the contract you are presenting and the contract you are signing. These may seem obvious, but as discussed below, this advice is seldom followed. Although you may come to agreement orally as to the general terms, you should always reduce the understanding to writing. There are many reasons why you should get it in writing. First, a writing serves to memorialize the understanding between the parties. As time goes by, the two parties might have different memories as to what constitutes their agreement. By getting it in writing, there are no disputes over the terms of the contract. Second, written contracts are much more likely to be enforced by a court in the event of disagreement. Oral agreements are not always unenforceable, but a judge is much ...

This column is simply some general words of advice for aspiring musicians. These comments reflect only my personal experience and observation (over the past 20 plus years), and you will find people who will disagree with me. With that caveat, take it for what it is worth. The first thing all musicians must do is act professional. The people who have power in the music industry (record labels, club owners, managers, etc.) are professionals. Music is their full-time business and their livelihood. They expect to be treated with respect. By acting professional, you immediately rise to another level in their eyes. When a musician calls me on the phone, I can tell in a relatively short period of time whether they are someone I should take seriously, i.e. professional. This sentiment is mirrored by countless other music industry insiders I have spoken with. Professionalism will take a band a long way. A similar bit of advice is to educate yourself about the entertainment industry. Take time o...