I need to get this off my chest. Last year, I've produced some pop tracks for an artist. We made a deal: I'd record, produce and mix his music for a flat fee and a part of the master rights.
I knew this guy was a real business man and he'd do anything to end up on top. I made the mistake of trusting this artist with our agreement and he broke it in a way I can't do jack shit about it. I formally gave away my copyrights, even though I put a significant amount of time in bringing the song together: I helped finetune the lyrics and structure of the song, so I already knew giving away my copyrights may have not been the best move, but he insisted, so I thought what the hell, let's just make these tracks and it'll be just fine. Quick note: this was halfway the project already and we should have made an agreement from the start, knowing that I'd help with the songwriting part as well.
I was pretty new to pop music at the time, so I wasn't the perfect producer, which he knew, but he still wanted to move forward with me. Now here comes the shitty part. He paid a more expensive and experienced producer to re-produce one of the tracks, when he landed an important sync deal. The producer made an exact copy of the track, but made a better sounding version. The artist then used that version of the song for the movie he scored the sync deal with. I got NOTHING. Absolutely nothing.
Moral of the story: do not EVER give away your copyrights. People sometimes suck and fuck you over by not acknowledging the fact that you were a part of the process. I threw away half a year on this project and I didn't even get credited. So: learn about rights and how to make an official agreement. Don't be stupid enough to trust people no matter what. I made that mistake, so don't you make it too! Trust me, it's not worth it.
Submitted July 03, 2017 at 04:16AM by Anoesj https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/6kyfy7/how_to_not_get_fucked_by_artists/?utm_source=ifttt