Music Contracts and the Millions Artists Don’t Make

In today’s age, many young people want to be rappers, singers, YouTubers, or professional athletes. While many of these aspiring youth realize that they need to have talent and work hard to have one of these careers, talent and hard work are not what drives them to want either of these careers. The “reward” that artists, YouTubers, and professional athletes receive for their talent and hard work is what inspires most young people today. Social media depicts artists, YouTubers, and professional athletes living lavish lifestyles. The media frequently shows them flaunting money, driving luxury cars, and living in large homes. Impressionable youth are often motivated by these lifestyles when they aspire to be artists, YouTubers, or professional athletes. They equate success in these careers with unfathomable wealth.

However, their ambitions are misplaced. In most of these careers, success does not equate to wealth. While many artists, YouTubers, and professional athletes are successful in their careers, they are often not paid fairly for their contributions to their respective industries. Their contracts are often plagued with poor negotiations, greedy executives, and substandard representation.[1] Especially contracts for music artists. Music contracts are frequently exploitative.[2] These contracts "often contain terms that heavily favor record labels or management companies.”[3] For instance, “[t]hese terms may include lengthy and binding agreements that restrict an artist’s creative freedom, control over their own music, and the ability to work with other entities.”[4]

While many of these terms bind artists to agreements that work against their self-interest, the most detrimental term arising from music contracts is the allowance for “the unequal distribution of revenue between artists and their labels or management companies.”[5] As a result of this type of unfavorable term, “[a]rtists often receive a significantly smaller percentage of the profits generated from their music compared to what the label or management company takes.”[6] For this reason, many artists suffer from financial instability, which in turn makes “it challenging to sustain their career and livelihood despite their creative contributions.”[7]

Consequently, to address the issues associated with music contracts, there needs to be reform to the process of entering into such a life-altering agreement. Legal reform could be the start of this process. For example, ‘[g]overnments can play a role in establishing regulations that protect artists’ rights, encourage fair negotiations, and ensure the enforcement of transparent contracts.”[8] Furthermore, the government could help establish a law that requires artists to have adequate representation,[9] sufficient education on the terms of their contract,[10] and penalties for companies who exploit their artists through music contracts. Without this legal reform, the inequity and abuse of artists caused by exploitive music contracts will continue. Enforcing sufficient consequences to disincentivize the lucrative nature of contract inequality is the next step to saving young artists from the predatory nature of these companies. Thus, it is imperative that there be some type of legal transformation that regulates how music contracts are executed.

[1] See generally Drew Schwartz, Black Artist are Still Getting Ripped Off the Way Little Richard Was, Vice (Oct. 21, 2020), https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3vb5j/little-richard-made-millions-it-all-went-to-his-label.

[2] See generally Drew Schwartz, Bad Deals are Baked Into the Way the Music Industry Operates, Vice, https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3gmjw/bad-deals-are-baked-into-the-way-the-music-industry-operates.

[3] Paul G. Oliver, Exploitative Music Contracts: Unfair Artist Agreements in the Music Contracts, Medium (May 30, 2023), https://medium.com/inside-the-music-industry/exploitative-contracts-unfair-agreements-in-the-music-industry-8d04209ea5db#:~:text=Exploitative%20contracts%20often%20contain%20terms,to%20work%20with%20other%20entities.

[4] Id.

[5] Id.

[6] Id.

[7] Id. 

[8] Oliver, supra note 3.

[9] See generally Adequate Legal Representation Laws, Legal Match, https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/adequate-legal-representation-laws.html.

[10] See generally Ways to Tackle Exploitation in the Music Industry, Yellowbrick (Sept. 10, 2023), https://www.yellowbrick.co/blog/entertainment/ways-to-tackle-exploitation-in-the-music-industry.