Why do we need a contract for everything we do nowadays? Rent a house, buy a car, perform a service, and you’ll more than likely have to sign a contract. It’s the same in the music business. Maybe even more so. I have so many different kinds of contracts that I’ve devoted one entire file cabinet to them. I label them under one all encompassing header: P.I.A. (Pain In the *#!)
Every once in a while I’ll look through my P.I.A. file just to see what exactly I have contracted myself to do. You know, 99% of the time it involves doing something in exchange for money. Some typical examples include:
Simple: “I will do this, and you will pay me that.”
Moderate: “I will do this and that but not that, and you will pay this and that but not that.”
Complicated: “Under Clause 5.2, I will do this and that but not that, and if as according to Clause 5.2.1, I do this, but you do not do that, then you must pay me this and that, as well as that, unless of course, as according to Clause 6.3.2, I do this or that, then I will pay you for this and that, as well as that.”
As a rule, the more money that is involved, the more complicated the contract becomes. I thought life was supposed to get simpler once you had enough money. Apparently not. Unless you get a lawyer and an accountant to move in.
Now all this extra paperwork has got me thinking. Do we really need these ridiculously worded documents? Is life really that complicated? Are people really such crooks?
As a Westerner coming to live and work in Taiwan for the first time many years ago, I was definitely a contract biased person. Conditions had to be clearly specified, options had to be discussed, and terms had to be agreed to. I was coming from the standard Western “make it clear, say it straight” mentality. Black or white. This or that. 2+2=4.
Then things slowly started to change. After six years of running around with a contract in my hands saying, “But it says here that…” I realized that contracts were not worth the paper they were printed on. They were just something to make me feel like I had a right to something. Usually a right to get paid. But it rarely worked. As a testimonial, I have yet to receive a dollar in royalties for my first three recordings, even though the contract is written quite clear.
So what started to change? I started to change. I started putting less faith in the paper and more faith in the people behind the paper. I tried to understand what they were thinking, what they were feeling. I tried to put myself in their shoes. I tried to see myself from their perspective.
This is when I realized that I had to depend on my relationship with them and not just the contracts between us. If I couldn’t trust a person without a contract, then how could I trust them with one? I found that in Taiwan, contracts could often make relationships much worse. The whole process of negotiating the contract sort of put a damper on whatever business that was supposed to be conducted. Not many people play golf together after a contract negotiation.
Without noticing it, I blended from a black and white person to a simple shade of gray kind of guy. And in this strange gray world, I ended up getting a lot more work done and getting paid for it as well!
So do I still use contracts? Yes, all the time. I use them as a personality test. For new aspiring artists, I have a standard all-in-one contract that was prepared in legal English. It looks very impressive. It feels important. I hand it to the artist, and tell them to take their time and think about it. See if this is a career they really want to enter. It’s all pretty meaningless. Just the basic stuff: No clauses, waivers, attachments, or funny stuff.
Here’s the test: If the artist comes back with thirty objections and a bunch of faxes from their lawyer, then I know that this person is not ready to enter the Gray World. They obviously don’t trust me, so what’s the use of trying to create a relationship without trust? I tell the artist that maybe they should think about doing something else.
Now if the artist comes back with only a couple of questions, usually pertaining to wording, I tell them to sit down and have some coffee. Let’s chat for a while. At this point the contract doesn’t even matter anymore. They have just entered the Gray World.
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