If I've already started work for a client, is it too late to negotiate a contract? Right now I'm just working of off "we'll give you an unspecified amount of money up front when it's finished and an unspecified percentage of profits if it's successful."
my number one rule with anything i've ever written for money is this - never send the final product until the check has cleared.
years and years ago, i was engineering and mixing an album for a friend of a friend. sent him the final mixes before he'd paid me because i thought "well, he's a friend of a friend. of course i can trust him."
the guy DISAPPEARED. never returned any phone call or message. so much work down the toilet.
]]>Basically, my advice is this: don't ever feel like you are being too difficult to work with, just because you are requesting proper contracts and documentation of the work you'll be doing. It's business. People do paperwork all the time. If anything, it shows them that you are professional and you take your work seriously. If they don't want to deal with contracts, you need to ask yourself whether you want to work with people that won't treat you like a professional. That choice is up to you.
Hope that helps.
I think it does.
]]>What the actual fuck is going on here
]]>- Names of both parties involved, hereinafter referred to as "Company" and "Contractor"
- Description of work, including exact # of songs to be composed and # of sound effects requested, whether to be created or just purchased on our behalf
- A cost breakdown, provided by musician to be agreed upon in the contract, of price per song, and price for hourly work applied toward sound effects, with an estimate of how long that would take
- A clause making it clear that additional work requests from the Company would require an additional statement of work
- A statement of how soon we were expected to pay once the work was delivered, and if we were to pay any portion up front
Usually in these contracts, we would only be responsible for paying the final total amount calculated in the contract, even if the musician ended up doing more work. If they hit their limit of what they estimated and needed to request more money, they would have to come to us to reevaluate the contract / make an amendment before doing more work, to guarantee they would get paid.
Basically, my advice is this: don't ever feel like you are being too difficult to work with, just because you are requesting proper contracts and documentation of the work you'll be doing. It's business. People do paperwork all the time. If anything, it shows them that you are professional and you take your work seriously. If they don't want to deal with contracts, you need to ask yourself whether you want to work with people that won't treat you like a professional. That choice is up to you.
Hope that helps.
]]>I'm finding everything on here very informative.
]]>One good thing that came out of that (besides Keff's awesome design) was this outline of how a contest of this nature should actually be structured by The Graphic Artists Guild. I think I followed all the recommendations.
Link to that: https://www.graphicartistsguild.org/res … petitions/
Those are good guidelines indeed...
]]>VCMG wrote:This information would have been incredibly useful to me if it was written a month ago. Would've kept me from making mistakes.
If I've already started work for a client, is it too late to negotiate a contract? Right now I'm just working of off "we'll give you an unspecified amount of money up front when it's finished and an unspecified percentage of profits if it's successful."
Do you know the people personally? Are they friends of yours? If not, you're basically screwed. You can try and pull things back a bit to negotiate a contract but essentially you've already got one. You agreed to a verbal contract of unspecified returns.
Damn. Oh well, I guess I'll just learn from this and keep it in mind next time.
]]>Link: http://chipmusic.org/forums/topic/5541/ … -winner-o/
One good thing that came out of that (besides Keff's awesome design) was this outline of how a contest of this nature should actually be structured by The Graphic Artists Guild. I think I followed all the recommendations.
Link to that: https://www.graphicartistsguild.org/res … petitions/
]]>This information would have been incredibly useful to me if it was written a month ago. Would've kept me from making mistakes.
If I've already started work for a client, is it too late to negotiate a contract? Right now I'm just working of off "we'll give you an unspecified amount of money up front when it's finished and an unspecified percentage of profits if it's successful."
Do you know the people personally? Are they friends of yours? If not, you're basically screwed. You can try and pull things back a bit to negotiate a contract but essentially you've already got one. You agreed to a verbal contract of unspecified returns.
]]>This information would have been incredibly useful to me if it was written a month ago. Would've kept me from making mistakes.
If I've already started work for a client, is it too late to negotiate a contract?
The real answer to this question is "maybe" with a strong dependency on whether or not you have clauses allowing you to amend the agreement. You should see a lawyer if you think there is eminent danger of liability.
Part of the strategy of making sure there are default conditions in a deal is to make sure you have a way to exit if things aren't as good as you thought.
]]>If I've already started work for a client, is it too late to negotiate a contract? Right now I'm just working of off "we'll give you an unspecified amount of money up front when it's finished and an unspecified percentage of profits if it's successful."
]]>First and formost, when you're contracted to make a soundtrack you need to look at it as work. Not a hobby. It is a different mindset than writing an album for your own pleasure. Like actual work or any day job, you should expect to be paid. Therefore, you should never be giving tracks away for free or without being paid first. A contract solves all these problems and it helps to let both parties know what they're in for. As for some key things to consider in your contracts: fees, album distribution rights, revenue share, schedule, just to name a few.
You should be as professional as possible and not afraid to negotiate. Do not undersell your services because you think it would be fun to have your music in a game. It sets a precedent for our community.
A big issue you should agree on first are fees including being paid a % upfront before work is started. You can set milestones along the way for other payments. This is where having a schedule will come in handy. Set a completion date, a review date, a discussion date, initial writing date. Whatever you think you'll need. Add stipulations for rework so they don't have you writing 5 OSTs rather than 1 and change.
Thats really only the tip of the iceberg and I am sure other people could elaborate.
]]>I have my own Exclusive and Non-Exclusive licenses which I use for all freelance gigs I do lately, and type them both out in full to the client to see which one they're interested in doing and which one their budget will allow.
It would be helpful if you have time to bullet list the highlights of your sample contracts.
I don't mean for this thread to call anyone in particular out or accuse anyone of anything in particular, I wanted to make a positive demonstration of what makes sense (for both client and artist) in a business proposal. Once you consider both sides of a deal (what client does for artist and what artist does for client) it becomes easier to recognize an unbalanced offer, and it becomes easy to remedy since all you need to do is add or remove terms to one of the sides.
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