Episode 25 - Music Business: Pt. 1
Show Notes
Music Business: Pt. 1
Live with Matt Rad - Episode 25
Nov 3, 2020
w/ Jon Castelli - Week 23
Show notes by: Bradley Will
You have to be an entrepreneur, and you are the center of the business.
Attorney
The first person that most people need to hire is an attorney to handle legal contracts.
Jeffrey Light - Matt’s first attorney - ended up being his manager.
If you’re a producer/mixer at Jon’s level, every time that you work on a song that’s going to be released there is a contract. Therefore your attorney will be necessary.
1 point is 1% of royalties. or you get hired as “work for hire”. The majority (90%) of Jon’s work is royalty deals.
Normally Jon is on the same contract as the producer. It’s a copyright ownership contract.
2. Manager
They do a lot of things. They will expand your reach and take things off of your plate.
The need for a manager varies wildly across the spectrum of writers, producers, mixers, engineers, etc.
You need a manager when there’s too much on your plate to handle both the creative and the financial.
Managers are more about strategy.
An attorney has a legal degree and a manager is just very good at being social.
Jon thinks that as an engineer you should learn to manage yourself for a while.
When you get to the place where Matt and Jon are at your manager becomes your most important team member. They will be your right-hand person.
Maria Egan used to be Matt’s manager for 8 years. Now she works at Splice.
She connected Matt to other people. Extended his relationships.
Manages your perceptions to others.
Operates as a buffer for business negotiations.
Peter and Lucas at Milk and Honey are Matt’s new manager. He did due-diligence on them before signing and asked his old manager on how to find out about someone.
Lucas is the head guy at Milk and Honey. Peter is the rep for Matt.
Nathaniel Cochrane is Jon’s manager.
Jon specifically sought someone as a manager who is NOT perceived as a shark, because they will represent him.
The number of people on Jon’s manager’s roster is 3.
The function of gossip from an evolutionary standpoint is to get the opinions and perceptions of the people around you. This is extremely important for attorney’s and managers. Talk around and see what everyone else thinks about them. See what others have to say about them.
You need someone who’s going to pick up the phone every day. Someone who you can have a personal relationship with.
3. Business Manager
This was the last person on Matt’s team. They take over your finances. Most people don’t need that.
When choosing business people you want to have a relationship that you trust. You want to be able to have very honest and uncomfortable conversations with them. It’s also important how they are perceived, because they will be representing you. This is huge.
Generally, an attorney will take 5%
A manager will take 15-20%
A business manager will take generally 5%
Q: How often are your managers seeking out new work or handling current workload?
Jon:
Jon’s work gets him work. Word of mouth. Nathaniel is out negotiating the deals on his behalf.
Occasionally Jon will task him with bigger picture, trying to get specific clients that Jon wants to work with eventually.
If Jon gets an email from someone inquiring about work, he will politely email them his manager’s contact info and say that he’s excited to work with them.
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A little advice: If you have to have a conversation with an artist about money: Settle on the price first.
Jon gives them unlimited revisions until the work is done.
If you don’t do that extra work you’re not going to get hired again.
Ask yourself, what is the minimum rate you need to survive mixing tracks based on your overhead and your lifestyle?
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Matt:
Earlier in your career your manager is going to get your name out there.
Your managers will use your work and your reputation to enhance your reputation and get you out there.
Right now Matt is trying to be more involved in the deal-making between managers until he knows that his new managers have a good workflow going.
Whenever your work falls apart and you’re unable to reach a deal with someone, Matt reaches out and says “Hey, it didn’t work out this time. Let’s just make some great music in the future”.
Q: When do you do things on spec?
Matt:
Has definitely done lots of stuff on spec.
His breakthrough was doing One Direction on spec.
These days he’s not willing to do stuff on spec, unless it’s superstar. Do it selectively.
Sometimes you want to do spec work for the practice. Get your reps in.
You’ve got to do great work. That’s what’s going to get you paid in the future.
Take shots when you have them. If you’ve got a shot to shoot up a level by taking a spec job, take it.
Jon:
You do spec until you don’t do spec.
There are only two artists that Jon would consider doing spec work for. And that’s to get the artist un-entrenched from their long-standing engineer.
Don’t do a spec mix on something you’re not the right fit for. It fails every time.
DO do spec work on the projects that you know that you’re going to kill it: The strategic spec.
Nobody is too good for spec. You become too busy for spec.
Q: Would you ever mix things for free?
Matt:
Yes for friends and passion projects.
Never for professional work. Always on spec.
Matt writes with artists all the time for free. If they use the song they have to pay him.
Jon:
Jon mixes two free projects a years for friends, pro-bono.
Your arc on business people:
Matt:
Started producing bands and hip hop records when a teen
Most people weren’t paying him.
He was making beats and recording hooks.
He started recording enough things that it got him new work and he started charging.
Once Matt had a deal to be done he needed an attorney.
He got hooked up with Eric Valentine’s attorney, Jeffrey Light.
Jeremiah Graber used to be Matt’s manager. Used to manage Jacquire King.
He had nobody for a long time, then an attorney, then a manager, then a new manager when he got a publishing deal, then a business manager when he realized he was spending 5 days a month going through receipts.
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Jon pays his engineers. There’s no free work from them along the way.
They get paid and get to learn. He got this model from Tony.
It is hugely, hugely important to do great work.
