Two Timing Artist

We all hear stories about managers that two time their clients, but what about the clients that two time their managers. Debra Antney known artist manager in the hip-hop community, with names under her belt like Waka Flocka (her son), Nikka Manaj,Gucci Mane, OJ Da Juiceman, French Montana, and Lex Luger, among many other high-profile acts. She is currently suing her client French Montana for claiming he made several lucrative concert deals behind her back.  She is suing for $50,000 that is her 20% fee that she was cheated out of.

LMFAO was sued by their former managers for 7 million dollars. The group consist of, uncle and nephew Stefan ‘Redfoo’ Gordy and Skyler ‘SkyBlu’ Gordy, have been sued by bosses at personal management company RPM GRP, who claim the band signed a deal with them in 2008 but later ditched the contract and hired two of the firm’s former employees to manage them instead.

Other big names like Taylor Swift and Ke$ha have also faced lawsuits by their managers. DAS Communications requested $14 million in damages after they were fired from Pop star Ke$ha. According the papers filed she made great amount of money in a very short period of time due to DAS efforts.

Taylor Swift’s former manager also sued country singer for millions of dollars, arguing she owes commissions from a contract she signed with him in 2004, according to RollingStone.com. In July 2005, Swift’s father Scott fired Dan Dymtrow and the singer signed with record label Big Machine. Dymtrow claims he was fired because Swift’s family didn’t want to pay his commission after he helped the singer’s music career take off.

 This is more common then most people think. It is important as artist managers to make sure that your have signed contract with any artist you invest time and money in. The artist and the manager generally begin on good note. In most cases, the manager will find an opportunity or negotiate a deal that will set the stage for success. The probabilities are low, but if the song reacts with the public and finds it self on top 40 radios, the artist is set to make several million from publishing and performances.  Managers are generally paid a percentage of the band’s income, often 15% to 20%. More recently managers are being offered salaried contracts instead of percentages, this way an artist can pay a manger half the money for the same amount of work. There are many different types of contracts so make sure your contract list every detail of your agreement.

Basics In Negoiatation

Hello to all, First I would like to thank those that have been keeping up with me and my journey in the music industry. I have learned a so much since my enrollment in Full Sail University. Currently I am taking a class that is all about negotiation and getting people to say yes. There are so many components and tactics to negotiation it is too much to explain in one post but I what to give you some information on key factors. The major topics that I have been learning are:

·     

           Separating the people from the problem- Separating the people from the problem means separating relationship issues (or "people problems") from substantive issues, and dealing with them independently.

·       Positional bargaining- Positional bargaining is a negotiation strategy that involves holding on to a fixed idea, or position, of what you want and arguing for it and it alone, regardless of any underlying interests. The classic example of positional bargaining is the haggling that takes place between proprietor and customer over the price of an item.

·       Objective criteria- Objective criteria are factual pieces of information, independent of the parties in the negotiation, that are relevant to what should or should not be agreed to in that negotiation.

Mutual benefit- A deal that provides simultaneously advantages to all negotiating parties have a reason to walk away from the deal satisfied with the same aspect of the deal

BATNA- Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement

·       Handling Dirty Tricks- Is when Parties may engage in deliberate deception about the facts, their authority, or their intentions

Learning how to incorporate or when not to incorporate the above references have come to help me strategize better then before. I have been watching you tube/podcast about negotiation and I came across one that really peaked my interest. A video on TED Talks by William Ury, author of "Getting to Yes", the video explained that there are 3 sides to a story and the value and position of the third side. The third side can keep an argument on track or be the antidote to a solution. This played such a big role in the way I now view negotiation because prior to this I looked at it as a two way street. Never once did I consider the surrounding community and how that plays a role. This was just week one in the class, in which I have already seen negotiation in a new perspective so I know that there is so much more greatness to come. I have provided some links to other video I found about negotiation that I hope you all take the time to view. I encourage you all to continue to educate yourselves in all areas that you need to be successful in your field. My field is music so I know negotiating things like publishing, beats sales, distribution deal etc will be something I have to be readily armed for. Hope you all enjoyed until next time peace and love.

 Additional source:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWSGF7GR0FM

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc6yi_FtoNo

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1NHqPDzqoU

http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/treatment/pricneg.htm

http://www.beyondintractability.org/bi-essay/positional-bargaining

http://www.sfhgroup.com/blogs/news_and_articles/2005/09/02/using-objective-criteria-to-negotiate-better-agreements/

Relationships in the entertainment industry

It’s seems like celebrity relationships are synonymous with lies, cheating and abuse. I am not saying that this does not happen in the regular peoples lives, but the ratio to that particular group is to high. Do you ever wonder why this is?  Well here is one theory in some of this relationships one partner is the breadwinner. Most cases the man is rich and successful and if he isn’t dating or married to another celebrity he is probably making way more then his partner. Now here’s the big issue most men not all, define themselves and their worth by how much they make and the material things they have. In a shallow society people support this way of thinking, by sleeping with them because they have these things. In turn these men accept these women who throw themselves at them because of these material things and thinks its ok because this lifestyle should come with these perks. I mean what’s the sense of being a celebrity right! Wrong. Being a players or playboy is cool if you are not married or committed to someone. It does not matter how much money you make or what kind of car you drives, these things do not buy out the laws or wrong and right. Now one the other hand there is a lot of trifling women out there to. Women that marry these men or sleep with them for money, Or the rich women that use that use their money or material things to attract young guys we know them as cougars. Here’s the thing people we make the money we can’t allow it to make us. We bring the value to money not the other way around. It takes a real insecure person to believe these things make them important or above laws, whether moral, ethical or legal we are all held accountable.  The divorce rate in the United States has reached 50 percent, and while an exact statistic is not available, the divorce rate in Hollywood is certainly higher.

Here are the top reasons for celebrity divorce as stated by Huff post celebrity

Economic support
Not just celebrities, for all rich people a divorce is easier to decide than most non-rich people. For me, if I wanted to get a divorce, I'd think about the financial side like lawyer expenses, living on one income after getting a divorce, and worry that if I'll ever meet someone I can love again. All these would make me work harder and longer on the problems I have in my marriage. To a person who is not rich, a marriage is one of the few big supports in life. Rich people have a lot of supports -- from ability to shop and travel to start a business, they have so many things in their lives to keep them occupied, get passionate about, and cheer up. 

And celebrities always have people throwing themselves at them. Not just because they are rich, I'm not talking about gold-diggers, but being rich makes them able to socialize a lot more with other rich, famous people (read: eligible bachelors and bachelorettes.), they can also often travel and meet people. A rich person will have more belief in meeting someone they can love again, than someone who lives in a small neighborhood and only gets to meet a limited number of people. Which makes the decision to get a divorce easier.

Things get real when you're married.
Celebrities are like the popular kids in school. We all know them at some level and have an idea on what kind of people they are based on their interviews, news about them, etc. So even celebrities can and do develop crushes on each other over their image in the media. When you're in a relationship with one of them, you get to see the real them. From a movie/music star, they go to being someone's son, the guy who has a crazy uncle, the guy who gets scared of spiders, the guy who is not romantic at all or too mushy, the guy who smells bad in the morning. Some people get disappointed when they see those things because when they met the celebrity, they had expectations over their image, and expectations usually bring disappointment. And some people tolerate the things they dislike about real them for a while, they think they like the things they actually dislike, and those become unavoidable when you're married.

Busy schedule
Actors, models, singers, directors, even some writers travel a lot. They spend months away from home at times. If a woman is celebrity and her husband isn't, it's easier to manage the schedule, the man can travel with his wife. Though even then, the man might find it too tiring after a while and want to settle down somewhere instead of going from one place to another all the time, or when they have a child, one of them will have to stay with the kids so they can go to school. This might cause a lot of problems like the lack of sex, not getting emotional support in person, and not feeling like you're married when you actually are. And when two celebrities are married, they both have a busy schedule. When one of them is giving a concert in Paris, the other one has to give a concert or promote a movie in New York. (When you look at the most long-lasting celebrity marriages, one is a celebrity and his/her spouse isn't.)

Temptation is higher when you're a celebrity
A guy/woman who works at a company will not have anyone kiss them as a part of their job. Actors get to kiss people in movies, singers get to dance with dancers on the stage. Such physical contacts can increase little crushes or create a crush. If that actor is married but have some troubles in his marriage, or doesn't have any problems, but the relationship lost its first passionate excitement like it happens to every long relationship, kissing someone might make him push away from his wife more and might cause him want to go after new excitements, especially sexual ones. Not to mention, celebrities have a lot of people hitting on them all the time.

Cultural difference
Divorce rate is very high in the USA, including in Hollywood. Even in UK (where divorce rate is also not low at all) there are less divorces. For an American celebrity, getting a divorce is "one of the things many people (celebrities) do here," for a British celebrity, getting a divorce would more feel like a fail and unusual because they see Hugh Laurie and his wife Jo Green, Victoria and David Beckham, Sting and Trudie Styler, Colin Firth and Livia Giuggioli, Ewan McGregor and Eve Mavrakis, David Bowie and Iman, Daniel Day-Lewis and Rebecca Miller, Ricky Gervais and Jane Fallon, Christian Bale and Sandra Blažić  and on and on

Age difference
Statistically, couples who have a little or zero age gap between each other have better and longer marriages. Among celebrity couples in Hollywood, the age gap gets bigger and bigger by year. Everyone might get attracted to youth, but actually dating with someone who is significantly older/younger than you is seen as something bizarre in a lot of countries outside the US. Again, it's easier for celebrities to find a partner. If you're a 35 year old businessman, chances are you won't find many 25 year olds who will want to date you. A 35 year old actor will have 25 year old women who like him because he's famous, rich and doesn't seem like a pervert in the media. And when a 35 year old guy dates a 25 year old woman, that relationship has a lower chance to work out than a 35&33 year old couple.

Narcissism
When millions of people tell you that you are awesome, scream when they see you, it's easy to believe you are indeed awesome and treat your spouse like you are better than them and know everything better than them. It doesn't happen to all celebrities, or even most for that matter, but especially among newly-celebs, it's not something too unusual to come across.

At the end of it all don’t enter commitments that you not ready for or don’t mean and definitely don’t think money buys new rules.

The age of Entrepreneurship

With the rise of the Internet and other new communications technologies, the field of entertainment is increasingly difficult to define. In this profile, we're talking about film, television, and music, as well as sports-each a form of entertainment raking in millions of dollars. Today more and more people are breaking out of the traditional work society and starting their own business. The funny thing about the majority of these people is they have joined the entertainment industry. It seems like every time I speak to someone lately they are a photographer, artist, producer, video director, model, actor etc. With the accessibility of the Internet and social media people fell more confident now more then ever to take a shot at the entertainment industry.In entertainment and sports, profit comes from discretionary spending, so these industries enjoy the most success in economically stable countries where leisure dollars flow freely. Industry companies supply their audiences with large-scale sporting events, music concerts, TV situation comedies, and silver-screen masterpieces. Simply put, they're in the business of fun-at least most of the time. Even during economically depressed periods, this industry flourishes as an escape for all walks of life. And standing at the pinnacle of entertainment culture are the celebrities: the movie stars and quarterbacks and rock stars and talk-show hostesses who either realize our dreams and give us hope, or make us fearful of the kind of values and environment of which current future generations will become a part. This is the only industry whose product is an illusion-neither a good nor a service, and yet both at the same time. Today you don't an agent, don't need to be signed and don't need a lot of money to make it so now we have the birth of entrepreneurship. 

I myself have joined the band wagon of becoming an entrepreneur, for me this is not a trend it is a permanent way of life.