Fussbett wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

jeep wrote:

FoK wrote:

Unfortunately, talented musicians are not always good businesspeople. Witness long-term fights in which great artists have gotten screwed (XTC springs to mind, and NIN) for years.

That NIN thing is pretty instructive: TVT's boilerplate contract in the 80s was the same as every other label - except for a clause that says they get 10% of every dime you make under that band name forever. So while Reznor doesn't make more off projects like the Natural Born Killers soundtrack than he does off the NIN material, TVT still gets 10% of his new NIN record revenue, tshirts, and possibly live shows even though he's on Interscope/Nothing Records like 15-20 years after the fact.

If I recall correctly Tool was under a similar contract with either TVT or another label. I'm not sure, but I think Smashing Pumpkins successfully sued their way out of the same thing.

This is why labels who sign bands always ask for the contract to be judged under NY or CA law, since those states are label-friendly (NY even has its own court system just for dealing with RIAA cases). Under MA law, it's called indentured service, and you can't be held to any kind of weird contract terms longer than ~90 days if they're not still paying you regularly. I even got out of an NDA and a strict Non-Compete because of it.

/jeep/

Part of the whole "A Perfect Circle" sideband (they insist it is not a side project) was to work around that crap. Apparently they managed to get out of whatever it was completely in time for Lateralus. Sort of a pity, because I would have preferred any song off a hypothetical AEnima 2 to any song or even the whole of Lateralus.

A Perfect Circle is exactly one Tool dude. It wasn't a legal loophole at all.