So maybe this is why you guys never take our advice on your business terms, because you think we’re full of it. We just spent two hours at home crying over the Ramones and how they never made a penny on “I Wanna Be Sedated” so we might know something about selling music on credit. We’ve got some strong opinions about something we call ‘net 30 terms.’ So you’d think that by now we could spell it out in a manner that might actually convince you that using a template for net 30 agreements is the way to go, but in the immortal words of Joey Ramone, “Eh. Whatever. Nevermind.” We’ll start with baby…
- What the heck is a ‘net 30 terms’ agreement? Your music publisher well knows your fans are going to want your latest bizzomb on vinyl as soon as possible, so they set up an account to make sure they get adequate distributions, which means some paperwork called a ‘net 30 terms agreement’ or something similar, in which they agree to pay you for ever single piece of art they sell at retail, plus shipping and handling, unless otherwise noted in the contract. They agree to pay you ‘net’ amount of money, 30 days after they receive the product.
- Why does this sound familiar? Well, you’ve seen one, and if you haven’t seen one, there are only 2 possible meanings to that. One: you don’t have a net 30 terms agreement template, and you’re going to blow off all that money you were thinking about getting from retail stores who need an easy thing to fill out when they order thousands of your CD’s without talking to you. Two: you don’t exist. You’re just a video someone made with flowers and sad vocal melodies to an underwhelming guitar riff. And this is going to totally suck for you but that means you’re a dead band. And maybe you deserve it.
- So let’s break this down a little more. Think of it like the musical performance these contracts parallel, and it’s just like rehearsing it with your band for an hour and then some wiseass who didn’t even write it whips out this improvised jam that makes no sense and now it’s on the album. You rehearse. And rehearse. There’s some improvisation in there, but it’s all ultimately strong. You don’t just show up and jam it out like some other stranger.
- They’re called ‘contracts.’ You don’t do them like that. This is your product! This is your artwork!
- So take a few minutes, and get a ‘net 30 terms agreement template.’ Take that contract, make sure you’re spelling things right, and give them a shot. This will save you hassle with your business dealings. It may even save your profit margin. It’s like taking a few minutes and writing a good song on that album that should have been 10 tracks… but then again you blew it out to 12 songs and you skipped including all those vocals. The people who bought that album are a couple months behind in their payments, and you’re not sure your next album is going to be marketable, or if that song is going to get a lot of radio play. And talking about radio play…
- Sometimes, you don’t always get paid on time. That’s why you have a ‘net 30 terms agreement template.’ You can’t just funk around with it forever and ever because your distribution rep forgot to put the check in the mail. After 30 days, you can see if you need to go after them legally. Sometimes, they’re just broke and it’s a small store that hasn’t seen customer traffic because something happened with the mall and it’s all serious, and sometimes you end up owing them money afterwards. But unless the lawsuit is worth more than your actual litigation, this may be where selling CDs gets too cheap. And by that we mean, you lost out.
- Okay okay, to give you a tiny bit of credit, maybe your last ‘net 30 terms agreement template’ was customized for a particular client who handled a very specific set of purchases. But if you have to customize it too often, then you’re probably just spending time inside the recording studio instead of marketing those new units to retailers and seeing where you can hawk your goods. So you cut a little too much off on the last EP and in that song you wrote on a napkin at happy hour, that you just layered a bunch of scream overlay vocals onto instead of blowing thousands of dollars on a professional audio engineer at that Japanese recording studio, but now you’re broke because you just spent all your money on that bottle of wine.
- Alright, we get it. You like to flex those creative muscles more than just a little. You’re going to do whatever your heart desires, no matter how much loss you might take. You know who cannot afford that defeatist attitude however? Your fans. They like your art. They expect to hear from you every now and then. And if they have to, they’ll just pirate all of your best music and leave you dead on the floor like the police. You know, eventually…
- Nobody wants to be the band that never released a ‘net 30 terms agreement template.’ They’re too busy getting their shit recorded, and arranged, and re-arranged, and overdubbed, and mixing everything later, and laying down that bitchin’ rap that was entirely made up on the spot, to be out there having to apologize on Facebook that they didn’t file the forms that they’d each painstakingly set aside on their desks, to put some money in their starving fan’s pockets. You don’t want to be the band that lost all of its fans and became a garage band called Sex Toilet in exchange for a few thousand dollars.
- Get your shit together. If you can’t do it yourself, call some bro at that record label and get his help. This is like therapy, man! It’s not like practicing for a gig, or rehearsing for practice. It’s just some times to organize yourself:
And if you were reading this and not watching your back with your first net 30 terms agreement template, Well, maybe this is why they don’t listen to us overseers. We’re the Force, baby! We are the law! Keep rocking on.
