James Walker - This Business of Urban Music: A Practical Guide to Achieving Success in the Industry, from Gospel to Funk to R&B to Hip-Hop

In the music industry, you come along and make your contribution; then its someone elses turn.

FORMER MOTOWN CHAIRMAN CLARENCE AVANT, OWNER OF AVANT PUBLISHING AND CONSIDERED BY MANY TO BE THE GODFATHER OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

In 2005 , urban music accounted for over 25 percent of all record sales in the music industry. Artists like 50 Cent, Kirk Franklin, Ciara, Destinys Child, Jay-Z, and Hezekiah Walker are selling millions of records. Encompassing gospel music, black music, R&B, and hip-hop, urban music has dominated the Billboard charts. However, even with the success of urban music, Shawn Jay-Z Carter recently told the New York Times that there are only ten guys in the rap game really making money. I remember speaking to gospel star Donnie McClurkin and informing him that the gospel industry probably did not even have five gospel artists who were millionaires. In essence, although the music is selling millions and grossing billions, the urban artist and his or her supporting role playersi.e., producers, managers, agents, publicists, and yes, attorneysare not all financially reaping the benefits of this rapid growth. In this book, we set out to discuss the urban music scene and provide a comprehensive understanding of the business behind the genre.

Black artists are owning labels, running production companies, and signing long-term recording contracts. Hip-hop has become the pulse of America. Gospel music has been its inspirational cousin in urban America, simultaneously showing up in McDonalds ads, on movie soundtracks, and even on Soul Train. Labels have shifted their focus from solely niche marketing to announcing the creation of divisions like Sonys Urban Music. But, even with this growth, expansion, and branding into mainstream, as Carter so eloquently reminded us, the urban artist (whether hip-hop or gospel), is still struggling financially.

Several years ago, I had heard some of my own clients talking about the difficulties of being a major artist in the public eye, yet privately still financially struggling and not really understanding how the music business worked. I was surprised at how many clients had sold millions of records but never read a royalty statement. Most had either never read or never understood their own recording contract. Some had even executed songwriter publishing agreements that gave away an interest in their copyrights but had no idea what it really meant from a business standpoint as an urban artist.

It was at this time that I started pulling together my notes and thoughts for a book that would introduce these artists, producers, managers, and urban music industry enthusiasts to the business known as the music industry. After typing up a short outline, and months of drafts and redrafts with the help of my editors, this book is the final project of a long journey of outlines, research, and dozens of interviews.

These interviews took me back to when I started in the music industry in 1989, booking and promoting shows in the Washington, DC area. These shows featured Phyllis Hyman, Stephanie Mills, and later Yolanda Adams. I recall sitting with Phyllis Hyman at Blues Alley in Washington and having her tell me how important it was for artists to get paid. If you pay people and take care of people, you will be in this industry a long time, said the forty-something-year-old artist to the twenty-year-old pre-law Howard college kid. We sat for a while at a bar where she and her road manager, Larry Kendricks, shared with me how many artists were financially struggling and had to resort to gigging week-to-week to make ends meet and survive in the business.

Following the event with Hyman, I worked more and more in the industry. The longer I stayed in the game, the more enjoyable and exciting it became and the more I wanted to learn about it. Sadly, the more I learned about it, the more disappointed I became. I discovered that black artists had been exploited and taken advantage of for over fifty years, starting in the days of blues, jazz, and rock n roll, and continuing to present-day R&B, gospel, and hip-hop.

For example, if ten rappers are making a decent living, or living the life, as they say in their bling-bling videos, I would estimate that only four to five gospel artists could say the same. Very few gospel artists could take two years off, go to Africa, and take care of themselves and their families from a financial standpoint. Even though it is a billion-dollar industry, the gospel industry still lags behind the overall urban community in terms of budgets, payment, and performance fees.

Practicing law for nearly fifteen years now, and being in the music industry for almost two decades, Ive heard horror story after horror story of black artists signing away their publishing income (i.e., the royalties you make as a songwriter), turning over their recording masters to a label for little or no money, hiring bad management, or simply not understanding the importance of the word business in the term music business. Thus, I wrote this book in the hopes of enlightening the next generation eagerly awaiting a career in the music industry; I also wrote it to wake up the uneducated artist who is already a member of this club.

With an eye toward the process of breaking into and surviving in this business of urban music, weve divided the book into four parts: : Marketing and Other Helpful Tips.

First, as an attorney, Ive always taught my clients and anyone else who would listen that empowerment was very important. By empowerment, I suggested clients own their songs, limit their album commitments, and definitely prepare for the future. Recording contracts are so critical to the artist first breaking into the business and later for his own empowerment; therefore, I start the book with a detailed chapter called Getting and Signing a Recording Contract and provide an understanding of the legal ramifications of such signing. This is a very technical chapter, but if you are an artist or plan to be an artist in the music industry, please read this chapter once, twice, and even a third time to understand the most critical document you might sign.

A few years ago, I watched Tavis Smiley conduct an informative and honest interview with Prince on BET. Prince had publicly blasted his label Warner Bros, for its restrictive contracts and Smiley wisely brought him on the network to explain his contracts. When Prince told millions of viewers that he had signed a bad contract and Warner Bros, had made millions from his album sales, but he was still not reaping the total financial benefits of his labor, it caused the music industry to sit up and take notice.

To think that an artist at the level of Prince could be locked into a bad, unprofitable, non-royalty-paying contract was just mind-boggling to everyone. Not long after that interview, word spread throughout the industry that gospel powerhouse Yolanda Adams was filing a lawsuit and demanding out of Verity, a label that grew to number one but continually had problems with gospel artists demanding payment of royalties. Yes, Verity is a gospel label, but gospel artists as well must realize that at the end of the day they are in business to make money, not disciples. If the opposite were true, would contracts even be necessary?