ROYALTY STATEMENTS

It’s the first week of April…

which means, in addition to the baseball season just getting underway, royalty statements are hitting.    Most labels & publishers now make these available on-line, which makes it a lot easier to review. As an artist, it’s important to know that sometimes these statements can contain errors, not out of any malicious reason but mainly due to the fact that most labels and publishers have hundreds, if not thousands of artists statements to render and sometimes don’t check the particulars of an artist’s contract, which can specify certain terms such as the way syncs are treated or the digital income is handled.  Sometimes, even business managers can miss these, especially during tax season which happens to coincide with this period.   Usually, they’re addressed as part of an audit, but that can delay receipt of an artist’s revenue by years.   As managers, we often are far more “in the weeds” on the particulars of our clients' careers and have been able to address these kinds of accounting anomalies to both labels and the artists to ensure that our clients are paid what they’re owed.  It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s important that any artist's team are diligent to keep a close eye on all revenue streams and, while it sounds intuitive and simple, you’d be surprised how often it’s not done.