Legal Advice For the Emerging Artist

This week I had the pleasure to speak with the entertainment lawyer, Galen Hair, about different liabilities and legal issues that affect the music industry. Galen Hair is a partner at Varadi, Hair & Checki, LLC located in New Orleans, Louisiana, practicing in the areas of entertainment law, contract, torts, and more. Hair graduated from Tulane’s University Law School and received his Bachelor of Music from Boston University College of Fine Arts.

In our discussion we talked about a few things that an emerging artist and new indie labels need to do to avoid any legal problems in the future.

First, as an artist, you want to cover yourself so you must copyright all the material as soon as possible. A lot of artists put this task off and then fall into the situation that someone has used their music and they were not compensated for the use. In the Hip-Hop industry alone, there have been many incidents of people stealing music from others. So to avoid that, copyright your music especially if you know it is a hit.

Secondly, record labels should protect themselves from any legal issues by applying for trademarks. The company should have trademark protection on the company’s name, logo, and slogan. Having each of these intellectual properties trademark protected will make you the sole owner of those properties and negate others from using them. If a situation occurs with another company using your property, having proper legal planning and protection in place, your legal team in most cases can end a dispute with a cease and desist letter threating to sue.

We also discussed the importance of contracts and the many issues that can form if not properly reviewed. Issues concerning royalties, licenses, and 3^rd party distributions are areas that could be avoided ahead of time.  Contracts between record labels and artists are often at the center of it all in court cases between the two parties. Having an entertainment lawyer to review all contracts can help spot potential problems in the contract and make suggestions that work out for both parties.

In closing, our discussion ended on the topic on what an artist should look for when searching for an entertainment lawyer. The three factors to consider in your pursuit are cost, experience, and locality. Most emerging artists do not have the money to afford lawyers like those of Jay-Z, so you must find lawyers that are within your budget. Cost and experience are the two factors that go hand in hand, the greater the experience, the higher the price their time will be. Locality is important if the client is the type of person who prefers in office face to face meetings.