Welcome to Episode 53 of the Bandhive Podcast.

It is time for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. My name is James Cross, and I'm here with Matt Hoos of Alive in Barcelona. How are you doing today, Matt? I'm doing pretty awesome, James.

How about yourself? That's wonderful to hear. Things are good here as well. I'm having a great day. I was telling you before the show I made some great food last night and you were telling me about the Mexican food you and your family had All sounds amazing, but I got to say even better news. We have Matt Bacon of Dropout Media joining us today. How are you doing, Matt? Matt Bacon. That is Hey, I'm, uh, living the dream. Whatever that means for people who put out death metal records for a living.

Well, that's awesome. I'm glad to hear things were going well for you and congratulations on your recent move to London. It's like it sounds like a major step, but it seems like you're killing it. I mean, yeah, it's been it's been really cool coming here. Ah, lot of my social life has been in Europe for a long time, just out of like going to festivals and, like the people I go on vacation with are all European like because I went to high school here. So, like most of my old friends air from here.

So there's been a lot of that a lot of like catching up with old friends. I haven't seen the year because of the ongoing circumstance, and that's actually been incredibly good. Like the entire experience, as far has been like, Why didn't I do this a year ago instead of spending all of 2019 jetlagged? Yeah, that is no fun. Sounds like you had you had enough of the ball rolling to be ableto actually make some life changes amidst everything. So that's good little proactive lifestyle. They're a lot better than most of the people here in the States.

I do appreciate this quote from my therapist who called an active waiting, you know, sort of this idea of like, I can't really make any actions that will make this thing move faster, you know? So I might as well make some sort of active step that marginally improves my lifestyle. Oh, that sounds like you're a true musician. Hurry up and wait. I mean, you know, that's the life of the industry. Oh, my God. It's like the worst part on tour. I'd always go so insane when I was on the road, I just feel like Okay, ready, toe, do something.

Instead, you just get really fucking drunk. Uh, yeah, the tour life. It's not for everyone, but this is a podcast for musician. So hopefully it is for everyone listening. But so for anyone who is wondering why we invited Matt Bacon onto the show, Matt, you run Bacon's dot bits on instagram, which is a daily Siris of video, is just like about a minute long that you've been doing for a couple of years now, which is I think it's awesome that you've had not just the motivation but the habit to do that every single day for I don't know That's gotta be two years.

Eight months. 19 days. Yeah. There you go. You already have it in your head. Do you know off the top of your head how many days that is total. 981 I think. 981. Dude, that's awesome. Wait, no. Was there was there? Was there a leap year in there? Yeah. So it's 982 982. That is the kind of dedication and drive that musicians need tohave like that. Z no doubt about it. That is how you build a career pretty much in any creative field, but especially music. Just by putting out content regularly, we were talking about having you on the show because you are posting some really interesting videos about record labels.

So this episode is going to be about the types of record deals that a D. I. Y artist could reasonably expect to be offered throughout their career. But before we get into that, you also run dropout media. That's your company. Can you give us a little bit of a background about what dropout media is? How you got into the music industry? All that kind of stuff. Sure. So dropout media is my consulting company and agency were essentially What I do is I run ads for, you know, pretty big labels.

You know, I've worked on campaigns with Zach wild and neck rot. And you know, Duelfer, any European fans will probably care about that band. I've done a lot of stuff like that with with it as sort of a marketing agency. But then, on the flip side, there is a consultant company where I help with, you know, everything from, you know, label. And it could be strategy or A and R. You know, like I got to sign Coven and Disaster Toe Prophecy Productions. I signed Capra and Workers to Black Light Media, which is a metal blade subsidiary, you know, among many others.

So there's sort of that piece the A and R label strategy piece, and then also doing consulting one on one for bands and kind of teaching bands how to grow their brands, how to expand their reach and kind of achieve that next level. And that's also kind of been on a huge variety of levels, from bands just starting out to band signed toe some pretty nifty labels in terms of how I got into. It was really a question of when I was 14 years old. I was supposed to go on a school trip, but I didn't because I was sick.

And also, I hated everyone. Um, because, you know, e kind of moved to France thinking that other high schoolers would know about Dark Throne. Not perhaps my Why is this assumption, you know, But anyway, so I didn't go on the school trip, and while the other kids were like on the beach learning to surf or something, I was like, Oh, I'm gonna start a metal blogged with my friend Dan. And, uh, Dan just kind of wanted to set it up and didn't really do that much writing.

He's still one of my really good friends today, which is cool, but I kind of took this block and it kind of ran with it. It's called two guys metal reviews. I still updated every day, and, you know, that turned into, like, just sort of an eagerness toe learn things, you know, And and I think when you see a lot of bands, when you're like seeing a different, you know, because, like, I was really focused on reviewing underground unsigned bands, literally, what happened was because I was 14.

I didn't know how PR worked, so I literally started a thread on ultimate guitar and said, I'll review your band And I got like, hundreds of replies and like some of those people, I don't know, like I met insanity alert through that who were now signed to season the Mist. I saw them open for Slayer two summers ago, which was like, really insane because it was like, Oh, like these air guys I remember from the demo and we were just a bunch of fucking idiots. So that turned into, you know, becoming a more legitimate press person.

And, you know, just saying yes to writing for everyone you know, simultaneously while not getting very good grades in English class. Eventually, I like, kind of inherited a label from this dude on. Put out some stuff, like when I was 17, 18, maybe even younger on Then when I left high school, I needed like, a summer job. So I started working PR for my buddy. Then, after like 20 minutes of college, I dropped out because I was like, Okay, I could do this, or I could be on tour and talk to girls.

Eso like that was not a hard decision for a 19 year old. And, uh, it kind of went from there like I ended up losing the PR job because ah, whole bunch of stuff, you know, But I'm still friends with that. I'm still working on a campaign with him right now, actually, you know, but then when I lost that PR job, I'm 19 living in Brooklyn, and I like, I don't know how I'm gonna make any money. But a bunch of the clients from that PR company hit me up.

More like, Oh, you gave us some really good advice. Could be, like, give you some money to keep giving us advice on. I was like, uh huh, then kind of a consulting company sort of came out of that. That's awesome. And so that also explains where the name of your company came from since you dropped out of college. That's awesome. So that also begs the question. Since you started this so young when you were 14, you started the block and then started working with the band's got the label at 17.

How long have you been doing all of this? Because it seems like you have so much experience. It's gotta be at least a decade. Yeah, it's it's it's This is your 10. Congratulations. 10 years in the industry. I don't know. It's just I think when you reach a point where you're like, OK, I'm going to do this thing and I'm not really going to think about any other things, like literally in the process of this. I've, like, forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bike and how to drive because it was like, I don't need to know those things.

Those things don't help me do death metal. You know those things don't help me do like shit. I want to do so. Like although I do, I do have to relearn how to drive. At some point. It's it's getting pretty bad. E. Just remember, you drive on the wrong side now. Yeah, exactly right. It's like a whole new ballgame. I need toe. I feel like I need to relearn how to drive in America first, before, uh, before switching over. Yeah, well, That's a great story. I think it will lead to some really insightful thoughts that you can share for artists who listen to the band I've podcast before jumping into it.

I just wanna give the listeners reminder. On episodes 35 36 we had a two part series about how to get signed, which wasn't actually how to get signed. That title, with a little click baiting on our part, basically talked about the expectations that artists have for getting signed and the reality and the truth behind that. So if you haven't checked out those episodes, you can find them at Band. I've got rocks slash 35 and band I've got rocks slash 36 Or you can, of course, find them in your favorite podcast half wherever you're listening to this episode right now.

But to get into the types of deals. Like I said earlier, Matt Matt Bacon, the types of deals you've been doing a video syriza about that as part of Bacon's bits Can you delve a little deeper into the types of deals that a D. I. Y artist could reasonably expect to be offered at some point during their career. If they make the right moves, sure and you know, and obviously just to be clear, there's a whole gamut of other offers out there. And people are always trying to discover new ways to do things.

Although I would say when people say that, be cautious because it very rarely happens in a way, that's a good idea. Okay, I've seen a lot of, like unique ways to do a deal that were either just rehashing an old way to do a deal or just bad on. I've definitely yelled out a few labels. Her, like this model, is not No, come on, buddy, but no. Okay, so basically so first and foremost, I think the deal most people need to know about that they don't actually know about is a products deal.

I think this is the type of deal that is the easiest to understand, and it is. It causes the least drama. Why a straight product deal is. All you're saying is a label saying, Look, we're gonna print 500 LPs, we're gonna give you 25% of them, and usually in a product deal, you can expect 15 to 25% of the product may be a little more if you have some cloud, right, So we're gonna do 500 LPs. We're giving you 25% so that's a 125 right? And then beyond that, they're like, will help promote you like we'll get PR or something.

But otherwise, you know, digital is you. Everything else is you. But our only restriction is you can't repress within two years or three years kind of depending on how active the label is. And you know how many units they pressed basically, right? Because like a label like ripple music, where, like they have a good machine going in a good back end, doing a repressive something is relatively easy. So we have it on a five year contract in most cases, right? Or as like, you know, if it's a small d i y label that maybe won't have the money in, you know, a year to do to spend another $4000 on LPs, you know, they might just be like, Look, just don't fuck us over, you know?

So don't reprint, and then we'll just call it even There were helping you out. You're helping us out. Like I said, those deals are generally the ones that cause the least drama. They're the easiest, you know, even if they're not necessarily most profitable on. There's a couple of variations within that. And those usually tie in basically two digital royalties, which a lot more and more labels want. Obviously, and usually there you're splitting digital royalties. You're either getting anywhere from 20 to 50% on those when I think that's really valuable toe split because, like a well curated label band camp can really, uh, move the needle for you, You know what I mean?

So I think that, you know, you're increasingly seeing the digital portion included, and I'm encouraging people to include the digital portion in their product deals, right? This still doesn't really include publishing the second type of deal, which is your classic deal that, you know, people like me who smoke cigars and sitting leather chairs like to offer is I don't necessarily like to offer this type of deal being fatuous, just for the record. But, you know, it's kind of your more typical record deal where what we're saying is, okay, here's $5000.

You're going to get an 18% advance, and you're going to get 50% on Digital. And maybe we'll take two shirt designs and we'll pay you 20% on that Now, it's interesting. Here is so the $5000 really represents the advance really represents royalties upfront. So what? This means this is what people need to understand. Okay, let's say I'm gonna make it way simpler than the one I just outlined just so that we can all follow the math together. You're a band. You're doing Onley CDs because I just wanna make it easy. Okay?

You have a 10% royalty, you get in $1000 advance and you're selling CDs at $10 a pop. Okay, so again, 1000 CDs, $10 each, 10% royalty. Okay, $1000 advance. So most people would think, Oh, if I'm selling CDs at $10 a pop. Well, that would mean that after I sell 100 CDs, I've paid off the advance, right? Wrong, Because you're not paying back at the rate that you're selling them at your paying them back at the royalty rate, which, if you remember, is 10%. So you're only paying off $1 per CD sold. So you need to sell 1000 CDs to pay off your $1000 advance.

Now some people view that as kind of a scam. I don't really, because I think it's the royalties in advance. But I think also that people don't necessarily understand that. And I think that labels also have a lot of deductions in there and a lot of added costs they can put in before they pay you back, depending on the contract. And I think that's where problems come up. And usually that's because some people who run labels are insane. But more commonly, the band didn't hire a lawyer and didn't understand the contract.

That creative accounting from labels is something I hear about over and over again. Yeah, it's a tricky one, but and and this kind of gets into the third type of deal, which is increasingly common, which is like the Indy joint venture deal, which is essentially this idea that we're going to give you your $5000 advance. Okay, we're going to spend 10 grand and marketing and paying staff on this release and then everything. After that, 15 grand we put into you, we're gonna split 50 50 but we keep everything on the payment.

So it's all essentially recruitment, recruitment, recruitment on that 1st $15,000 and that of the 15,000 and first dollar you're splitting 50 50. And that's become increasingly common because I think that that guards against some of the creative accounting, although I think I never understood that because I feel like that option allows from or creative accounting. But regardless, like that's, that's an option that you're seeing happen. Mawr and Mawr on it seems to be making people really happy. I think it makes a lot of sense in sort of this newer status of labels, a sort of content distribution partners more than like the people who put out the music, you know.

So I I think that sort of makes sense because in some ways you're really just on influencer partnering with ah bank order. I just I've said I'll set up like deals with influencer accounts and you know, corporations all the time that kind of operate like that and I think that's I think a lot of people view that a sort of ah Equitable way to be So. Speaking of recoupment, I know for major labels, there's the old rule of 10, where basically one in 10 albums will recoup When you're working with D. I. Y. Artists these days who are signing to independent labels.

Does that same ratio someone apply? Or do you see higher percentage of artists who are able to recoup the advances that they've been given? First and foremost, most artists are getting an advanced these days. Yeah, fair enough. Or if they're getting in advance, it's pretty small. That being said, I don't know the figures off the top of my head, but that seems basically accurate. It's tricky, though, because there's just so many layers. There's just so many directions you could take that from. And so, like, I'm sure that you know it's more likely in some genres than in others on Did you know it depends on the deal structure and status of the types of bands who are signing to that label on the status of the fans of that label.

You know, a label like 20 bucks spin sort of has this culture fans who by a ton of product and who are obsessed with the label in a way that you know, many others or not. And I'm sure that helps some of that stuff along. I think you need, You know, I can't fully answer that because I think it's too tricky. But I can say most people don't recoup when they do get in advanced. Yeah, which to me personally, it doesn't seem like the end of the world to not recoup.

Yeah, because you got all the money already right? Exactly. As long as there's no, like, tricky wording in the contract that says it has to be paid back out of pocket, then it doesn't really matter. Yeah, like that's what I never understood. It's like the only time I see it being a concern is sometimes people will cross collateral. The advances record, the record and which essentially means like, let's say, I had $3000 on record 1 $5000 on a record, too. But on record one, I only recouped $2000. They would be able to take $1000 in my advance from record to and apply it to record one, and then I have a smaller advance.

I've seen that be an issue. But I think that is not something that you should be like. Like just make sure you don't have a cross collateral ization clause. Yeah, that is a really important thing to be said. I mean, you just kind of briefly touched on it when you said, you know, this was obviously a case where bands didn't have a lawyer and didn't you know, the lawyer didn't go over the contract? When you're in business, you need lawyers. And so, like, if you guys don't have a lawyer yet, you know, and some of you, you know, you're all gonna you know, our listeners, we're gonna be in a different part in their career, everybody.

But as soon as you get to the point where labels were reaching out to you and coming at you with the deal, you need an entertainment lawyer to look at that because the last thing you want to do is sign some sort of 3 60 deal where, you know, you relinquished rights to literally everything about your band. You put out a record, it doesn't recoup, and then you're thinking, Oh, I'm just gonna leave this record label. Go to somewhere else, and that's not the case at all. And so you know, these are things that air, you know.

It's really important toe. Have an entertainment lawyer coming in and saying, Well, you know this clause this condemn finitely, screw you. And so, like, you were saying earlier, There's been a lot of reimagining of deals, and in that reimagining, it's very easy. Thio include whatever clause you want in a contract, you need to make sure that your bases are covered. Yes and no. I think, yeah, like especially with bigger deals like, I've definitely seen deals from majors where it was like, Hey, we get all of your income implying it's all gonna be music.

But like if it isn't and you have to go get, like, a real job, they get 80% of that, too. But I would just say like because I've definitely seen it happen where bands spent a ton of money on a tiny deal like took like to get a lawyer, like if it's a d I Y label offering you a product deal. In that case, you don't really need a lawyer, you know like you need to be thoughtful, but I wouldn't necessarily be like Go spend $1000 on a lawyer so you can get 50 LPs.

You know what I mean? I've definitely seen some people get, like, lawyer happy on very small deals and then come to regret it later on, you know? And like, obviously, I think you should hire a lawyer for a lot of things. Like I have a lawyer who I've I've been working with for six years. Like I want a company with him. Like, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to like, but you kind of get what I'm trying to say, right? Yeah, of course. You know its's, uh you don't need to go buy a $10,000 guitar toe, learn how to play guitar, right?

Yeah. It's exactly you don't need on $1000 lawyer for something simple. And as a part of that, you know, like, you know, use some judgment with the lawyer. Your lawyer, you hire because I've definitely also seen bands for a several $1000 advance. Hire some high power industry lawyer, and it's like, Well, you're playing type of music that has a pretty finite ceiling and you paid this guy a 50 year advance. There are other solutions and it, but it's definitely tricky. It's definitely hard to find those other solutions. But I'm just saying, like, don't assume getting a big lawyer is always the answer because the other thing is, too.

Especially some of those guys don't necessarily, um, I've seen it happen where it's like Lawyer who handles mostly deals for majors, gets paid a dumb amount of money to do something for, like, an indie label. And it's like he doesn't really know how the how the industry works at that level or for like that genre, you know. And then the band ends up paying way too much money. So you have to, like, be really thoughtful in that because I think that lawyers are really, really, really goddamn important.

Just make sure you know the lawyer that you're getting Yeah, if you're going into a certain part of the industry, make sure that they're, you know, a contract lawyer, or make sure that they deal with D I Y artists. Yeah, exactly like like make sure they have some sort of greater understanding. Alright, make sure you're competing at the level that you're competing at not trying toe run before you can walk, so to speak. Exactly. I really like that. It also comes down to location. Different states have different laws.

Different countries have different laws. So if you hire a lawyer from like California to do a deal with a D. I. Y label in Vermont and the band is also in Vermont, California's laws don't matter at all. For that type of deal. You can hire the biggest lawyer in California, and it's not gonna help if there's this, like a dispute in Vermont. I think that's something to be said to. That's definitely a piece that I think people don't understand. It also like I have like this whole ongoing thing about classism in the music industry, and I think that's a big part of it, you know, And that's something I try to like, kind of personally help people with as much as I can.

Even if it's tricky, if that makes sense, Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. It's It's the kind of thing where if an artist wants to make music, they should be able to make music like that's how I feel. We advocate for always putting out the best product possible, you know, bringing in somebody who knows what they're doing for the mix, that kind of stuff. But if somebody can't afford that, that's not a reason to not create art. At least in my opinion, if you can't afford mix engineer or going to a studio, that's fine.

Make art. Somebody out there will still enjoy it. Maybe it won't have is wide of a reach, but it's still gonna be enjoyable to someone somewhere out there. But as far as the product deals, I'm curious about how re pressings work on that. Since, you know, you said, different labels will stipulate different lengths of time that you can't repress on your own. If the label doesn't repress, does that same percentage that is given to the band apply. So if they, you know, press 1000 copies and give 200 to the band, and then they do another pressing of 1000 copies later in, you know, six months or a year, does the band still get 20% of that pressing?

Usually, yes. Sometimes there are changes, depending on things you know, ultimately, like ah, significant part of the cost for the first pressing is gonna be getting the vinyl plating made and getting the layout done like that that you know. So sometimes people can get a higher percentage on the second pressing because, you know, we don't need to pay the whatever it takes for the final plating thing. And we don't need to pay the layout guy, you know, we have all the files. And so sometimes I've seen bands to be like, Oh, well, give us another 5% then.

Usually, though, labels want to keep it the same. And usually the label argument is essentially well, yeah, we invested a bunch of time on the assumption that there'd be a repressed We could make our money there, and usually the contract will say that. But sometimes what will happen is like you have a contract for just a single pressing, and then they might offer you a new contract for a new pressing on. I've also seen it done where I'm in the middle of this right now. Where we did ah products deal on the first pressing and then the second pressing is more normal. Indeed.

Deal that we talked about the 50 50 joint venture. That's interesting. So since a lot of the expenses have already been put out there, is that just then essentially a larger marketing push for the second pressing? Yeah, or some. Sometimes it's just like Okay, this thing sold were really quickly, and a lot of people want one. So we're just gonna do it again, You know what I mean? Because, like, the thing is like, especially if you have a good warehousing situation than, like, why not just print another 1000? If it costs you a few dollars a year and you're moving 25 a year or 50 a year, then like, you might as well just have it out.

You know what I mean? He might as well have it in stock, you know, like I'm sure consider something like I don't know what kind of music you guys like. All of it. Okay. You know, I'm sure that no Slayer record is going unprecedented, you know, just they're just just repressing every six months. There's just another, you know what I mean? Because it's just there's still demand. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's one of the things to that. Bans when they're signing need to consider is the longevity of the record because I've seen a lot of artists who are like, Oh, well, we put out this album 10 years ago and you know we can't repress it.

The label won't let us, but the label won't put it out themselves, either. It sounds like with a product deal that's not as typical. But when you see situations like that pop up, if you had to associate that most commonly with one type of a deal, which which type would that be? UM, the more standard royalty deal, but also because the joint venture deals haven't really been around long enough for those toe really have started having that issue. I think it's important to work into your contract a clause saying on this is actually ah, part like built into German law from what I understand.

Essentially, if the label does not exploit your physical rights for two years and you give them a a certified letter on six months notice, you can just start toe press on your own house. Awesome. That is really cool. And quite frankly, let's be honest, some fucking D I y label that hasn't posted on Facebook in four years. Are they really gonna fucking find out if you made some CDs? I would not think so. Like Like I I sometimes see people getting really caught up on this stuff, and it's like, Well, that guy is going to sue you.

You know, that's also part of the beauty of the product deal. To me, too, is like, obviously, don't be a dick, you know, obviously, you know, repressing ah better CD at right after the guy presses, you know, like there's a reason those contract terms air there, but simultaneously, like if the guy really, really is trying to fuck you over like I don't know, like, I rarely see that actually come to be the case. But I think sometimes it's important to realize, like in terms of some of the smaller guys, like I don't think they're gonna you know, but obviously, like, I don't wanna be like, oh, just rip off label.

That's obviously not what I'm trying to say. What I'm trying to say is just like if someone's really fucking you over, I don't know, talk to a lawyer about it and look at like what they could realistically do to you because, like, quite frankly, a lot of these smaller label seals are full of holes and not very well written, I think. Matt Hose. You have a story about that, don't you? Yeah, absolutely. Our first label, it was littered with terms that were not well defined. And so, uh, legally, I'm not allowed to tell you who it was, but I can definitely tell you that there are contracts said that we were supposed to get a large lump sum of money put into a marketing budget for us for every x amount of shows that were played.

Oh, my God. Right. And the loophole was that there was no definition for what the show was, and so we weren't trying to screw label over. We wanted the right store music back. That was our only contingency. And they said, Well, we haven't fully recouped yet, so we don't want to do that. And so we said, Okay, we're gonna play three shows a day in our friend's basement, and we're not gonna invite anybody. And we told that to our lawyer, and we said, Can we do this?

And he said, Yeah, absolutely. you could do this. He's like your buddy owns a venue and he can literally sign off on the fact that you've played these shows so you could go play three shows a day for the next couple months, and they'll ou $90,000. And so for us, we basically just turn to them and said, Hey, this this is really what we want. We don't We don't want to do this. We want to be above board. We wanna, you know, run business well, and we don't wanna have this, uh, stigma about our band.

And so when we ended up talking directly to the label owner and said, Okay, well, this technically we you know, we can do this first. The initial thing was that they tried canceling our contract when they were outside of the window to cancel with a lot of contracts. If you know you have multiple options, you know, they have to let you know ahead of time. If you're gonna be working together essentially well, they had decided we weren't working together anymore, but they didn't tell us in time.

So our little quote unquote forcing their hand when we told them about that they came back with. If you basically pay off the last of the debt on what's owed on the printing, then we will go ahead and give you the rights to the music back. So we were actually able to strong arm our label into getting the rights to our music back, which really does not happen. That was the year I think that was like it was like 2015 or 2014 that that happened. And it was like the same year that Metallica got the rights back for, like, master of puppets or something ridiculous like that, you know?

So just to put in tow a full scale of how long it might take you to get your rights back, even if you do get your rights back, a lot of contracts you don't get your rights back anymore. So just due to the fact that we were in this situation where we kind of had like, a contractual gray area, and that's just what you're talking about, Matt, where you're saying like some of these smaller contracts, they're not well defined and there's loopholes in them, and for us we could have been horrible horrible people and exploited them.

But instead we chose to do business above board. And in the end, both partners left with basically what we entered with. They didn't make any money and we had our music. And so everybody kind of had a bad taste in their mouth. But at least no parties walked away saying, like, I hate these guys blah, blah, blah this, you know, And so for us, we kind of felt pretty good about it was your plan when you were gonna play all those shows? Was your plan to make a flyer for each one?

Probably not. E. Just like I had this image in my head of just like you're just making hundreds of different flyers to make it a show on. Honestly, we could have one of the guys in our group at the time, Did a little bit of digital, uh, graphic work and things like that. So I mean, our opportunity was endless and we knew it. I mean, and And it was it was me and my guitarist Jesse that we sat down. We went to the contract. It was like I think that this is the case.

So Then, after we had talked amongst ourselves for quite a while, we then trying to our entertainment lawyer is like, Hey, man, can we give you a couple 100 bucks to look over this and see if what we think is right on? We told him, and he was like, Yeah, no, you're absolutely correct. There's all sorts of plot holes in here. What I was going to say is, this is also like, Why again? Like I said earlier, like a lot of times you see these sort of creative deals that aren't good, right?

Andi, This is why? Because, like if a band can play three shows a day in their basement and you owe them 90 grand, it's a quick way to put a label out of business. Yeah, like it seems like it seems to me that you should maybe do some. You know, like there's a reason you don't see a lot of New Deal types. Yeah, and I think there's also reason there that labels should have their attorneys look over a deal before they offered it to an artist. Goes both ways.

Matt Bacon. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thio just go over to these types of deals. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely. It's our pleasure If people want to learn more about you and dropout media, obviously there's Bacon's dot bits on Instagram. You can search that up and get the daily videos. But where else can people find out more? Yeah, find me on Twitter and Facebook. Facebook is dropout media, and Twitter is Bacon's bits underscore. I know it's different. I know that's wrong. It's very frustrating.

Um, we don't need to remind me. Yeah, so, you know, find me those places. I have weekly columns at Ghost Cult magazine and doing and stoned. And then a few other places they're about to roll out and, you know, just, uh, check out black light Media, the metal blade subsidiary. I help run or help coordinate or something. I don't have an official title. I just do things. Just help, you know, But to check that out, because that's like the project. We have a lot of exciting stuff coming on.

I was literally on a call about it 30 seconds before we got on this call. So, you know, pretty cool stuff. I have a lot of other projects you'll see if you follow me on socials. They're there many excellent. Awesome. Yeah, go watch Bacon bits. Comment. Tell me how much I suck. Ask questions on and he's in the metal industry. So he means when he when he says tell him that he sucks because you know those metal guys when we when you come from a background and metal, you need to be angry to propel your career.

Well, there's even a site for that. Metal sucks. That's exactly right. It's just, you know, he's got a got to feel the hate everyday body. That's right. Exactly. We don't get pent up for nothing s o. All those links will be in our show Notes at Band I've got rocks slash 53. That's the numbers 53 so you can get all mats links from there. And you can also just type them into instagram Twitter wherever you want to find Matt Bacon. Matt again. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

It's been an absolute pleasure having you here. Thank you. I really, really, really appreciate it. Like it really means the world when I get to do things like this. Eso thank you very much And letting me rant about deal types and things I don't like was very kind. E think it's something that people need to hear, so I appreciate it. That does it for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. Big shout out to Matt Bacon of dropout media for dropping those wisdom bombs on us this episode.

So if you are interested inciting to record label those air some things to watch out for and consider you know what type of deal do you want? Do you need an entertainment lawyer, which, depending on the deal, maybe you don't? Maybe you dio you know your situation best. But if you have any questions about that, first of all, check out episodes 35 36. If you haven't yet, you can find them at Band. I've got rocks slash 35 Band I've got rocks slash 36 and you could also head on over to our Facebook group, which is better dot band slash group.

If you're just looking for a short link to type into your browser, or you can visit Facebook and search for banned hive once you're there. Feel free to ask any questions you might have about how Thio navigate a record deal getting signed, all that kind of stuff or anything in general that you have on your mind about running your business because we have a great community of over 400 artists who are looking to grow and share their knowledge so we can all be better business owners together. Thank you so much for listening.

It's awesome. We really appreciate it. We'll be back next week. 6 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday with another brand new episode for you. Until then, have an awesome week. Stay healthy and, of course, as always, keep rocking.