Saturday, August 25, 2007

The Music Industry and 'Borrowing' Ideas


We're not much for writing negative stuff but we thought it might be interesting (and cathartic) to post this tale of caution. Anyone who reads this knows the music industry has a bit of a rep for sometimes being a bit of a bitch. It sometimes lacks professionalism and is often far from transparent, this of course is a generalisation but it's born out of a lot of word of mouth and experience.

I've always been quite circumspect about the music business, two stroke have been let down a fair few times by various parties but we've always considered it par for the course and it's been balanced by some excellent relationships.

We where invited to pitch for a music video with a decent but not massive budget, it was a quick turn around deal and so we quickly put together a treatment and submitted it to the commisioning label who are a very significant indie. I get a call the next day saying they love it and can we develop it further..... we then spend the next two days tailoring the concept until it has ticked every box and the label in their own words call it 'absolutely perfect'

During this process they tell us that the video is ours bar a few formalities and to get ready as they want to shoot in under a week. We then busy ourselves with preparations and wait for the budget to be transferred.

Then at the 11th Hour label call to tell us they have doubts about our track record in constructing narratives, we found this a little odd given that our production partners Angelic Films have a huge amount of experience assistant directing on feature films and this sort of project is well within our capabilities.

So to appease them we bike across DVD's of additional show reel material, which they do not even look at and after chasing them find out we have been dumped off the video.... In favour of another company who they admit have not as strong treatment but they have used before and feel safer with.

Up until this point, it's annoying but it's fair enough they only thing you can accuse anyone of is short sightedness and rashness.

We of course asked them to delete any material that we have sent them and do the usual legal things telling them that all ideas that where discussed belonged to us. We then shrugged it off and forgot all about it.

it wasn't until one of us caught sight of the final video that we got more than slightly peeved. Put simply they stole the major themes of the video. It was an unashamed ripping off what we had submitted and call me naive but I was shocked and very disappointed that a well known label could behave in such a way. Alas they changed it just enough to make it impossible for us to go after them legally. The most annoying thing about the whole thing is that they made a poor job of video anyway!

The moral of they story is sadly when it comes to the music industry is... be cynical, don't take for granted that people will stick to their word. Above all make sure that you have all your legals covered from every angle and don't be afraid to go after those who rip you off.

It's annoying but we've been so busy with Fuzzed that it's not been a big deal, however I just thought it might be worth a cautionary tale for anyone submitting ideas to anyone.