I already charged him for the designs, but did not otherwise license it to him for resale. Multiple bands, multiple tours. Neither he nor I know what the norm is for this. He is happy to give me a cut somehow, but I'd like to see how others handle this. Percentage of poster sales? Or have him pay me a one-time bulk licensing fee so that he can sell as many as he wants? If anyone has input I would appreciate it. (BTW I do not print or otherwise facilitate printing...just charge for design)
take the percentage (33-50%), either cash or posters produced, and put a 2year limit down in writing on production.
good advice, esp on the 2 yr limit...thanks!
also make sure in writing that the posters or elements from them do not start turning up printed on shirts or other promo items without consent and their usage percentage
Yeah, lock that shit down on every other possible usage. Anything additional should be accounted for. ALSO- depending on the size of the band and the accounting infrastructure they have in place, it might be less of a headache on your end just to take a chunk up front, and limit the usage to just one year. It depends on if you can trust them to actually know how many they sold or not.
Something to think about.
i am starting to think that is the best and easiest way to do it. musicians and their managers are sometimes tough to trust/track down for payment/depend on in general. I could go on. but yeah that seems like the best way to maximize what I get with the least amount of headache.
If there's no agreement regarding the resale of your work, cover your butt by watermarking the print files you provide them. 'For promotional use only • Not for sale'
Yea, I made an illustrated admat for a large (10,000+) festival overseas last month. Took me 70 hours as usual to illustrate it. And I agreed as usual to do it for $500. That comes out to 7 bucks an hour. Which is five times less than what I usually charge, but I can't see charging $3500 for an admat, so I am happy for the work and the $500. They contacted me this week saying they would like to sell T-shirts and another item at the festival with the image on it. And that they would like me to make a few changes made to the admat to prep it for the shirts.
So I emailed them back and said that we need to come up with some kind of compensation for the licencing as a merch item.
I get the feeling that response took them by surprise, because they came back and said it is already really tight as they are dividing the sales between the three headliner bands and the venue.
I told them they need to make me an offer.
It is kind of funny how this overseas promoter thought that they would get to sell hundreds of shirts and not compensate me. If they did that, they would actually be able to recoup the entire $500 fee for the admat design and actually make a sizable profit. It would be free for them to use my design for the promotion of their festival and they would actually make a profit off of it.
Funny how promoters think.
Funny how designers think.Quote:
Originally Posted by jimkaplanart
Hi guys, I have a similar issue which I'd like some advice on.
I have a thread in the Poster Class forum of my work so far which I'm very happy with, but it is infrequent and a hobby at this stage, but my most recent commission is for the album artwork for a local band.
Though it's their first album they are fairly high profile within the genre (members of other ex-bands etc), and the release is to be distributed pretty widely through underground/rock/hardcore promoters, press and radio.
We agreed first off that the work - and my fee - was to cover the album art and a printed shirt only, but any further use of the art was up for discussion subject to fees etc.
The art is done and everyone's very happy with it (especially me), but I've been asked now how much I would want to release the art fully. Honestly, I have no idea. To put it in context the fee for the artwork was £50. How did you guys approach it when you were starting out? At this stage, would a time limit on the license be appropriate? It's easy to be cynical about how big a deal either the band, the artwork or myself will be, but I am REALLY pleased with how it turned out, they are, and if I do say so myself, the artwork has legs.