Musical America Blogs

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. Dear Law and Disorder: A successful duo I represent has recorded a CD which is being released by a record company. Although the artist made attempts to obtain a contract, because of time restraints, according to the record company, it was only possible to give a contract AFTER the recording [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. Dear Law and Disorder: I hire musicians to perform, with me. Are they employees or independent contractors? I do not deduct taxes from what I pay them. Should I also make them sign a contract stating that they are independent contractors? Contrary to what many believe, the distinction between who [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. Dear Law and Disorder: We booked one of our artists to perform at a non-profit venue. The booking agreement was signed by all parties. We just received a phone call from the venue that their board met last night and decided unanimously to cancel the engagement due to poor ticket [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. Dear Law & Disorder,   Our ensemble has recently had friction with its management over weather-related travel concerns. We had concerts scheduled during both Hurricane Sandy and this most recent blizzard in the Northeast, and as both approached, discussed postponing them with our management company. In both instances, they stated [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. Dear Law & Disorder: We are facing a visa problem for one of our Russian singers.  She is supposed to sing in the United States at the end of February with a US Orchestra. Now it turns out that the orchestra is neither willing to apply nor to pay for [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. Dear Law & Disorder: When a composer/songwriter is commissioned to write a song, who owns the copyright to the song? The commissioner or the writer? And for either party, when the other owns the copyright, what kind of controls and/or royalties does the holder have? As with just about everything [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. Dear Law and Disorder: Help! We are a small agency. We booked an engagement for one of our artists at a venue that has now cancelled the date. We had a series of emails with the venue confirming the date and fee and then sent them a formal contract that [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. Dear Law and Disorder: May we loan music that we own for orchestral performances by other non-profit organizations (schools, community orchestras, etc? Would the other group still need to obtain performing/recording permissions? Could we be liable if they don’t? It depends how define “own.” If by “own”, you mean that [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. No sooner had Super Storm Sandy begun crashing into the East Coast when my phone started ringing with cancellations. The most common question went something like this: “The presenter needs to cancel, but they already paid a deposit. Do we have to give it back? What the protocol?” The second [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. I own the video footage of a performance by a dance company. Recently, I learned that another choreographer purchased a license from the dance company to recreate and perform the same work. However, they used a copy of my video to help in recreating the choreography. In other words, they [...]