John speaks highly of you, Elliot, so I'm looking forward to discussing this and that with you. Hey, doing all that stuff on a student budget is how you learn to handle money, and if you get rich, stay that way. I speak from experience there.
On another note, would anyone in their right mind sign this "contract" I've been offered? Looks to me like they think the "talent" hasn't been around, or only around their mother.
They only promise to *try* to get me a job, but if they do - even if the job is crap and pays 10c, they own me for 6 years, unlimited? Yah, rushing to sign that and get it notarized, you betcha </sarcasm>
Now, you never know what they'll come back with when I tell them "nice try, but no cigar, I'm not stupid". It's common in this game to ask for the world, but be willing to take a little slice, "no harm in asking" - other than the implied insult. Just thought it might be informative to others who haven't been approached by media to see what games they play. It's usually pretty obvious if you have reading comprehension skills. My R&R band turned down a contract with Warner Bros for similar reasons.
The fact that we'd released our own albums, and were selling them briskly had no effect on their stance "we're taking all the risk here and deserve most of the money". They insisted we borrow a crapton of money from them to re-record it all, giving said money to their wholly owned studios (which frankly, weren't as good as ours). Basically the only money we'd have gotten via this is through touring, which we were doing already and keeping ALL the money from. So we didn't sign that one either, paid off two mortgages self-publishing, and advertising our music via releasing low quality MP3's free - with an ask to send us money for the full fidelity version on CD, and simply getting local music stores (My partner, John Bain, in music crime, did most of that footwork) to carry them.
Now, Vice/Motherboard didn't pay me, but they are talking about it going forward, and "anything I want to do, they'll buy". Those guys, I can deal with - they seem pretty honest and the ones I met are nice on top.
Geez, these guys think that because they noticed you (because someone else did first) they're worth getting to skim of your life's work and into the future? Dream on buddy - earn it.
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.