Demystifying label contracts

In 2017, artist manager

Jon Tanners (below left) was venting to friend and mentor Daouda Leonard about the challenges he was facing getting clients paid. “I didn’t know why there wasn’t a dashboard for managers,” Tanners says. “Managers didn’t have any tools.” Leonard, who had gone from building websites for financial firms to managing publishing for clients like Skrillex, showed Tanners “a bunch of Google spreadsheets, some flowcharts, and some esoteric writing about metadata,” Tanners recalls — and an idea was born.

The two soon launched CreateSafe, a company that develops products to help artists and music-biz pros navigate their byzantine world.

Its most popular offering has been the Record

Deal Simulator, a simple, free online interface that allows anyone to input a few basic data points (advances, marketing costs, recording costs) and immediately see how royalties would be split. The popular program has helped increase financial literacy for artists at all levels; one British MP used it as a guide to question major labels in a government investigation. “Being able to see . . . how a prospective deal translates into profit or loss was really a game changer,” says U.K. singer and producer Adam Bainbridge, who performs as Kindness. “It puts a little power back in the artist’s corner.”

In contrast to many tech wunderkinds, Leonard and Tanners draw on their years of experience working with artists to guide their approach.

“For years, the complexity of legal language and the length and density of these contracts has been a huge tool in the obfuscation of the path to profitability for artists,” Tanners adds. “We want to give the opportunities to learn and to build to that next generation of artists, who don’t have any idea what they’re getting into.”