The Five Star general in an interview with HipTv addressed the issue of artistes dishonouring contracts.
Having tackled Harrysong for the aforementioned offence, he offers very useful insight on the issue. He attributes the act to artistes not reading their contracts. He recommends record labels to ensure the presence of lawyers to explain the contents of contracts when signing. Read what he said below.
“Most of these guys are hungry, and they are not interested in reading your contract. You type a contract for an upcoming artist, of 10 pages. Hes not interested in reading the contract. All he’s interested in for you to put him on the camera and let him shoot a video. Put them in a studio to record music. And he wants to see himself in South Africa, London. That’s what he interested in. Once he gets that, he’s satisfied.
The next thing is how he’s going to do without you and he’s going to forget your contract. So its high time we, the record label owners, try to make these guys go through their contracts. Read it for them line by line, get your lawyer sit with them and they should get their lawyer or someone from their own angle. Because some of them don’t have family when they come to you, but all of a sudden, when they become huge and big, they have families and friends. They come to fight for them.
So I think we should put that in play when they are being signed, They should bring that their friends and their families from the initial stage, to come and help them read the contract, before you invest. It’s not easy to give them a platform, money, and all the investment that is needed, and when the person gets to this level, they want to throw you aside. Sometimes it’s hurting, some of these record label owners don’t find it funny. And away from that, the blessings that goes with that, you will lose it by the time you breach your contract.
Because for someone to invest a dime in you, it’s like a risk because you don’t know if that person is going to make it. So when you now make it and you think you can do without the person, not in a proper way or fulfilling your obligations, trust me, even God in heaven is not going to be happy with you.
So I think the advice is that we the record label owners should also make sure that they know what they are signing this time, before they go into it. Don’t try to pretend to make them fell like you are tying them down, you are tying yourself down because at the end of the day, they will fight you, you will go to court. So lets do that from the beginning and settle it before we move on.”
