We do take the client’s billing address upon confirmation, however as explained below, we keep this on file for our records and will only provide you with those details if there are any legal issues / unpaid or cancellation fees that we are unable to resolve and the matter needs to be taken further. As discussed, we agree that W Entertainment should put the clients’ address on their agreements. However, it is positive that we now have it writing that they will supply us with the address if we are unpaid or cancelled. We've been advised to keep that on file.
Please refer to the below email conversation where we discussed the W Entertainment agreement in more detail. The agency will never be liable if we have an unpaid fee or cancellation unfortunately. We did talk about some things that should be addressed though. This included the address, which they won’t budge on, but also the payment method. ‘Client’ to pay ‘Artist’ by cash on the day of the event prior to the performance. Alternatively, artist can request a BACS payment 2-3 weeks in advance of the event. This as stated, leaves it too open. If W Entertainment refuse to change it then we need to make sure we get it in writing to the client that we need payment 3 weeks in advance of the event. We should also invoice the client with the pay by date on it. We're concerned about breaching our part of the agreement if they don’t pay, and we don’t turn up. There is no way to easily resolve this but if we invoice the client with the pay by date and ask them to confirm they are happy with / accept the details, we should have something to fall back on. In any case, if we were not paid on time we would contact the client to discuss. If we are booking musicians separately then we are taking on a role that puts us at risk of having to pay cancellations. This would only change if we were signing agreements collectively or in a partnership. Read More... Contract for Latina Carnivale Contract for Latina Festivale Employment agencies and businesses (HMRC) Live Agreements Zara D Zara K From: "NE" From: Claire We've just received this email from LH regarding 1 of the 5 employment agency clients we’ve contracted/invoiced directly, for a future Employment Agency booking that’s set up directly between ourselves and the client.
As it’s a knock-on effect from the same agency, we’ve drafted the below response to LH and were planning to Cc AT. We wanted to run it past the MU before we do that. We need to be careful here as obviously AT could pass anything we say back to the 6th May clients. This booking is for July 2019 and the client has paid a 50% deposit already to the agent. Contractually if the agreement has said they just need to pay 50% now and the rest at a later date, then they do not have to pay the rest now. Basically, this is an employment agency agreement, similar to the 6th May, where the client pays the artist directly. Again, there is no client address on the agency contract, so protection is limited in the event of a client breach. That’s why we've gone through all 5 employment agency agreements and contracted/invoiced directly, because although their deposit is to the agent, ultimately the agreement is between the artist and the client and that’s why we feel the need to protect ourselves, hence the 50% of the deposit to us and an MU contract. In terms of the areas we're worried about mentioning to AT, It’s these sentences: I’m sorry for the extra hassle but the reality is we’ve recently experienced a very serious client breach for an event that took place on 6th May, 2018. As W Entertainment’s contract was set up directly between the artist and the client, we're now at risk of making a significant loss. Rory is currently liaising with the client to recover these costs, and I’m happy to say that positive progress is being made. We wanted to check no damage to the 6th May case would be done if this got passed back to AT, and then to the 6th May clients (there may be a risk of ‘provoking’ the 6th May client if the tone sounds accusatory). However, we must make it clear how the 6th May booking has had repercussions on future contracts regarding the need to protect ourselves, and therefore it must be explicit that this is a direct consequence in order to justify.
We need to write back to LH justifying why we're taking the precautions we're taking, especially as it’s through the same agency and no doubt LH and AT will be talking to one another. If we are unsure about what we can mention to AT, we do not need to mention the specific date of the gig case we are dealing with. We are right to try and protect ourselves but payment issues should ideally have been mentioned on agreement of the booking. Getting the client’s address on the agency agreements is really important. Have we taken this up with them? We can’t see it being an issue for them to include the client’s address. We can see the confusion from the client if our agreement wasn’t provided when making the booking and they have paid a separate deposit. We notice that the agency agreement states: ‘Client’ to pay ‘Artist’ by cash on the day of the event prior to the performance. Alternatively, artist can request a BACS payment 2-3 weeks in advance of the event. The client has agreed to pay cash on the night, or by BACS 3 weeks before the event if we send an invoice. Obviously that is not ideal and something more concrete would help to put our minds at ease. Perhaps in future the agency would be willing to change this clause to say that payment needs to be made by BACS 4 weeks before the event, or more even? It is definitely a conversation worth having and obviously the sooner it can be paid the better. The agency agreement also states that W Entertainment should be notified of any contractual changes. They could deem that our agreement and changes to payment is a contractual change to theirs, and we agreed to this term on accepting the booking. The best thing to do is speak to the agency about both making it a requirement to include an address on their agreements and seeing if we can change to payment timings/methods. If we can get it agreed that a deposit is paid to us as well as the agency then great. They may argue that in this case though, the booking contract was agreed before we expressed our own changes. It’s very complicated. We're happy to accept employment business contracts because our agreement is between ourselves and the agent, and therefore the client is more traceable. But when it comes to 3rd party agreements, it’s a bit of a minefield and we'd feel more comfortable — given our recent experience — of taking a 50% deposit so we can at least cover my own overheads. We don’t know what AT would say if Zara doesn’t pay, and we're not entirely convinced he’d speak in our best interests. We're imagining a situation whereby he’d simply repeat back to us the client’s feedback and use this as 'evidence' for claiming that the agreement wasn’t honoured on our side, which would be a terrible thing but certainly possible. We're not sure if we trust him not to do that and that’s what we're worried about. We do not need to discuss the Zara case with AT at all. He does not need to be involved from here and we don’t think we should directly be discussing that case with him anymore, unless necessary. We established before that the agent is not liable if the client fails to pay, and our understanding is that W Entertainment got their money from Zara. Our email opens conversation to a better booking agreement so we think it is fine. We'll use that email to respond to LH. We’ll leave AT out of it. From: LH It’s interesting what they have said. By ‘client billing details’ we assume they are referring to their address? If that’s the case then it would seem that they do take the client’s address on booking and would provide it to us should we have an unpaid fee or cancellation. It would be worth clarifying that with them. Without an address it is difficult to make a money claim and it certainly couldn’t go as far as a small claims court. From: "NE - W Entertainment" Comments are closed.
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BlogRed & Black Music was set up in 2012 to stop musicians cancelling. PurposeAt Red & Black Music, we believe in accountability = learning from experience. This blog serves as a record of challenges we’ve faced and how we’ve worked to resolve them. By sharing this, we aim to demonstrate our commitment to professionalism, problem-solving, and continuous improvement. Archives
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