The Proposition: The Unbearable Shiteness of Being (...Signed)

Despite being the most coveted and enduring adolescent fantasy since Jessica Rabbit, in reality recording contracts are a minefield. In a contemporary musical environment that sees less money spread increasingly thinly, it’s easy to see how young, weary or struggling musicians can get so overheated at the mere whiff of industry interest that they'd sign their own mother's death warrant if it were placed before them.

Yet, for the average musician, usually unschooled in the fork-tongued demon-speak of contract law, they are predominantly impenetrable cataracts of wordplay, seamlessly blending Latin and Olde English, almost always benignly smiling at your perplexed face whilst they mentally evaluate your net worth. Just ask Meatloaf. Two years after releasing the then-biggest-selling record of all time, Bat Out Of Hell, he found himself owing his label $2.5 million. He ultimately declared bankruptcy before rescuing his situation and sentencing the rest of us to the unbearable torment of I Would Do Anything For Love. He's far from alone in bearing the unscrupulous brunt of cynical contractual malpractice. Numerous scowling celebrity faces bob about on top of that vast, grey sea of despairing also-rans, dispatched to oblivion by the wave of a record executive's hand, their ambivalent label deeming them financially unviable but unwilling to set them contractually free.

Certainly, during the courting and honeymoon periods, A&R guys and the labels who employ them do their best to butter up the talent by pushing the right buttons. The contractual parts about “advances” and “royalty percentages” are momentarily crystal clear as the eyes of the prospective signees light up. The thing is, these words need to be tempered by an uglier word: “recoupable.” Record labels are both gamblers and loan sharks and, albeit from time to time the odd individual might actually benefit from the services of either, on the whole the real winners are the companies.

Those aforementioned advances, be they related to publishing, recording, touring, flamboyant haircuts or sequinned hot-pants, will all need to be repaid. If they're not, you and your band certainly won't be doing much music for the foreseeable future as your fate is tied up in automatically renewable options, exclusivity and master-ownership clauses. Chances are you even compromised your very likeness, an innocuous looking phrase which incorporates the small matters of your name and face. You also almost certainly passed up the final say in a whole array of factors including who records your album, who designs the cover, what idiotic concept is chosen for the video and which tampon advert/party political broadcast /Hollyoaks trailer your painstakingly crafted art is crudely grafted to.

By the time your 50,000 album sales are being written off as a financial flop, it’s too late. All these items need to be negotiated early on and sadly both the label and the sweaty-palmed youngsters sitting in their office know that, if things get too difficult too soon, there's another bunch of less demanding wannabes on the end of the next phone call.

This is a situation more than 50 years in the making as labels have gradually tightened their grip on the music “industry” and honed their ability to mass-market their product, simultaneously devaluing its artistic merit and re-marketing it as an accessory. It's hilarious then to hear the bleatings of the “Big Five” majors as digital piracy erodes their diminishing returns (a global decline of approximately $1.9bn last year apparently). The irony being that the labels have been robbing musicians blind for years, yet now canvas for support under the faux-morally outraged banner of “artists deserve to be paid”. That's sort of like the Tories asking the elderly to have a whip round for their next election campaign.

An association of major record labels recently responded angrily to the growing backlash against their methods through an article in The Times, claiming that the music industry is a place of massive financial risk, where 90% of acts make a loss. They cited examples of fledgling artists paid advances in excess of £750,000 whose debut records went on to sell a mere 100,000 copies. That's a hefty financial hit for sure. The problem is you won't find much public sympathy for a guy blowing his family savings on a losing horse, especially when he only amassed those savings by stealing the pocket money from the neighbourhood kids.

Yeah sure, the industry is high risk but that's because the industry is the way the record companies made it. They normalized pandering to the egos of musicians, they turned music into a hyper-expensive publicity-driven feeding frenzy and they continue to write huge speculative cheques for manufactured idiots whilst the lower echelons of the sector suffocate under the huge financial weight that keeps them pinned helplessly to the bottom. Like Cheryl Cole complaining that she doesn't get any privacy, you can't help but think “hell mend you.”