This week’s news that Adele had signed a £90 million contract with Sony Music has focused naturally enough on the singer’s significant win.
However, the truth is a little different. It doesn’t mean that Adele can walk into her local bank with a novelty-sized cheque and walk out with all the money in a big bag. She’ll get a big chunk of change right away, but it won’t be £90 million . Instead, the money will come in large dribs and drabs over the years depending on how the contract is structured.
Over the years, stories about million-dollar deals rolled out again and again, usually with new bands and involving multiple albums. These deals are handy shorthand from the band’s side to signify that the act have hit the big time. The stories rarely go into the minutiae of the contract, which show that all the options are with the label and they decide if the band will get a second or third album. Such boring detail gets away from the “million euro record deal” yarn, the music industry unicorn that so many Irish acts have encountered through the years (Jedward, if we remember right, had two of those deals).
In the case of Adele, it’s an old-fashioned move by singer and her team. Given the fact that she’s the biggest-selling act of the past few years, she could have decided to set up her own operation and license her music to Sony or whoever, thus maintaining complete artistic and logistical control.
While she’s sure to have a lot of the latter at her new home – could you imagine being the executive who decides to boss her around? – she could have had a whole lot more if she struck out with a new business model.
Sometimes, though, you just reach for the gold pen, sign on the dotted line and take the cash. Let’s hope it works out better than the £80 million deal Robbie Williams signed a few years ago.
