Image rights, in plain language

Music photography has a quiet rights problem. Photographers, especially early in their careers, sign contracts they have not read carefully and end up giving away their copyright for a single show fee.

Nobody at the music industry end of these contracts will explain what they mean. The job of explaining falls on you.

Here is what you actually own when you press the shutter, what the contracts try to take away, and the clauses we have personally walked away from.

What you own at the moment of capture

When you take a photograph, you own the copyright. This is automatic in most of the world. You do not have to register anything. The moment the shutter closes, the image is yours.

Copyright includes:

→ The right to reproduce the image.

→ The right to distribute it.

→ The right to display it publicly.

→ The right to license it to others for money.

All of that is yours by default. What a contract does is rent some of those rights to a client for a fee. That is a licence. A licence is not a sale.

Licence versus assignment, in one paragraph

A licence gives the client permission to use the image, under specific terms, for a specific period. You still own it.

An assignment transfers ownership. The client now owns it. You do not.

If a contract uses the word "assign," pause. If it uses "buyout," pause longer. These are the words that lose photographers their copyright.

The €1 receipt trick

We have been handed contracts that say the photographer assigns all rights to the artist and that the photographer agrees they have received €1 as consideration for the transfer.

The €1 is fictitious. Nobody hands you a coin. The clause exists because most legal systems require some form of consideration for a rights transfer to be valid. So they invent a token amount and ask you to sign that you received it.

If you see this in a contract, you are looking at a full copyright transfer dressed up as a formality.

The pre-pit non-disclosure

Another one we have seen: before the show, the photographer is asked to sign a contract promising not to take any pit photos.

Read that twice. Sign it, and you are agreeing not to shoot the pit, before you know whether you actually have pit access at all.

If you do not get pit access, you might want to shoot the show from the audience. That is your legal right as a paying audience member. Signing this clause may sign that right away too. Some versions of this contract are written broadly enough to cover all photography of the show, anywhere in the venue, by you.

We have walked away from this one more than once. Other photographers signed and shot anyway. That is their risk, not ours.

Approval-required clauses

Some contracts say only images approved by the artist or management can be published. The photographer must submit the cull for review and wait for sign-off before any frame goes out.

→ The artist will reject your best frames sometimes because they did not like how they looked in them. The frame might be the strongest journalistic image of the night and it never sees daylight.

→ You lose editorial integrity. The images are no longer journalism. They feel more like a press release dressed up as photography.

The no-negative-coverage clause

Some artists' contracts ask the photographer to agree that they will not publish anything negative about the concert or the artist.

This is the strangest one. You are a visual journalist being asked to pre-promise positive coverage. The clause usually appears in the same paragraph as the pit access permission, hidden among the other boilerplate.

If you sign and later publish a piece that criticises the show, the artist's management has a contractual basis to come after you. You also become the photographer who other journalists notice has agreed to constrain their coverage in exchange for access.

If a show is so bad that you would want to write about it negatively, the no-negative-coverage clause is exactly what stopped you. That is not a deal that ages well.

What "unlimited usage forever" really costs

If a client offers you a day rate that includes unlimited usage in perpetuity for all parties, here is what you are actually selling:

→ The right to license those images to a magazine in three years for an editorial story.

→ The right to sell prints of the show.

→ The right to use the images in any future commercial campaign by the artist, the label, the festival, the sponsor, or anyone else they choose to license to.

→ The right to ever say "no" to a use you do not want to be associated with.

All of that, given away for one day's fee. The maths only works for the client.

What we actually licence

A reasonable licence for a typical Coda commission looks something like:

→ Use by the artist, label, and main festival sponsor only.

→ Editorial and social media usage.

→ Two years.

→ Photographer retains copyright and may use the images in their own portfolio and for editorial pickup.

Any extension to that licence (longer term, more parties, commercial advertising) is negotiated separately and priced separately. This is normal in advertising and editorial photography. Music is just slower to catch up.

How to push back without sounding like a lawyer

You do not need to know the law to negotiate a contract. You need three sentences.

→ "I'm happy to licence for [editorial / PR / commercial] use. Can we add that wording to the contract?"

→ "I'd want to retain copyright. Can we change the assignment language to a licence?"

→ "This clause about [whatever] doesn't work for me. Can we remove it or rework it?"

Most clients respond reasonably. The ones who do not are the ones you do not want as long-term clients anyway.

When to walk away

If you don't agree with some of the clauses, you cannot get them changed and the brief is asking for things that cost you more than it pays, walk away. The fee is not worth the long-term cost.

We have walked away. Every time the relationship survived. Sometimes the same client came back later with a different brief and better terms. Walking away is not the end of the relationship. It is the start of a different conversation.