by Chris Castle and Amy E. Mitchell

You’ve decided to form a band. Let’s get your business in order.

What are the most important things you can do to make sure that you don’t trip yourselves up down the road? What can you do now to make sure that when you hire lawyers and accountants you don’t have to pay later for them to fix business mistakes you could have avoided? Here are 20 questions to ask yourselves before you get too far.

1. Appoint a Band Administrator: One band member needs to be responsible for keeping track of the papers and information relating to the band’s business, such as receipts, bank statements, payments, approvals for licenses, etc.

This doesn’t mean that the band appoints someone to make decisions on behalf of the band, just to make sure that there’s one person to communicate the band’s decisions to the outside world and share in the burden of keeping track of the band’s business.

You should also decide what rules you are going to follow amongst yourselves to make voting decisions about spending money, contracts, tours, hiring/firing, etc.

2. Band Agreements/Business Organizations; Accountants. If the band has (or thinks they have) already signed a band agreement or formed a business organization, then ask to see copies of all agreements and formation documents.

Read the rest at Artists House Music

Technorati Tags: Administration, Amy E Mitchell, Artists House Music, band, Chris Castle

 Print This Post

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Music Business, Music Promotion, Wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.