Canadian Lawyer

w w w . c a n a d i a n l a w y e r m a g . c o m J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 9 25 Entertainment law is "basically contract law with cooler clients," Dahl says. He was elected president of SaskMusic, Saskatchewan's non-profit music-industry association, in 2016 and is on the board of directors for the Western Canadian Music Awards. His career has come full circle as D'Eith, now a provincial member of the legislative assembly in B.C., has also joined him as partner at Murphy & Company. One Bad Son recently concluded a U.S. tour, opening for Sebastian Bach. Dahl's responsibilities and routines result in a unique work arrangement. "I am part of a new wave of lawyers who don't live in their offices," he says. "My lap- top is my office." He gets up before the family to get a few hours of uninterrupted work done. Then, while his wife and baby sleep, up pops his three-year-old who he hangs out with until daycare, answering a few emails here and there. Though he says he's accessible to clients to a fault, the freedom allows healthy eating, exercise and a lot of family time. But he also sees his model as more efficient. "I bill three hours of work while other lawyers are commuting." He's also billing while he's on the high- way in a tour bus. During the recent tour, Dahl negotiated a deal with Elektra Music Group for one of his clients who has a gift for finding unknown talent. Traditionally known as "A & R," or art- ist and repertoire, record labels typically have divisions in the company devoted to hunting for and corralling new talent. But as fewer and fewer records are sold, this artist-development function has waned, which Dahl says made inking the deal even more special. His client will earn a salary and get a percentage of the earnings of any talent she brings to the company. "In the next few years, I think she's going to just do amazing things, around the world, through this deal," he says. There's no textbook method to Dahl's practice. In fact, he says that while writing his thesis, there was only one textbook on entertainment law in Canada. Much of what he's able to do for clients is based on the relationships he's built through the years, he says. "I'm there to connect the dots." As a musician, Dahl's favourite moments in film are when they match a scene with the perfect song. With few buying records and streaming services paying little to art- ists for their music, placements in films is a valuable revenue producer. Recently, Dahl was approached through a mutual contact and got a song by his client, Saskatchewan country singer Colter Wall, featured in the trailer for the Oscar-winning film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. "I negotiated it and so, every time I see it, it's just like, it just feels cool," he says. "You work so hard at this career. . . . It's good to have those moments you sit back and be like, it was all worth it." Dahl is serving clients in an industry evolving along the lines he sketched in his thesis back in 2008 and 2009. In it, he argued that the internet has transformed what a music career looks like, uprooting the traditional relationship between art- ist, their copyright and record labels. While artist copyright used to earn the label massive profits from record sales in the short term, with the plummet in album sales, the revenue now comes in the long term "from an infinite array of sources." That's because the recording industry was "predicated on mass failure." Only 10 per cent of what a label released made any money, but those acts were so profitable that, through "a complete assignment of the underlying copyrights" of the songs, they would recoup the losses in the long term with their roster of artists. But if few buy albums, the old model doesn't work. In 2017, two-thirds of music- industry revenue came from streaming, up from just over half the year before, accord- ing to The Verge. This has led to labels steer- ing artists toward 360 deals, where the label takes a cut of everything the artist produces, including merchandise, touring and corpo- rate endorsements. Labels are not investing in artist devel- opment, so, to get signed, artists must first create buzz on their own with social media or by touring. In other words, the labels aren't signing the 90 per cent who gain no traction with consumers. NEW © 2018 Thomson Reuters Canada Limited 00249QJ-94677-NP The UK Common Law Library is now a click away with WestlawNext Canada and Westlaw UK Research more intuitively with seamless access to 12 essential titles. Why interrupt your research to track down the references you need? Link directly to the world's most important common law resources and enjoy the same look, feel, features, and functionality you rely on with WestlawNext Canada. For more information, please visit www.westlawnextcanada.com/uk-commentary ntitled-5 1 2018-12-12 2:57 PM

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