Hi All,

I've been talking with a new potential member about setting up an agreement for me to help him. He is a singer songwriter writing mostly pop music. He writes lyrics, music, and performs all the tracks (instruments and vocals). My role so far would be to fine tune production, arrangement, replace instruments at times with my own, mix and master the songs. And re-do mixes when necessary based on screener comments and other feedback. He would rather not pay for the services but give me a royalty portion instead. Given that my work has no advance and is solely based on a possible future payout;

What would be a fair way to share the royalties in an agreement?
- for the main song
- for other variations including instrumental versions etc.

Thanks in advance all

Hi Pedro
First, I'm sure you know that for any given piece of music, the time until it generates any royalties can be long-- maybe years. Also, a piece could never generate royalties at all or only result in very small dollars.

Not saying that to be negative, just to make sure you are clear that if you don't take any upfront money as work-for-hire services, you may never recoup a penny for your time.

There are two main ways to do this:

(1) You do the work for no charge and sign and agreement with the artist that he/she will reimburse you X% of any future royalties earned by the track. Keep in mind that the artist might be paid by license fees by libraries and performance royalties by their PRO and would have to, in turn, pay you your share. To avoid the re-payment scenario, for license fees, you could be co-owner of the master recording. Many libraries will divide any license fee payments among master owners (Some will not). I don't know if there is any simple way to get PRO's to split payments for a specific track as opposed to all payments for a composer.

(2) Be a co-writer of the composition and co-owner of the master. In this scenario, both of you would have to sign all deals and all revenue would be split. The PRO part would be automatic. Even though you may not have "written" as much as produced & arranged, this is the most reliable way to ensure that all revenue is shared-- almost on "auto-pilot". There are, however, some libraries or end users that, for license fees, will only pay one party who has to distribute to the co-writers, but many will split and make separate payments.

Am I making sense?

HTH
Casey

I'm usually in the other position, doing most of the writing, preproduction, tracking and arrangement. In our current economic climate I find that more and more the music industry is turning on itself and everyone is trying to make money off of each other rather than from selling to music listeners. For this reason and also because cash is very tight, I'm very happy to split ownership of tracks with producers/engineers who can bring my projects home. Basically, I would say, make sure you're working with someone who is trustworthy and then just split the track. 50% of anything that comes back. That would mean you would be part owner of the master. Or if that sounds like too much and isn't fair to him, split the writing so you're basically taking 25% of the total writers/publisher's pie. However, if you're agreeing to doing remixes based on feedback it sounds like the work will be pretty equal. Unless you're really fast and efficient, I think it might not be worth it to do it for less than 50% ownership.

That's my two cents, spend how you like!

Jon

Thanks Casey and Jon!

Jon, my thoughts were in and around yours.
I was thinking 25% for the main song and 50% on all variations, remixes, instrumental versions, etc.
Thoughts?

This is interesting.

I think you are best going with the 50/50 (25%) and any remixes should be bumped up.

I've run into only one problem so far with co-writing, but it kept 2 tracks out of a library and potential placement. It was a bummer, but now I know what to do!

Good Luck!

Hey Kyle,

When you say now you know what to do, what do you mean?
Thanks!

Sorry, what was pretty vague...

Being very upfront about all the aspects of working together was what I was referring to. It looks like you've got a handle on it!

K

Another way to handle it is to agree on the would be cash price for producing the album. Then Fifty fifty split the deal until you get a substantial portion of that price returned. For a 10k album say take 50% up to 6k. After that 10% for all sales. The producer gets a shot at getting paid for some of his investment, and the artist isn't giving away half of his creation into perpetuity in case it hits big.

Its a little more bookkeeping but makes for good will in a long term business relationship.

Judy

Thanks Judy,
Interesting option. Definitely would make for a lot of paperwork and more tracking.
Potential option nonetheless

What ever deal you come up with...put it in writing.

I have done this with a few people who sang on my tracks as main vocalist. I offered a smaller percentage (10%) of revenue...if any, from the song. We're hoping to place the songs with artists so 10% could be a substantial amount with the right artist and billboard chart position. much more then a studio session fee, but it's all a gamble.

As a co-writer its all equal shares. regardless of the contribution amounts.