Master Recording Split for 3 Cowriters

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TLCA
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Master Recording Split for 3 Cowriters

Post by TLCA » Tue Nov 16, 2021 8:19 pm

What is a fair split for Master Recording in this case for each? 3 Cowriters have an equal split for the Composition and Lyrics of the song being produced:

Cowriter 1 is the producer
Cowriter 2 is the artist, provides vocals to the producer and has input in the production
Cowriter 3 provides background vocals, string track and has input in the production

No one is getting paid or work for hire.

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RPaul
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Re: Master Recording Split for 3 Cowriters

Post by RPaul » Sun Nov 21, 2021 3:42 pm

TLCA wrote:
Tue Nov 16, 2021 8:19 pm
What is a fair split for Master Recording in this case for each? 3 Cowriters have an equal split for the Composition and Lyrics of the song being produced:

Cowriter 1 is the producer
Cowriter 2 is the artist, provides vocals to the producer and has input in the production
Cowriter 3 provides background vocals, string track and has input in the production

No one is getting paid or work for hire.
"Fair" is really whatever you agree between the three of you. I've only had to consider this once to date, for a 5-track EP that had two featured artists and multiple people involved on the tracks/production/musician side, with different involvements on each of the 5 tracks. For whatever it's worth (probably not much), here are the breakdowns I used (comments on the logic below):

50% for the featured artist(s), and 50% for the production/music/tracks. Of just that production/music/tracks half, I subdivided those further by function:

5% Executive Producer
25% Producer
15% Mixing
5% Mastering
10% Engineer
15% Arranger
25% Background musicians/vocalists

(Those add up to 100%, but keep in mind that they are against the 50%, so the rates against the entire recording are half of those figures -- the figures versus the production half are just easier to read and explain.)

The goal was really to try and divide it up in some fair way based on my feeling for the functions and work involved.

The "Executive Producer" role here was really just a coordination role -- sort of project management, but including getting things into the distribution cycle, as opposed to also incurring the financial risk such as in the typical case.

Producer is probably self-explanatory in the sense of its being the creative side of things on the production front, while mixing, mastering, and engineering are the technical roles on the production front. Arranging is probably also self-explanatory, at least to the degree the musicians aren't just coming up with their own parts. Then the other big chunk is for royalty participation of any musicians, basically divided up by the number of components each contributes to the overall arrangement/recording.

Two other things worth noting: The production/music/tracks roles overlapped greatly here, but with different involvements on different recordings. Thus, the share any given person got could be different for different tracks in the overall collection. Also, at the very high level, before taking any of this into account (including the 50% for featured artists), 10% was taken off the top for administration (e.g. royalty accounting and reporting) since that would be an ongoing thing once the recordings were released. Thus, if looking at gross royalties, the featured artist share was really 45% (i.e. 50% of 90% since 10% came off the top for admin) as was the production/music/tracks share. (But, again, the percentages just get really ugly when taking all that into account. Also, song royalties come off the top before gross recording royalties, so that makes things even more squirrely if looking at the percentages.)

So, is this fair? Well, the collaborators on the project agreed to it, so I guess it was by definition. :) But I have no clue how others might divide things up. I just tend to overthink things, especially when it comes to trying to make sure everyone involved has some compensation relative to their involvement. I don't recall if I had based any of these figures based on researching any industry conventions of that time (it was well over a decade ago.)

Rick

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Casey H
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Re: Master Recording Split for 3 Cowriters

Post by Casey H » Sun Nov 21, 2021 6:35 pm

Simple. Equal splits on both master and composition. That's the professional way to do it.

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Re: Master Recording Split for 3 Cowriters

Post by hummingbird » Mon Nov 22, 2021 6:44 am

+1 to what Casey said. Equal shares.
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VanderBoegh
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Re: Master Recording Split for 3 Cowriters

Post by VanderBoegh » Wed Nov 24, 2021 4:21 pm

I do equal splits. Every time.

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