800 lb. gorilla listing / work-for-hire agreements

[bigbluebarry]

Hey Joel, I'm in a situation where I do a lot of co-writing with one of my best friends, who also happens to be named Joel I typically write the music and he handles the melodies and lyrics. That's not always the case, but for the most part, that's how it works out. We made a decision that for every song that we worked on together, we were gonna split it 50/50, regardless of the amount of contribution from each person. Now, I doubt that relationship would work with everyone. For us, it just made it a lot easier than to try and remember who came up with what and how many words he wrote and how many I wrote, and how much of the melody did he come up with as opposed to me. I've got some co-writes with an artist where the producer also got involved and they took more of that approach to figuring the percentages. I have a feeling that might be the more typical approach, especially here in Nashville.My friend and I had this view on our arrangement. If we get a deal on a song, and it does well, then we both do well. It helps his family. It helps my family. It gives us the opportunity to continue doing what we love. We would both like to think that neither of us are greedy, so we genuinely want to see the other person be successful. My friend is closer to me than my own flesh and blood brother. And like I said, I doubt that our arrangement of the writer's shares would work well with everyone. But for us, it works out great.By the way, welcome to the boards and congrats on your forwards! I'm kinda new myself. Joined Taxi back in January, had about a dozen forwards but no deals yet.- Big Blue

[mazz]

Apr 16, 2008, 7:01am, joel wrote:Yeah, I'll have him draw me up a work-for-hire agreement too. I'll definitely be needing one soon. I've talked with my ex-bandmates, and it sounds like they'll be cool with all this. Now I just need to figure out what to do with my new band. We're currently in the studio working on an album, so now is probably the time to do this stuff. I wrote all the songs by myself before I even started playing with these guys, so the songs are definitely mine. But my new bandmates are making a huge contribution to the arrangements. It's been a real collaborative effort in that regard, and the songs are much better because of their input. So, part of me feels like splitting everything evenly with them. Seems like there would be less issues in the future. But I also don't want to just give potential money away that's rightfully mine. Have you guys had experience with this or know what a lot of other bands do? It's pretty difficult to quantify someone's musical contribution.Thanks,JoelMy wife had a band for a few years and she was the sole writer. All of the band members contributed quite a bit to the (here comes the key word) arrangements of the songs.We created a document that honored the members' contributions by giving them a split of any licensing fees generated by the specific recordings of the songs they contributed to. She retained the publishing and copyright of the songs and also any power of attorney to pitch the recordings of the songs as she saw fit. The document also had an end date and a provision of one year after the official dissolution of the band (sent in writing to the members), whichever came first. It could have just as easily had a monetary figure instead of a date, but that seemed harder to manage.This way, she can re-record the songs if she wants and the original players don't have any participation in the new version.This might be something to discuss with your attorney because some members of the new band may perceive their parts of the arrangement to be critical enough to the song to be construed as co-writing. Depending on how you want to handle it, you need to nip this in the bud before you get too far down the road!You're on the right track. Please keep us in the loop on this, it's very instructive because it's the real world!Cheers,Mazz

[joel]

That's a good point, Mazz. Some people do sometimes consider their contributions to the arrangement as contributions to the writing. In fact, that was one of the many things my last band fought about when we were finishing up our last record. I've always thought that songwriting was writing the chord progression, melody, and lyrics, and that writing a cool guitar part is arranging. But the person writing the cool guitar part doesn't always agree. Another interesting point you make is about being able to re-record a song later. It's possible my new band won't go anywhere and will fall apart in a couple of years (though hopefully that won't be the case), and if that happens, I should be able to re-record my songs with other people and not have to give my old bandmates a percentage of any money the new recordings make. On the other hand, if the recordings I make with my current band are successful, and then after we split up, I decide to re-record some of those songs and release them with a different band, my old bandmates would understandably feel that the success of the original recordings (which they contributed to) contributed to the success of my new recording. So, it seems like any agreement would need to state that the agreement ends if the band doesn't go anywhere and the band breaks up, unless the band does gain some success. But I have no idea how to put that into a contract. Is that what you were referring to when you said it could have a monetary figure instead of a date?The more I think about this, the more complicated it gets. What happened to the good old days when bands could just play music, not worry about this business stuff, and get ripped off by managers, publishers, and labels? Joel

[coachdebra]

Quote:The more I think about this, the more complicated it gets. What happened to the good old days when bands could just play music, not worry about this business stuff, and get ripped off by managers, publishers, and labels? Oh, that still happens ...