Collaboration or Work for hire?

[bgusch]

Hi all,

I hope all is well with you and your loved ones.

I just re upped for my second year at TAXI and the last year was mainly listening and learning.
I mainly attempt instrumentals and don't sing.
A friend is a prolific songwriter and self taught guitarist. Can I, as the TAXI member, submit his songs and arrangements, if agreed upon by both of us with a signed work for hire?
Would I submit under my name as long as I had the paperwork spelling out our deal or what.
How does that work.
I can see if I hired someone to sing a part of play sax the WFH would be " I paid you x for your part and we are done...
But if the person did most of the work???
I need to know more about collaborating???????
They are not interested in joining TAXI.
Where do I find WFH forms?
Thanks for any insight.
Bob G

[cosmicdolphin]

You can submit collaborations with non-Taxi members but it can get messy. What tends to happen is folks making music outside of this side of the business don't understand it start questioning everything.

i.e. you might get a Library deal which is 'standard' to anyone who knows this side of the industry but someone else runs the contract past their lawyer friend who doesn't get how these deals work and tells them not to sign it.

If you did go ahead most collabs are equal splits as it keeps things simple so you and your friend could agree to 50-50, but remember he would need to be a member PRO and understand that if stuff did get signed it's likely that there is other work to be done such as making alt mixes and / or stems of the songs. Or you might get an edit request to change something on the mix and only have a short amount of time to turn it around. It's a lot of work and people who aren't invested tend to flake on you.

Also if they are not your songs and he's done most of the work why would he sign a share of them over to you ? To sign them to Libraries you need to own the Master ( basically the rights to the music ) so if it's not your composition or co-write then really you have no business doing so. Copyright is assigned to the creator at the moment of creation.

Mark

[bgusch]

Good advice, cosmicdolphin.
Thank you.