Work for Hire or Splits?

[amayzlin]

Hi everyone,

I am new to TAXI and to this forum. I am looking to collaborate, but not sure which way to go. Should I go the "Work for Hire" path or make agreements to share in the profits on placements/royalties? If the latter, what sort of agreements do people make? For example, I wrote and arranged a children's country song, and I need to have it mixed and mastered. What type of collaboration would you go for in this particular situation and in general?

Best,
Alex

[Casey H]

Hi everyone,

I am new to TAXI and to this forum. I am looking to collaborate, but not sure which way to go. Should I go the "Work for Hire" path or make agreements to share in the profits on placements/royalties? If the latter, what sort of agreements do people make? For example, I wrote and arranged a children's country song, and I need to have it mixed and mastered. What type of collaboration would you go for in this particular situation and in general?

Best,
Alex

There's no answer that fits all situations.
Work-For-Hire: You pay a fee for the work and retain all ownership and royalties. Make sure you get a signed WFH agreement if you do this. Pro: You own 100% when done. Con: The upfront fee can be costly, outside of your budget.
Split: Here you share the ownership of the composition and/or the master recording. Usually, folks keep it simple and make the splits even (e.g. 50/50) across the board. Pro: No upfront cost. Con: Any income gets shared.

Some things to keep in mind. A large percentage of songs we put in music libraries never get placed. And if they do get placed, they may not earn enough to cover the WFH fees. Of course, that depends on what you paid. If you only paid a singer, for example (usu. $150), you *might* earn that back. If you pay $500-$1000 for the entire production, much less likely.

If you do a split, make sure you sign a collaboration agreement that details the agreed upon percentages for master and composition. My opinion is if the other party was involved in the songwriting (melody, chords, lyrics), do a split.

With mixing and mastering only, it's less common to do a split, though it's very possible. I usually see mixing and mastering as pure fee for service. Whichever way you go, make sure you get the proper paperwork signed. Don't wait till later on when a deal is on the table and the other party can't be reached or balks at signing.

HTH
Feel free to ask more questions.
Casey

[amayzlin]

Hi Casey,

Thank you so much for this detailed response. Very much appreciated.

Best of luck,
Alex

[cosmicdolphin]

I wrote and arranged a children's country song, and I need to have it mixed and mastered. What type of collaboration would you go for in this particular situation and in general?

I would reccommend doing what most of us have done and learn to mix and master yourself. Let's say you write one song a week..it might end up costing you $5k a year for something you could do yourself.

If you are lucky enough to sign any tracks you might get notes back on edit requests back from the library, so if you're paying someone else it means you gotta go back and pay some more.

[amayzlin]

I wrote and arranged a children's country song, and I need to have it mixed and mastered. What type of collaboration would you go for in this particular situation and in general?

I would reccommend doing what most of us have done and learn to mix and master yourself. Let's say you write one song a week..it might end up costing you $5k a year for something you could do yourself.

If you are lucky enough to sign any tracks you might get notes back on edit requests back from the library, so if you're paying someone else it means you gotta go back and pay some more.

Hi, thank you very much for your response!

Yeah, it's definitely better to do everything yourself so that you incur as little expenses as possible. And I completely agree on the "edit requests" part. Of course, since everything has pros and cons, the big con of doing everything yourself is that it's extremely unscalable. Unfortunately, there's only 24 hours in a day. Gotta find the middle ground somehow.

Best,
Alex

[cosmicdolphin]

the big con of doing everything yourself is that it's extremely unscalable. Unfortunately, there's only 24 hours in a day. Gotta find the middle ground somehow.

How many tracks are you aiming for and what type are they ?

[amayzlin]

the big con of doing everything yourself is that it's extremely unscalable. Unfortunately, there's only 24 hours in a day. Gotta find the middle ground somehow.

How many tracks are you aiming for and what type are they ?

That's not what I meant. Let's say my goal is to produce 50 songs this year. If I am gonna do everything myself to incur as little expenses as possible, there's no way in hell. Maybe like 10-15 at best. Achieving that "50 song" goal is what I call scalable. It will require collaboration and delegation. But 10-15 is really nothing. I am too old for 10–15, my time's running out.

[cosmicdolphin]

That's not what I meant. Let's say my goal is to produce 50 songs this year. If I am gonna do everything myself to incur as little expenses as possible, there's no way in hell. Maybe like 10-15 at best. Achieving that "50 song" goal is what I call scalable. It will require collaboration and delegation. But 10-15 is really nothing. I am too old for 10–15, my time's running out.

Okay , that seems more like a speed problem to me. There isn't really enough money in it a lot of the time to pay people for stuff, so doing as much as you can yourself makes it much more viable.

It may not seem like it now but 50 full songs a year should be well achievable with practice. I mostly do instrumentals and maybe 3 or 4 songs a year but can manage 100 if I put my mind to it. I'm a little more relaxed these days so it's usually 80-90 a year. Instrumentals are faster to produce of course so it would be more like 40 - 50 if they were all songs. This includes writing , recording, mixing, mastering and exporting all the deliverables like stems and alterntative mixes.

I'm no slouch but there are people here way faster than I am, and many of us have full time jobs and familes, children etc me included. But the more you learn , and the more you do it, the easier it will become.

Mark

[amayzlin]

That's not what I meant. Let's say my goal is to produce 50 songs this year. If I am gonna do everything myself to incur as little expenses as possible, there's no way in hell. Maybe like 10-15 at best. Achieving that "50 song" goal is what I call scalable. It will require collaboration and delegation. But 10-15 is really nothing. I am too old for 10–15, my time's running out.

Okay , that seems more like a speed problem to me. There isn't really enough money in it a lot of the time to pay people for stuff, so doing as much as you can yourself makes it much more viable.

It may not seem like it now but 50 full songs a year should be well achievable with practice. I mostly do instrumentals and maybe 3 or 4 songs a year but can manage 100 if I put my mind to it. I'm a little more relaxed these days so it's usually 80-90 a year. Instrumentals are faster to produce of course so it would be more like 40 - 50 if they were all songs. This includes writing , recording, mixing, mastering and exporting all the deliverables like stems and alterntative mixes.

I'm no slouch but there are people here way faster than I am, and many of us have full time jobs and familes, children etc me included. But the more you learn , and the more you do it, the easier it will become.

Mark

Wow, Mark, thanks for that. I am jealous. It's really inspiring what you said. I guess, I need to work up the skill of producing fast, and I can definitely work on that. Thank you!

[Casey H]

Collaboration can be very helpful. You might have a good song idea and a collaborator might be able to work with you on it and do the production. Networking with other folks here on the forum and at the Road Rally can help that. I'm not saying don't learn production but along the way, you could start getting songs out there. I get the impression you write vocal songs, as opposed to instrumental cues? They are obviously slower to crank out because you need lyrics and a good singer.

I don't produce any of my own songs. While I do often pay for productions, I've also done a lot with collaborators that I met through Taxi. Recently, along with 2 co-writers, I got a song placed in an indie film. If it wasn't for the collab with those folks I met here, it couldn't have happened (One of them did the production).

I hope you can come to the Road Rally. Well worth it for a lot of reasons.

Best,
Casey