how do you handle split sheets with artists you are developing in-house?

T

TNYSTRK

New member
I produce/mix/master for a hip hop collective (just mixtapes thus far) and we are venturing into creating for-profit content (something we'll sell through tunecore)

I know that the PRO's treat music/lyrics as 50/50 (100/100) splits in terms of perf royalties, however i'm wondering how anyone has handled this situation personally.

Because of the lack of startup funds, I am not charging for studio time/producers fees/mixing/mastering/original beats. Does this mean i'm entitled to 50% of download sales as well as 50% of the publishing? This seems outrageous, please tell me if i'm totally wrong. I've been trying to figure out what to do so we can draft agreements and hit the studio. thanks.

I'm sure other's have faced similar problems with artists they want to develop pro-bono at first.
 
We mostly split it equally on the people in the studio but that is more like a songwriting session where one of us produce it later.

In a clean production role like you describe I guess it would more come down to points and/or parts of the royalties. I do not think there is given rules to how much you are entitled to.
For me it would have boiled down to who and what you are.

Are you a great producer working with unsigned people that you partly believe in? --> You´re cut should be huge and they should be willing to give it to you. Such producers would also ofc get a fixed payment up front but as you told, this is outta the question right now.

Or are you a bunch of unsigned friends trying to make and break it at the lowest cost possible? If so, you should go in as you do now and you should really discuss the cuts/royalties.

Depending on how much time you put into each productions and how much you believe in each act/artist/song I guess - for me - the deals would have been done on a song to song basis. But I can perfectly see you wanting to do the same deal with several people; avoiding discussions and tension.

This is the best advise I feel I can give you. I really ain´t a seasoned semi-pro when it comes to this.
From the artist point of view, I would never give away 50% of rights/royalties unless the producer was master class and he had connections too (Pensado, CLA, Maserati etc.). 50% is a huge giveaway. But then again - like a lecturer one said to me - it´s better to have 20% of 100K than 100% of nothing; he was talking about sitting too hard on your cuts/shares.

I do not know if you got any wiser by this. Hopefully it will help your decision together with the rest of the guys chiming in their cents and dollars here soon.


Best of luck!
 
I swear @Bandcoach had a breakdown chart somewhere that went over this... (i could be thinking of something else tho...)

- But yes, I agree with @Heyclown - consider all the variables and get on the same page before you guys start doing tons of work...

--- many-a-great-song was not released because people couldn't agree on sh*t.... #SadButTrue
 
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I did do a breakdown of what to do in terms of splits with a singer, which would only be partially relevant here

it was one of ollie's threads I think....
 
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TNYSTRK said:
Because of the lack of startup funds, I am not charging for studio time/producers fees/mixing/mastering/original beats. Does this mean i'm entitled to 50% of download sales as well as 50% of the publishing? This seems outrageous, please tell me if i'm totally wrong. I've been trying to figure out what to do so we can draft agreements and hit the studio. thanks.

I'm sure other's have faced similar problems with artists they want to develop pro-bono at first.
Click to expand...

At the end of the day... it's what you negotiate. I would take 50% of the sales and 50% of the publishing

Sounds like you're doing a lot of work

Mixing/Mastering
Recording/Engineering
Creating instrumentals
 
As producer you would be entitled to 50% of the performance copyright and all associated revenue. The performance copyright corresponds to revenue generated from the underlying musical composition in the copyright ie. when th song gets played.

But that's not the only hat you're wearing.

Mixing and studio time would go toward ownership of the sound recording copyright. The sound recording copyright corresponds to revenue generated from record sales.

What percentage should you get of the masters?

Whatever you can negotiate for yourself.

I'd need to know more about the specific situation to really give any advice, but if these guys are artists they would never get 50% of the masters if only wearing the artists hat.

Most new artists would get between 8 and 12 percent (after recouping).

Are you invoicing these guys since your spending time and money (electricity at least) so that you can be accurately compensated for your efforts?

You've only just started to cracke the surface of he questions you should be asking.

Feel free to hit me up but I'd love to get more details and answer in the forum so that we can get some good dialogue going.

Who are the artists signed to?

Are they a group or individual artists?

Is there a record label or production company involved?

What kind of budget , approximately, are they and you working with?
 
let's rephrase that slightly - as composer of the backings you are entitled to 50% of the copyright, publishing, mechanical reproduction, synchronisation and performance royalties.

As for what you should get as a result of using your facilities to record, mix and master for the crew, that is a separate contractual agreement which ethically should not touch the royalties due to other members of the crew. In an ideal situation you would be charging for time up front; as you not e this is not possible right now. So instead, keep an account of all time spent on non-composition tasks (mic setup, recording, mixing, mastering, etc) and bill against a future payment date

Remember that download sales and physical sales carry a range of additional hidden costs as well as the royalties attached to the recording: both of these (hidden costs and royalties) form part of your operating costs and must be removed before calculating nett profit, which should be split according to some pre-agreed contractual split.

Hidden costs can include aggregator costs, distributor costs (these two would formerly have been in-house payments to a label), registration fees, paypal/bank/financial institution fees, graphic design fees, video production fees. All of these need to be recouped before you can assert that you have a made a profit from sales. In addition you are required to pay/account for royalties before declaring a profit from sales (you cannot include the royalty payments due as part of the nett profit).
 
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