Okay, so let’s start talking Turkey now, the, the business side of things and how the song gets split in collaborations. I get lots and lots of questions about this, so I’m gonna try and give you some guidelines on how I work, in a co-write. And the overarching, opinion that I have about this is that everything should get split equally between all of the writers in the room.
So if there’s three writers, you each get a third of the song, two writers, you each get half of the song, and there’s no discussions about, well, I feel like I contributed more than you did, or, I feel that, you know, there were more lyrics for me, so maybe I should have more of the lyric side of it. No, we agree that everything gets split equally because even if somebody just puts a, a one word into your lyric, that can change it into a hit, or if you put one note into somebody’s melody, that can turn it into a hit.
So it’s not about the amount of lyrics or melodies that people write. It’s about all of you being in a room and being part of that songwriting session. So for me, there’s never a discussion about how participative people were, because even someone’s energy in a room can change the way that I deliver ideas to people. And I absolutely have, have witnessed that where I felt myself writing differently because somebody is in the room.
So, equal splits for me. And, and this goes for lyrics and music. it’s very rare that somebody will come to me with a full lyric, but even if they do, I’ll often have tweaks that I wanna make and I will encourage them to critique the music that I’m putting behind their lyrics. So at the end, it’s far easier, to take the equal splits approach and swings ’em roundabout. Some days you might contribute more, some days you might contribute less, but in the end it all gets evened out.
It’s also really important, when you are working with someone that you haven’t worked with before to agree upfront on this. And the simplest way is to send an email before the session saying, just to clarify, when we do this session, there’s gonna be equal splits on the song. are you cool with that? And if they come back to you and say yes, then you’ve got it in writing that that’s how it’s gonna be.
It may seem a bit sort of officious to do that beforehand, but trust me, if you haven’t agreed it and you don’t have it in writing anywhere, and let’s say that that’s the only song you write with that person, and you think that it’s 50 50 to share, the song turns into a massive hit, and then suddenly you get a letter saying, oh, my client thinks that they wrote 80% of this Song because you didn’t really do much of the lyric.
They brought a lot of lyric into the session. Then suddenly there’s a court case happening. they say that where there’s a hit, there’s a writ, and there have been so many of these of people arguing the task afterwards. So it’s far better to, to avoid that situation, agree things upfront, get it in writing, and then once you’ve got that working relationship, you don’t really need to do that again. it’s been very rare. It’s only happened a couple of times in my career that somebody has actually argued the task on who was more participative.
But I’ve always gone in with the approach of, let, let, let’s just split it equally and then everybody’s happy. I did hear a story from one of my co-writer friends, a very, very successful songwriter who wrote with an artist who then, had her manager. she’s a very, very famous artist, had her manager call up my friend and say, oh, she thinks, she says that she wrote more of the lyrics.
so she’s counted up the words to make sure, and she wants this percentage of it, to which my friend very politely declined. she went ahead and recorded the song anyway, but she was trying it on and the let’s just not have that situation. let’s not be precious about it. Let’s split everything equally. One of the questions that I get asked a lot is whether a session singer gets a cut of the publishing, if they bring something new into the session.
And for me, the answer is no. I pay session singers to sing for me. I don’t offer them publishing on this, because they haven’t written a song, and this is called Work for Hire. So essentially I’m paying them to do a job and that job entails them singing the song, but also at times extemporizing on the melody coming up with ad libs and maybe one of those ad libs turns into a big hook for the song if that’s the case.
They’ve been paid their due. so this is not a discussion that should be had, further down the line that, that a singer suddenly says, oh, I want a cut of that song again. You make things clear that this is a work for hire and, that they’re being paid to do that. Most professional session singers will already be aware of this, and they’re very, very happy to do ad libs and to do background vocals and the whole thing, and maybe even change a few melodies here and there.
and that’s absolutely fine, but they’re getting paid to do a job. They’re not getting a cut of the publishing because of it. Something else that happens is that, I’ve been asked about producers about whether, you should barter with a producer. So let’s say for example, that a producer costs a thousand dollars to create a track. Do you go to them and say, Hey, listen, I don’t have a thousand dollars, but, I’ll give you 50% of the publishing if you record the song.
Most producers will not take a chance on that. They would rather have the money up front. But if for example, they do, if they hear a hit record in there, they might think, hello, there could be something interesting going on here, and they may take you up on it. You’ll be kicking yourself further down the line if that song goes on. To make a hundred thousand dollars, you have to give away $50,000 of that instead of a thousand that you would’ve paid to have the production done.
So I would say save up and get the producer to do it so you can pay him and you’re not giving away any of the publishing. And on that, if you are working with somebody who is a producer, if you’re actually writing the song with a producer, for example, I’m a producer as well as a songwriter, when people come to me and write with me, then I don’t ask for more publishing.
for part, for my part in the production of the track, for creating a demo. I don’t ask for more publishing. it’s just something that I do as my job. And occasionally there will be, situations where we get a cut on a song and the record label will say, Hey, we love the track. So we’d like to buy the parts of the track, the actual musical parts, the recording to use with our artist, in which case I get paid, they don’t get paid, they don’t get a cut of my production fee.
I will get paid for the work that I’ve done. So it’s speculative work on my part, so it’s in my interest to do the very, very best job that I possibly can, but I’m not asking for a cut on publishing. And if you’re working with a producer, then that again, should not be something that should be asked for. And, it should be agreed upfront if you are concerned that that might happen. But, this is your pen, your pension, this is your kid’s inheritance, so hang onto your publishing for dear life.
Don’t give it away on a whim. So finally, with the demo itself, once it’s done, people ask about copyright. The easiest way to copyright a demo these days is to literally by emailing it, by putting it onto a SoundCloud page, for example, even a private SoundCloud page, you then have a digital timestamp on it, which means that, you can always prove that you were one of the creators of the song.
And it’s got, you know, it will be down to the microsecond of when it was uploaded. It’ll be on a server somewhere, either an email server or the SoundCloud server, whatever it may be. And of course, it’ll be on the main computer it was recorded on. But also make sure that you register your song with your local performing rights organization. So for example, in the uk that’s an organization called PRS. In America You have ascap, BMI, and csac. In Germany, you have gamer and it goes on.
the performing rights organizations are the organizations that collect the money when songs are performed live and they pay the writers. So this will mean that when the song does get cut, you will get paid what you are due. This isn’t a way of copywriting your songs, but what it is, is an official way of saying who the writers are on all of those songs. So you don’t upload your songs, to these organizations so they can hear them. It’s literally, this is the title of the song.
This is the length of the song, this is the type of composition that it is. It might be theatrical, it might be classical. And these are the writers and these are the percentages of each of the writers. That way you’ve got the thing registered officially with the splits. So all told this should wrap up the business side of stuff from the point where you discuss what the splits are gonna be, who’s gonna be producing the demo, making sure that you don’t give away your publishing for production or for people singing your song and for copywriting it and registering it.
But, as Elvis said, take care of business. His TCB was taking care of business. So make sure that you do the business side, with as much passion as you do the creative side.
