Music Publishing & Songwriting

There’s an old adage about keeping your friends close to you– and keeping your enemies even closer.

Having spent the past week fighting through a thicket of legal and licensing issues on several different projects, I was reminded that in the jungle that is the music business, it’s often very hard to tell which is which– who is friend and who is foe. In fact, more often than not, friend and foe are one and the same person. Unfortunately, when it comes to disputes and problems in the songwriting and publishing business, the two opposing sides are usually former associates or friends.

In a business filled with myths, one of the greatest myths is the idea of “song theft”– some nefarious stranger that happens to hear an undiscovered hit song and suddenly grabs it, and claims it as his own. I’ve had countless songwriters ask me about how to avoid this fearsome fate. Many have explained to me that they never send their songs out to people; for fear that someone might hear their work of genius and steal it out from under them. Needless to say, this particular career strategy has its drawbacks. Others carefully edit their tracks to 30 second blurbs, or add annoying bleeps and blips periodically throughout the track, as if their demo was as likely to be pirated as the next Lil’ Wayne single.

The good news is that it’s highly unlikely that a perfect stranger will pilfer your song. Honestly, 95% of the people to whom you send your demo, solicited or unsolicited, will never listen to it at all. Out of the remaining five percent, two or three percent will listen to only a couple of seconds of the song before moving on. All things considered, your chances are pretty good that no one weeding through a pile of demos on his or her desk will be making off with your masterpiece.

The bad news is, you might want to take a long, tough look at your friends. Call me a cynic. You wouldn’t be the first. But a long career in the music industry doesn’t exactly elevate your faith in humanity. In fact, experience has taught me that the vast majority of legal issues within the music industry, the problem is not between strangers, but between business partners– one songwriting collaborator with another, an artist with his or her producer, an A&R person with his employer, a musician with a producer, etc.

These disputes usually arise in part because of the close relationship between the people involved– a closeness that usually means that the necessary paperwork goes undone. If you’re concerned about avoiding trouble, don’t worry about sending out demos or sticking sound effects into the middle of your recording. Instead, keep your focus on the paper:

1.Split Letters– agreements between the songwriters involved in a composition, outlining the percentage of the song controlled by each writer. These letters should also provide the publishing and contact information for each writer.

2.Production Agreements– usually between producers and artists that the producers are developing. This agreement, at the very least, should make clear who owns the master recordings and the performances on those recordings, and the compensation to be paid to either the artist or the producer should the product be released (or not released).

3.Work For Hire Agreements– usually given to session musicians or vocalists who perform on a recording, in exchange for a one-time fee. It establishes that people performing “work for hire” have no further claims on future income generated by the song or recording.

4. Sample Agreements– made when samples of other recordings are included in a new master. These are the responsibility of whoever adds the sample– the producer, the writer, the remixer, or the record label.

Trust the voice of experience. Most of your career in the music business will be spent dealing with arguments between two collaborators, each who think they contributed at least 60% of the song, or a session singer who thinks that he or she really wrote part of the melody, or a producer who did a demo with an unknown artist that led to a recording contract, but no song on the album for the disappointed producer. These are the issues that come up again and again, and many of them are impossible to resolve, because they come down to oral agreements, assumptions, or inferred agreements between two parties too engaged in the creative flow to bother with outlining their understanding with each other.

Am I saying that crooks and cheats surround you? Of course not. Most people in any dispute sincerely believe that their position is correct and legitimate. Most disputes are misunderstandings that have risen to a level where compromise and an apology is not sufficient. While a written contract will not solve every problem, it does force everyone involved in an issue to clearly outline their understanding of the situation and their expectations, as well as establishing a clear record of what everyone actually agreed to at one specific point in time. Even well meaning people often rewrite history in their heads, forget what they did or did not say, or change their perception of what is “fair” over the course of several years. That’s why it’s good to right things down.

I know that most struggling songwriters, producers and artists are not anxious to take on legal fees they don’t need. If you’re looking for a template of a songwriting “split” letter, you can find one in my book, Making Music Make Money. On several different Internet sites, you can find examples of work for hire agreements, production contracts and sample agreements. Certainly, I would encourage you to see an attorney for big items– especially artist/producer production contracts. But if that’s out of reach, use the best template you can find, and make sure that you understand what it’s saying. So long as it accurately reflects your concerns, it’s probably sufficient. It’s certainly better than nothing.