Collaboration The Next Step?

tanlith

tanlith

King of the Wicker People
The issue of collaboration online has always seemed like a scary thing to me. And I'm sure alot of you have the same fears. We don't want to lose our hard work or have someone swoop down and grap half our money just because we used his/her suggestion to change one word in a song!

So I've been away lately doing a lot of research on the topic of Collaboration Agreements... and I posted the result on my website. If you want to know more about collaboration, click the link below....

... and no, this isn't an advertisement... it's free info... there's just way too much to post on here so I dedicated a page on my site to the topic.

- Tanlith -
 
Funny. I used to be scared about this as well. But lately I have realized that if it is good enough to steal then it would just be a compliment on the work that I have done. True, I could be ripped off and lose out on royalties, but leaving it on my computer won't make any money either! Plus, if I can write one hit, then I can write another!

I am no longer worried. I don't plan to make any money off of my love in life.

Joshua
 
mori - while I agree with your sentiment in principle, if it were easy to get cut after cut of hit songs then everyone would be doing it. Even the big boys have dry spells.

Besides, you don't need a hit record to make money with music. This is my perspective from the world of Country Music because that is the market I have familiarzed myself with. (Warning, my numbers might be a tich off because I haven't done the number crunching in some time, but they should be close enough for discussion purposes). Consider an album cut on a hit album. Depending on the sales it might make you $10,000 - $50,000 in royalties over the life of the song. It ain't gonna get you retired, but it could get you seriously thinking about doing it for a living. If you have properly protected your intellectual property, this might give one a chance to take a shot at songwriting as a profession rather than as a hobby and still support your family. Now that I’m a family man, this is an important consideration.

If your song is a charting song then you could possibly make $50,000 to $250,000 (maybe a tad more if it’s really really huge & especially if it’s picked up for TV ads, movies…) over the life of the song with the royalties from radio & other airplay. The upper end of this is by no means chump change and certainly worth protecting. It would certainly mean (for me) that I could take off a couple years and really hit the songwriting hard and still support my family.

Just some food for thought :)

Tanlith – I took a quick scan through (I’m at work). Looks good. Nice work.
 
Good analysis; one further point I would throw in is that on-line collaborators aren't necessarily looking at major market sales, but indie and small, regional market sales. In fact some, such as myself, tend to prefer doing business with indie publishers and artists.

One reason is that songwriters/publishers dealing with major labels are almost always asked to provide the song at some discounted rate of the statutory royalty rate of approximately 8 cents per unit sold. My experience has been that it's not unusual for major labels to demand and get a 75% discount rate just to put a song on hold for a project. Indie labels, generally, don't try to stongarm the songwriter/publisher into such discount deals. I've found most of them appreciative of what goes into writing and plugging a song and are willing to pay the statutory rate or close to it.

There are so many considerations and options for how one does business and who one does business with, that the options are worth pursuing. Personally, I'd rather have 10 decent selling songs by indie artists than 1 flash in the pan radio hit. Another consideration is that if the song is really that good, it may be covered by a major artist, so you might see some increased income from that.
 
Peter D said:
Good analysis; one further point I would throw in is that on-line collaborators aren't necessarily looking at major market sales, but indie and small, regional market sales. In fact some, such as myself, tend to prefer doing business with indie publishers and artists.

One reason is that songwriters/publishers dealing with major labels are almost always asked to provide the song at some discounted rate of the statutory royalty rate of approximately 8 cents per unit sold. My experience has been that it's not unusual for major labels to demand and get a 75% discount rate just to put a song on hold for a project. Indie labels, generally, don't try to stongarm the songwriter/publisher into such discount deals. I've found most of them appreciative of what goes into writing and plugging a song and are willing to pay the statutory rate or close to it.

There are so many considerations and options for how one does business and who one does business with, that the options are worth pursuing. Personally, I'd rather have 10 decent selling songs by indie artists than 1 flash in the pan radio hit. Another consideration is that if the song is really that good, it may be covered by a major artist, so you might see some increased income from that.
Click to expand...


Nice point Peter! Mind if I paraphrase that and add it to my site?

- Tanlith -
 
Tanlith - You're more than welcome to paraphrase or quote my remark. I'm glad it made sense to someone.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top