Some music business-like advice please!

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rockandroller

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Hello out there

Here's the scenario. A friend, let's say an aquaintance, of mine asked me to put together some music for a project he and a partner have come up with. The project is a cartoon they created and consists of a one episode script, or pilot I guess.

During one of the scenes one of the characters' dialogue goes into the form of a song. Tha'ts where I come in. I transcribed the dialogue from the script and recopied them exactly into a lyric sheet. Than I can up with the music, played all the parts and transformed it into a song. Hopefully this makes sense.

My friend is trying to pitch very hard to either get financing to produce it, or if I know him, try to sell the rights outright. My questions are:

1 What preparations should I take to protect my creative interests in this?

2 What credits do I give to myself. Musical Score? Musical arrangement? Producer?

3Without going to extremes, ASCAP, BMI, how can I protect my work?

4What do I ask for in compensation? A % if the thing ever goes anywhere, or sell it outright? If outright, what is fair compensation.

I am asking this because my freind is very gung ho about this project and even offered to buy the song outright. I am not accustomed to all the formalities, and don't want to set myself up for some battle if this project were ever to take flight. PS he is my friend, but that doesn't mean I trust him to give me proper credit without taking some precautions. Thanks for taking time to read this...
 
just a quick one, if you are writing a theme song, you may want to CR and have interests in royalties and so on. If its just incidental music you would usually sell the material outright or would be payed for whatever contribution you had.
 
One of the first things you must determine (in your own mind) - what are the chances of this cartoon project being successful? If you think there is no chance that this thing will go anywhere than holding out for a % means nothing. On the other hand if he is willing to purchase the material - at least you get some assured value for your efforts. Or, you can sell the rights to use the material while keeping the copywirte on the music.

If you want to protect your rights to some possible future royalties, going the copyright route and joining a performing arts groups (such as BMI) is the only real way of achieving that.

While some people argue to never give up the rights to material - I personally think sometimes it is better to get 100% of something than x% of nothing. I must assume that whatever you have written would not be destined as a Top 40 hit (it's cartoon music)- so the potential for any significant financial return may be very limited. Unless the cartoon becomes a series such as the Simpsons, your music may have a limited shelf life.

You can offer to sell the material and ask for some "on screen" credit for creating the music (just to get your name out there). Since the words were his (or rather part of the script) you only have a right to the music - which limits the value you may or may not claim credit to.

Regarding how much is it worth to sell up front? The buyer mormally dictates value (something is only worth what someone is willing to pay). If you go that route - ask him to put a number on the table first. If you put the first number down you are already negotiating against yourself. Since I don't know how much time you put in or how truly significant your music may be (is your music absolutely the focus of the cartoon, or as petemiller referenced - is the music incidental) - I can't possibley help you with setting a value.

When I've sold material in the past I often use my gigging rate as a pont of reference. I normally get a minimum of $100 for a gig (which with set-up and tear down comes out to about $15 per hour. So, if I spent twenty hours on a piece of music - that would be $300 (likely the minimum amount I would accept). Naturally, I would seek more than that - but at least I have a bottom line number to work with.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do.
 
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