What should I charge for producer's fee?

J

Jef Gibbons

New member
Hi all, I'm pretty new to the producer thing, and need some advice. I currently have about 6 clients that come to my studio (which I recently built with help from this forum!) that I help write songs with. Meaning a lot of them come with a melody, and I come up with the chord progressions, harmonies, help adjust the melody, lay down piano, bass and sequencing etc. I also pretty much arrange the song for them, then they sing the vocals. What would be fair for me to charge as a percentage of the songs in this case (assuming they make any money down the road)? I can't find much info on this topic, but would like to know what other people do in these cases. THe other question is what to charge as a percentage if I just record and arrange the song? Thanks for any help, jef
 
Charge them a per hour rate and in the contract have some kind of agreement about production credits and co-writting credits so if they get picked up by a company or publisher you get some royalties. 50/50 should be fair if your doing alot of work or 60/40 and charge what you think is reasonable for your per house rate.
 
It really dependson the potential of the band....

if they are gonna sell some records, you could easily waive initail writing fees and settle for a percentage of writing royalties and a point or two for producing........

if they arent gonna sell anything, or much at all, royalties and points wont amount to crap so you should charge them up front...then again, if the band and the song is going nowhere, do you really want to give up your material to them?....
 
Forgive me....I'm an old fart.
Back when I was elbow deep in aligators, the producer was the one that spent the lion's share of the money and in turn owned whatever he paid for, until paid back or some other pre-arranged deal was satisfied.
The writing is a different story, percentage of royalties would apply there as a co-writer (your name should be on the application sent to the copyright office).
As a musician....hourly fee would apply.
As a recording engineer, hourly rate again.
What about publishing? Is there a publisher involved?


I dunno, maybe things have changed.


bd
 
Great replies, thanks folks. Yeah, I do charge per hour when they come in. I'm thinking I'll make a small contract that says I get 50% of the royalites if I write the music to a clients words and melody, and I'll ask for 20% royalties on any songs that I simply produce and arrange for them as well as continue charging them per hour. Does this seem fair? Do you think I'm short-changing myself? Does anyone have a sample contract they could show me? Thanks for the help!
 
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