>
> My tendency, rather than looking at this as a division into writer and
> singer, is to first look at it as a division of song and recording. If the
> song is self-published, and is also not co-written, then there is no further
> subdividing of that, and all of that portion (however it is sized) would go
> to the writer. However, the recording, unless all made by one person who
> does everything, is likely to get subdivided, for example, into singer,
> musicians, producer, engineer, arranger, mixer, and whatever else may be
> involved. The other thing here is who is doing the administration and any
> promotion/marketing of the recording. So that could be another cut of the
> recording part of it (assumedly any song-specific promotion outside of the
> recording would be the responsibility of the publisher, but the publisher
> might also be involved in promoting the recording, especially if that is the
> only released version of the song).
>
> I think the model would probably need to vary depending on circumstances,
> and my tendency is to look at it more or less like a record
> company/publisher relationship (i.e. in the sense of the traditional music
> industry) even if the same person is filling multiple roles on both sides of
> the fence.
>
> Purely for recording sales, there are some legal guidelines -- i.e. the
> statutory mechanical royalty rate, which can be applied to most download
> sales (questionable would be when the download price gets very close to, or
> less than, the statutory rate, but, thus far, I don't think there are many
> services that get down quite that far for permanent downloads). Down the
> line somewhere, there probably also will be for interactive streams and
> temporary/tethered downloads, but last I heard it was expected to be at
> least September before a final verdict would be rendered on that. TBD
> information notwithstanding, though, this tends to lead me to think the song
> portion of the money should be structured based on the legal guidelines, and
> would probably come off the top, be it as a penny rate (e.g. the current 9.1
> cents per song) or a percentage of wholesale rate (e.g. if the new rates end
> up going that route, or to cover situations where the wholesale price of the
> download gets too low to make the statutory rate reasonable).
>
> Then, whatever is left over from that is for the recording, but that could
> also include marketing and administration functions, especially if we're
> talking about project with enough players to make it not a simple case of
> self promotion and paying oneself. My next tendency in this would be to
> figure out what any marketing and administration cuts should be, based on
> what is planned in these areas, then take that, probably as a percentage,
> off the top of what is left after the song portion. For example, if there
> isn't going to be any promotion budget, and all people involved in the
> recording are expected to promote it to the best of their abilities, but
> there are enough people involved to make admin (e.g. tracking the royalties,
> dividing them up, issuing payments, etc.) non-trivial, perhaps assigning 10%%
> for admin might make sense. It's hard to say what might be fair here, but
> there definitely could be considerable work in dealing with this sort of
> stuff.
>
> Anyway, once you get any marketing an admin portions handled, then it comes
> down to what is left for the creative side of the recording, and all the
> players involved in that. Here again, I think it all depends on the nature
> of the project. Will it be going out under the singer's name, for example?
> Or will it be something like "the Songwriter A project" where the singer is
> just the voice, not the identity of the artist? If the song will be
> associated with the singer's name (i.e. the singer is a "featured artist"),
> my inclination would be to split the recording 50/50 between singer and "the
> rest" (i.e. producer, musicians, etc.), then take "the rest" (i.e. those who
> were involved in the tracks and production, and figure out how best to
> allocate that (assuming everyone is collaborating on spec, not doing "work
> for hire" that would not be based on royalties). On the other hand, there
> is often a lot more work on the production side than in the vocals, so it's
> easy to make the case that the singer should get a smaller percentage --
> e.g. maybe 25%% -- especially if there is a complex arrangement. It really
> all depends on the project, and probably also on the leverage of the
> individuals involved.
>
> This is a real-time consideration for me as I have an upcoming release that
> has multiple songwriters (two co-written songs with different co-writers),
> multiple featured vocalists (the recordings are duets), and different casts
> of characters involved in the instrumental tracks for each of the songs on
> the release. Even within this one release, which is likely to have a total
> of 5 tracks, including the main two songs and three remixes of those, it is
> tough to come up with a one-size-fits-all model that seems fair all around.
>
> Rick
> --
> =======================================
> Rick Paul
> Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP)
>
Web:www.RickPaul.info
>
MySpace:www.myspace.com/rickpaulmusic
> =======================================
