your thoughts please.

[ManhtnProjct]

Lets say there is a band with 4 members. 1 is a writer, 1 is an audio engineer and writer, 1 is a graphic designer and 1 handles business though he is not a lawyer.[bleep]

There is an album recording budget as well as a marketing, PR, CD pressing etc.. bugdets.

For this instance we will be talking about just the Writing and Recording process and that Budget.

They have a partnership agreement that says everyone is equal 25%. (equal for all income and equal for all debt)

Writing / Engineering can take 4-6 months. During this time, 2 Members spend the most time and focus.

Lets say there is a recording budget of $20,000. Any money saved in the end is split up equal.

Do you think it is fair that the writers and engineer are expected to do it for an equal split of the recording budget?

If you had to hire a studio, would that be cost effective?

Do you think it would be fair if the 2 writing / engineering members split 60% of the recording budget while the other 2 split 40%?
2 Members split $8,000 = $4000 each
2 Members split $12,000 = $6000 each

What do you think is fair?

Thanks for your time.

[albee1952]

Talk about a can of worms. I'll toss in one opinion here(and please take it that way). Without the writer's great(hopefully) song, nobody else has anything to work on. If it takes months to engineer that song, maybe the engineer needs help(why isn't it done in 2 weeks? or is that just Nashville screaming at me). If the engineer truly provides a "free recording solution", then maybe the investment is not equal? As for splitting up money saved, there will be no money saved(or you overlooked something). Seriously, when was the last time any recording project came in UNDER budget? A different split might be fair if the song never sells any serious numbers, but if it DOES sell, then the 2 writers will get more royalties down the road. Just stuff to think about. And remember, if this is a labor of love, with good friends, and its about fun and selling some CD's at local shows, then you should think about putting that friendship before anything else(something that may bite the wallet a little, but friends mean way more to me than money).....

[HD2]

First off you need to define you partnership in more detail. Just saying everyone has 25% is not enough. You should define what each members duties will be. As a writer are you putting all the other members names down as "song written by"? If so you are giving away your royalties (if there are any to be had) for no reason. If the other members do not get credited as writers then there will be more money for the sole writer.
As for the engineer, if there is a $20,000 recording budget then that amount would have to be paid to an engineer, regardless of whether he is a member of the band or not, so there shouldn't be any money left. In fact if is really taking that long to record the project then the engineer should be owed money after the $20,000 is done.

[ManhtnProjct]

talking about writing and recording a 12 song record start to finnish.

[DigiTechSupt]

I've had to do quite a bit of this myself and the method that's worked best is to draw up an outline of ALL the tasks needed to finish the recording, then assign a value (we use 'total hours') to each task. Add up the total number of hours, divide it by 100 and that's the percentage of 'value' for each hour of work.

The more hours someone puts in, the higher percentage they get. We usually leave a 10% 'slop' value to account for anything that may have been missed in the initial assessment.

This provides incentive for other band members to participate - the more work they do, the more they get.

[O.G. Killa]

Originally Posted by ManhtnProjct

Lets say there is a band with 4 members. 1 is a writer, 1 is an audio engineer and writer, 1 is a graphic designer and 1 handles business though he is not a lawyer or an accountant.[bleep]

They have a partnership agreement that says everyone is equal 25%. (equal for all income and equal for all debt) This is very generous because 2 of the members write all the material, 1 of those 2 - engineers throughout the whole writing process and recording.[bleep]

Writing / Engineering can take 4-6 months. During this time, 2 of the members can do whatever they want in life. They can go to work and make money, they can go out to dinner with their girlfriend or go to the bar and get smashed, throw up and sleep late.[bleep]

Lets say there is a recording budget of $20,000. Any money saved in the end is split up equal 4 ways.[bleep]

If the engineering member provides a free recording soloution, each member can walk away with $5,000 but 2 of the members will be hard at work, day and night while the other 2 hardly need to be around.[bleep]

Do you think it is fair that the writers and engineer are expected to do it for an equal split of the recording budget?

Don't you think it is very generous of the 2 writers to split all income 4 ways equal? (including publishing)[bleep]

Do you think it would be fair if the 2 writing / engineering members split 60% of the recording budget while the other 2 split 40%?[bleep]

What do you think is fair?

Thanks for your time.

What's the point in writing and recording an album if nobody hears about it? You've just made a $20,000 paper weight or drink coaster for your coffee table.

What's the point in writing and recording an album if your artwork, epk and marketing material look like something a 1st grader drew with crayons?

What's the point in writing and recording an album if you don't have anyone to get your songs on the radio, get live shows, get people to show up to the live shows, etc...

Just because the Writer spends all of his time at the beginning quarter of the process. And the Engineer spends all of his time in the second quarter of the process, DOES NOT belittle the efforts needed in the 3rd and 4th quarters of the process.

Let me ask you something... do you have any idea how much it costs to hire a PR firm? Do you have any idea how much time and effort it takes to get even ONE song on ONE radio station in ONE town?

If you have divided up the duties so that one person writes the music, one person records/produces the music, one person does the artwork and marketing materials for the music, and one person manages/sells the music after it is created, then I would say you should thank your stars and consider yourself LUCKY.

If you don't believe me... go out and hire a PR firm to create an image for your band and music, brand your band, promote you, get you live gigs, set up sponsorships for your tours, get you on the radio, and get you into retail distribution chains.

I've got news for you... You'll be paying roughly around $5000 a month (or higher) for those services with a minimum 3 month or 6 month contract...sometimes even a year contract.

AND THEN, you also have to pay for all the expenses on your own on top of that. If the PR firm decides to press up 2000 36" full color fliers to promote your album, you pay for that separate from the $5000/month! Need a website custom designed to the PR firm's branding specs for your band... that's another $10,000. Need to pay an indie radio promoter to push your music to radio stations, That's $1500 to $2500 per station! The PR firm decides you need to make a music video for MTV and Youtube. That will cost you AT LEAST $30,000~$50,000 for something good enough for MTV to air. Most music videos cost between $100,000~$300,000 to make. Then, hey!!! It's starts to work and you get an order from a distributor for 20,000 physical CDs to put in stores. That's going to cost you another $20,000 to run off that many copies. And then you need to create even more posters and marketing material to accompany the CD in stores. And then your PR firm decides you should pay for "featured product placement" in the stores. So you have a display near the register, which costs you another $30,000 for one week nationwide...

And then you need to tour local clubs across your region or even the US to support your album release. Well, renting a van and hotel rooms, gas, food, at least one or two techs to setup, breakdown and maintain your gear is going to cost you around $2500 per week. Not to mention you have to hire two other musicians to fill out the band (since you got rid of the business guy and artwork guy). Which adds another $2000/wk bringing your total touring expenses to around $4500/wk. And you need to tour for 2 months at least, which brings your touring total to around $36,000. Which you have to pay for.

All in all... every album I've worked on that cost between $20,000~$30,000 to produce... has cost roughly $50,000~$150,000 to promote and market!!!

If you've ever looked at a label's "recording contract". You'll notice only about 1/4 of the money is allocated to actually making the album (Usually around $500,000). the other 3/4 of the money (roughly $1,500,000) goes to Marketing, Promotion, Distribution, and most importantly TOUR SUPPORT!

Honestly, you are better off making 25% of something than 50% or 100% of nothing. While all your work comes at the beginning of the process. Don't belittle the 75% of the process that happens AFTER the album has been recorded, mixed and mastered.

Every great band I've ever heard that went nowhere, went nowhere because they put too much emphasis on the recording and too little emphasis on everything else. If you have nobody to help you sell your recording, you'll never sell it to anyone except your family and close friends. Just remember that...

[O.G. Killa]

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

I've had to do quite a bit of this myself and the method that's worked best is to draw up an outline of ALL the tasks needed to finish the recording, then assign a value (we use 'total hours') to each task. Add up the total number of hours, divide it by 100 and that's the percentage of 'value' for each hour of work.

The more hours someone puts in, the higher percentage they get. We usually leave a 10% 'slop' value to account for anything that may have been missed in the initial assessment.

This provides incentive for other band members to participate - the more work they do, the more they get.

You see... for me that doesn't work...

Here's an example as to why...

If I'm the "Manager guy" band member. We spend six months recording the album... I just come in and play my parts... cool...

We play our first show and 10 people show up, with a cover charge of $5. We just made $50 for the whole band. We work out all the kinks in the live show... and then I decide to work my magic.

I draft up a press release for the local news papers, create an email flyer and send it out to 5000 people, make a phone call to a local newspaper which gets us a CD review and a small interview and I call a couple local college radio stations, two of which start playing our CD several times a day and have us come in for live on-air interviews the day before our next show...

I might have spent maybe, 3 hours worth of work... but now instead of 10 people showing up... 1000 people show up with a $5 cover... we sell 100 CDs at the show. Someone from one of the colleges that is playing our CD came to the show, they run the student union, and want to pay us $5000 to play at a music festival the college student union is running.

At that college music festival we play in front of about 30,000 students, we sell 1000 CDs, get another 2000 people to join our mailing list and we meet a promoter that runs a big commercial music festival (like Cochella, Ozzfest, etc) and wants to pay us $10,000 to be one of the open acts... opening up for HUGE top draw artists in our genre. At this commercial music festival we sell another 1000 CDs.

From that opening gig... I talk to and befriend the tour manager and several band members from one of the headlining bands. I maybe spent 2 hours hanging with them. From that two hour hang, they give us an opening slot on tour for them, and they will be paying us $10,000/wk (gross) to tour with them for 6 months.

Now... lets stop at this point and add up how much money my 5 hours of work has just made the band...

$2500 from the original show ($5000 total door, house gets half, band walks away with $2500).
$1000 from CD sales at that show.
$5000 from College Festival
$10,000 from CDs at College Festival
$10,000 for Open slot at commercial Festival
$10,000 from CD sales at Commercial Festival

At this point, my initial 3 hours of work have made the band $38,000. And when you add the extra 2 hours and the 6month opening slot on tour that came from it...

$240,000 from 6 month tour at $10,000/wk

Brings the gross total to $278,000.

So how are you going to tell me that my 5 hours of work is WORTH LESS than the 6 months you spent making the album? When, if I left the band and nobody else knew how to network, write press releases, get reviews, radio play, interviews etc you would still be -$20,000 right now instead of +$258,000.

So long as everyone hits their goals and their targets... everyone should be an equal partner. Just like you sit down and agree on how much it will cost to make the album and how long it should take. Certain goals and budgets need to be set for promotion and marketing that are reasonable. If the band member responsible for those tasks initially agrees with and then hits those specified goals, then they are an equal member, regardless of how much time they put in. Each person's value cannot be directly associated with their time spent. It is really based on how influential they are to the partnership making a profit.

[DigiTechSupt]

Each person's value cannot be directly associated with their time spent. It is really based on how influential they are to the partnership making a profit.

Derek - I absolutely see where you're coming from and my initial reply was trying to 'keep things simple', as there usually will need to be adjustments made. Having somewhere to start that at least points them in the direction of fairness and that will lead to further discussions between them that can expand upon how to make everyone happy.

The question I always ask when someone says something similar to what you're saying is this:

How long did it take the 'engineering guy' to learn how to do it well enough to make a record that sounds great? Quite awhile I would imagine.

How long did it take the 'manager guy' to make all those contacts to be able to influence media and sales enough to garner that kind of income? Quite awhile I would imagine.

So, while the engineer did, say, 100 hours of work, the manager did 5 and is claiming 'full partnership', even though the skills/contacts necessary for both jobs is about the same. The manager wouldn't have the record to sell without the engineer and the engineer wouldn't make the money without the manager.

So why should the manager get a higher share from less actual hours of work?

As with anything - these kinds of things should be taken into account and negotiations will have to occur. Working out how best to do it comes with experience - there will be mistakes and flexibility with band members is almost a requirement.

To possibly explain all the 'buts' and 'ifs' of the fine art of negotiation would take a book - and then several years of experience to get to the point where you have enough negotiation tools and knowledge to keep everyone generally satisfied.

Your case is one I've seen many times - from both the engineer and manager perspective. I would absolutely push for the best deal I, with my particular skills, could get while still maintaining a balance that everyone can agree on.

[Hotcrazyfruit]

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

So, while the engineer did, say, 100 hours of work, the manager did 5 and is claiming 'full partnership'

It only takes 5 hours to get deals with radio stations, get some record deals and get your music out there?

Woah

Nick

[HD2]

Originally Posted by O.G. Killa

From that opening gig... I talk to and befriend the tour manager and several band members from one of the headlining bands. I maybe spent 2 hours hanging with them. From that two hour hang, they give us an opening slot on tour for them, and they will be paying us $10,000/wk (gross) to tour with them for 6 months.

Ah ha Ha Ah ha Ha. I love this one! That happens all the time right? A band that has just released their first CD gets an opening act slot for $10,000 a week for 6 months. I think you put one too many zeros in there.