A recent incident prompted this article; a writer I know happened to get to the manager of a major R&B/pop crossover group. The manager loved her song and felt it was so good that the group may want to record it despite the fact that the group usually wrote their own songs. He asked her if the group could have the publishing if they recorded it. She said, “No.” He said, “Goodbye.” She said she was totally unprepared to deal with the situation and had no idea what to say. She was excited that he liked it, but thought that when he wanted the publishing he was trying to rip her off.
The two major sources of income (mechanical and perfor-mance) are negotiable without transferring your ownership of any of the copyright. Generally, when someone says they want “the publishing” they want ownership of the copyright (and/or the right to collect all income earned by the tune). In the “standard” writer/publisher contract, you assign the copyright to the publisher in a contract which gives you half the income as writer, with the other half going to the publisher. But the publisher owns the song and can sell it to anyone else if he wants to. A good businessperson will always want to own the copyright. It’s a commodity whose value will increase with the song’s degree and length of popularity. So you can’t blame them for going after it. They’re not trying to rip you off, just taking care of business. You need to do the same.
“Mechanicals” refers to the income from the sales of records and tapes at the current rate of two and three-quarters cents per song per unit sold, payable to the copyright owner. For a million seller, that’s $27,500. As the writer, you’ll take half off the top right away, and from the remainder (referred to as the “publisher’s share of mechanicals”), you can offer percentages as an incentive only for their limited exploitation of the song. If someone else later records the song, you don’t end up giving them parts of the mechanicals for that new recording.
Next time I’ll write about the “performance” income, which is also negotiable without giving up your copyright.