Music Business/Law Tips - "Producer v. Production Agreements"

The 2 main producer related agreements are: (1) Producer Agreement and (2) Production Agreement. What is the difference? 1. A Producer Agreement is where a producer is hired by an artist or label to produce master(s) for the artist/label. The producer is a “work for hire” which means the producer will not own/control the masters (the artist/label will), but will get paid a fee for his/her work and back-end royalties on sales and licensing of the masters to film/TV/ads. 2. A Production Agreement is where the producer acts like a label and discovers/develops the artist, and signs the artist exclusively to his/her production company for a term/number of albums. The producer normally gets 50% of the profits here (a lot more than under a Producer Agreement situation). The producer will normally cut a few demos and then pitch/showcase the artist to a record company who can partner with the producer to distribute and market the artist. If the producer cannot find a distributor within a certain amount of time the artist can usually terminate. Of course there are other key issues that affect the above like recoupment of costs and songwriting/publishing, so if you are an artist or a producer make sure you have good legal counsel before doing either type of deal. Ben McLane Esq Benmclane.com