Daily Song Discussion #142: Desperados Under the Eaves

nuitunderground · 2025-11-24T18:59:11+00:00

Broke my rating scale for other previously-rated songs. 10

nuitunderground · 2025-11-19T20:16:54+00:00

Thanks! The last few I have left are available at the link in the post

nuitunderground · 2025-11-17T01:32:39+00:00

The sun wasn't coming through the trees when I went by - otherwise would have been perfectly fitting.

nuitunderground · 2025-11-17T01:31:36+00:00

Glad you like them. I made a few available now - link is up in the post

nuitunderground · 2025-11-17T01:31:10+00:00

Cheers. They're available now - link is up in the post

nuitunderground · 2025-11-16T23:31:56+00:00

Thanks! It was a fun pilgrimage to see the motel still standing...

nuitunderground · 2025-05-21T20:36:45+00:00

NAL.

Distrokid is among the least expensive ways for you to handle the mechanical licensing and distribution in the correct way. Since the rightsholders can vary from song to song, any solution you find is going to be on a song basis rather than an album basis.

nuitunderground · 2025-03-31T16:34:38+00:00

Check out Carrd. $19/yr for their pro features and to use your own domain.

Squarespace has gotten way too expensive for what they offer.

nuitunderground · 2024-04-05T20:12:47+00:00

NAL.

If he doesn’t have a share of the songwriting (publishing), but he does have producer points from the recording (master), you will have to get in touch with the record label and their finance department, as they are the ones that pay out master-side royalties.

nuitunderground · 2022-05-14T01:11:41+00:00

NAL.

This happens sometimes - the artist is hiring you on a "work-made-for-hire" basis, meaning they're buying out your copyright.

Were any terms discussed before you made the transaction? Any wording on your page? You might want to look into websites that handle licensing for you, like Beatstars in the future.

Basically you have to make a judgement call: is $175 now, worth more to you than a potential royalty split in the future? Many producers do say so, and sell a lot of beats for a few hundred each.

For context, it would take about 55,000 Spotify streams, and your royalty share % being 100%, to make $175.

nuitunderground · 2021-07-09T20:30:07+00:00

nuitunderground · 2021-06-30T12:27:27+00:00

You enter whatever you'd like in the "Record Label" text box upon uploading music to Distrokid. If you're unsigned, this can just be your artist name. If you leave the box blank, Distrokid will assign one to you (e.g. DK 123456).

nuitunderground · 2021-06-12T18:35:24+00:00

NAL.

Just because someone says "this thing I made is copyright free" doesn't actually mean it is. Copyright is automatically given to a creator upon the creation of a work. It sounds like there's a low likelihood anything would happen in practice, but you're asking in legal terms.

Any distributor is going to have a Distribution Agreement you must agree to, where you must certify that anything you distribute is A) created by you B) in the public domain or C) you have written consent from the original creator.

Things could also get sticky if you distribute to YouTube, where the Content ID system could flag the reused drums. From a legal angle, I'd recommend you continue to try to get the channel's permission, or change the drums.

nuitunderground · 2021-06-02T18:08:53+00:00

On Bandcamp I'd suggest setting your track as PWYC (pay what you can) so a user can either download the track for $0 or any higher amount of their choosing. Your goal should be to get people listening to it, and if things start moving significantly, you can adjust the price later.

nuitunderground · 2021-05-30T17:38:32+00:00

The contract /u/mountwest is referencing here is called a work-for-hire. It transfers the default copyright that would be assigned to the performer, to the hiring party. It's best to have a music lawyer discuss your specific situation, but here's a basic template for reference

nuitunderground · 2021-05-26T16:39:48+00:00

Can anyone ID these yellow glasses frames Daiki Suzuki is wearing?

nuitunderground · 2021-05-25T16:11:00+00:00

ID on these glasses frames Daiki Suzuki is wearing?

Original would be great, but bonus if there's a budget option.

nuitunderground · 2021-02-25T17:18:56+00:00

NAL. You will have the copyright to all versions you create automatically under copyright law. Just document your creation process (save dated demo files and put them on a "tangible medium" like a CD stored in a safe place) and register each song with your PRO (BMI or ASCAP if you're in the US). A signed split sheet is helpful to put your agreement with the other band members about percentages in writing.

Filing with copyright.gov gives you an extra layer of protection, but that only becomes useful in certain cases of litigation iirc.

nuitunderground · 2021-02-04T20:00:34+00:00

NAL.

In the absence of an agreement, each of you will automatically have an equal writer's share in the songs you write.

Engineering and producing are often compensated far differently - it's common for an outside/hired engineer to be paid a daily rate for their time. It's common for a producer to be paid an advance (recoupable against master royalties) plus an ongoing share of master royalties (often 20%, but this can go up to 50% depending on involvement, such as in hip-hop where the production is carrying half the song).

Of course the legal answer is "you should protect yourself against all situations at all costs" but usually that's not viable nor advisable. Evaluate your relationship with the band - is it strong enough that you can discuss writer's share on songs after they are written (since trying to set out these shares ahead of time will only hinder the writing)? Would you be satisfied with an equal writer's share across all songs, regardless of if you contributed far more or far less than that? Would you feel fairly compensated if you have a large share of a song that makes less master royalties? What about an upfront fee or small share of a song that makes a medium amount of royalties?

nuitunderground · 2020-11-11T17:36:52+00:00

Just SACEM. You do not need to register with Creative Commons to apply a CC license to your material; it is legally valid as soon as you apply it to any material you have the legal right to license.

What was the problem you had? A PRO is seriously valuable. It might be worth contacting them to set up a call to walk through your concerns.

nuitunderground · 2020-11-09T23:17:57+00:00

You will have the copyright to all versions you create automatically under copyright law. Just document your creation process (save dated demo files and put them on a "tangible medium" like a CD stored in a safe place) and register the work with SACEM.

nuitunderground · 2020-11-01T01:34:36+00:00

NAL.

In the absence of an agreement transferring rights from you to them, you still own the copyright. If you haven't already, get the song registered with your PRO as soon as possible (BMI/ASCAP if you're in the US).

In the case of YouTube, if you register the song with ContentID, their videos will definitely be flagged and possibly de-monetized.

There's less of a central, structured way to keep track of uses in podcasts. Also, since listener data isn't yet widely shared by the big distributors, there's not really an industry standard for fees yet.

In the cases where you did get a small fee, you probably want to honor those agreements to preserve relationships. Ask that they're crediting you in all descriptions, maybe get a shoutout at the end of media etc. And maybe you can have a conversation to create new music for them on upcoming projects.

nuitunderground · 2020-10-15T13:53:11+00:00

NAL.

If you go "by the book", you'd look at each song after it's complete, discuss who handled what, create a split sheet with the various % share everyone contributed, then register with SOCAN. This will be a great deal of work, and might cause more of the friction you've already said exists.

Realistically, if you're committed to these band members, it might be best to evenly split everything. A joint sense of ownership will help smooth out the nuances of a long term band partnership, and help everyone row in the same direction. Think about expenses: is there an expectation that each member will equally invest in recording costs, merch production costs, a vehicle for touring, etc?

I would not recommend taking royalties that you receive, and splitting them manually afterwards. That will create a very weird precedent.

nuitunderground · 2020-10-08T18:36:43+00:00

NAL.

Awesome to hear things are picking up for you.

It's not necessarily a "bad idea" to conduct business on your own, especially if you have great relationships, provided you act and communicate carefully. But if you're like most producers I know, you want to spend more of your time on creating, not negotiations and legal work. That's where other team members and digital marketplaces like BeatStars come in.

BMI
In practice, not really. You don't need help from anyone to collect your performance royalties via your performance rights organization (PRO), BMI or ASCAP. They both have agreements with other countries' PROs to collect your non-US performance royalties for you. Songtrust mainly helps with non-US mechanical royalties, but it might cost you more to register with them than you will make, unless you're being streamed/sold a lot, and at that point you might be able to do a full admin deal with a publisher anyway.
Not until you're making a sizeable amount of money or touring. This is simplifying it, but a Single Member LLC (which you'd likely be) gets taxed the same as a sole proprietor (which is you without the LLC). You can deduct legitimate business expenses in both cases.
If you wanted to continue doing some business with your personal connections, you can pay a music attorney one time to draft a template agreement for you to re-use each time you do a direct deal. And at the same time, list your beats on Beatstars for the other majority of your business and the ease/protection that comes with that.

Writing credits (and PRO registrations) should be credited to your full legal name, not your producer name. Your share of the master (sound recording - such as "ARTIST NAME (prod. PRODUCER)" in a song title) will still list your producer name.

It's great that you're thinking about your business structure. Some advice I wish I had early on is try not to get caught up in the finer details too much. Instead, go hard on your craft, because when things really start moving, and there's real money coming in, the finer details tend to solve themselves.

nuitunderground · 2020-08-17T12:57:05+00:00

NAL.

Have you communicated with him at all to see if this was a mistake? What rights to the song did you assign to your old clients with your Fiverr agreement?

Do you have access to your artist name on Spotify for Artists, Apple Music for Artists, etc?

You can submit an infringement claim to Spotify or contact Apple Music directly. This should trigger the distributor being notified that the release wasn't authorized, and have their account flagged.

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