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I'm writing and composing a rock show for the stage and I'm collaborating on several of the songs with a few different lyricists/songwriters. Would love advice on the best kind of collaboration agreement I could draft between myself and my collaborators - royalty splits, copyrighting, ASCAP etc.
Brandon
Tags: agreement, collaboration, copyright, legal, musical, rock
Views: 40
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Kevin M Mitchell on -
Hey Brandon -- I'm a composer of a few musicals and a writer, and while I've not been in your position exactly, I've had some friends in similar situations.
Royalty: It's a math game, and you can cut it up several different ways.
(Decide first if this is an "Opera" -- no dialog; a "Musical" -- mostly songs but 25-30 percent dailog; or "A Play with Songs" -- the songs/musical element measuring up to less than 50 percent ... in other words, "how big a part are the songs and lyrics to the show?")
Say the show is a musical, so Book, Lyrics, and Music are all equal components. Book is all yours, so start off with 3 percent. Then you just break down rest as fairly as you can. If there's 10 songs, and you wrote music and lyrics to five yourself, then you get another 3 points. Of the five remaining, music and lyrics are 10 parts of 4 percent. John wrote lyrics to 3 songs and music to 2 other tunes, John gets 2 points. Somebody just wrote lyrics to one song, it's getting into the ".3" range. Make sense?
Now this royalty is for the ENTIRE SHOW. Each composer/lyricist gets publishing rights to his or her song(s). So if that becomes a hit and sells on iTunes or what is left of sheet music, they would get the vast majority of the royalty, with you getting a small part as it's your show and you inspired the tune with your story (at that point though get a lawyer!).
Copyright: Clearly you're the main "creator" -- so you should file the necessary copyright, and you should hold it, though of course the other collaborators will be listed on that.
No need to worry about ASCAP until the show/music is published by a publishing house, and in that case, they will take care of that.
Like any discussion on Theatreface, this is just to give you an idea of how to approach it. I'm not a lawyer! The "how important is a particular song to the show" is a tough question, and extremely subjective. Good luck!
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Permalink Reply by Gordon P. Firemark on -
This is what we theatrical attorneys do. It's not rocket science, but it does get complicated, and if you're not careful, you can make mistakes that will make things very hard in the future.
It's not just math, but also questions about "merger", whether the work is a "joint work", who'll have control, voting rights, what happens after someone dies? (do the family of the decedent get to take over and dictate how the artistic work is used, developed, etc?)
Bottom line is, you need a professionally drafted collaboration agreement that is tailored to your specific situation. (which is considerably more complex than if everything was being created by the same book writer, composer, and lyricist.)
-Gordon Firemark
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