Individual Song Contract Versus Exclusive Songwriter’s Contract

The Individual Song Contract is a unique agreement for one song. It is accepted practice for the initial payment to be $1.00. Don’t panic! Companies give advances out but they are really short term loans. If they were to give you a thousand dollars and the song only makes $200, then you not only have to give back the difference but if you can’t you will lose your career. These agreements are either for a new songwriter that is not yet established or for a specific niche or genre song that is made for one specific purpose. Sometimes publishers will do this in order to keep a certain song away from a bulk of work in an effort to increase the statistics. These inflated numbers will help you both in the long run as it relaxes producers over potential risk.

The Exclusive Songwriter’s Contract is an agreement over a specified amount of time. If you sign for one year, then everything you write in the year of time is partially owned through the publishing company. This is not a bad thing as the contract is still predicated upon percentages. For example, the statutory rate is 50%/50%, Publisher/Songwriter. Again, they only make money based on your song’s making money so rest assured, more often than not the music publisher will make good business decisions on your behalf.  Exclusive contracts often are based on weekly or bi-weekly advances that act as a paycheck with a monthly or bi-annual payoff of the balance of royalties. Or in the case of bad business, you would have to pay it back at that point.

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