How Producers Get Paid Upfront (Instead of 50/50 Splits)

I've seen a lot where when artists enter a 50-50 split it feels like a good deal at the beginning because it's like okay cool like I don't have to front a bunch of money we're in this together kind of thing but my observation is very often those kinds of arrangements just make the process of producing and releasing the music just take really long. Hey everyone Daniel Grimmett here you're listening to Producer Management the podcast that lets you in on real conversations between professional music producers and their teams the deals the strategies and the unfiltered advice this show is brought to you by my company Dark Label Music when producers want clarity strategy and growth they call us we're hired as a strategic partner part management part creative and business development designed for the realities of being a music producer right now so whether you're a small studio or a grammy-winning veteran reach out to us at darklabelmusic.com to see if we can help. So something that freelance producers always struggle with is how to navigate collaboration requests or when artists only want to work on 50-50 splits and this becomes a real problem when you're focused on trying to build your client base and actually get paid upfront production fees.

In this episode I want to show you how my producers navigate that. Now a quick caveat here every producer is going to have projects where it makes sense to waive their upfront production fee and just work for back-end royalties. This episode isn't about whether or not you should do that.

Obviously you should every producer has those projects too. This episode is just more how to navigate these requests when you're primarily focused on freelance work or you're trying to increase the amount of freelance work that you're getting. So what I notice is that when producers are talking with an artist and the artist mentions that they've only done collaborations or 50-50 splits or that's how they work the producer immediately gives up on the conversation and this can a lot of times reinforce their belief that no one has a budget or wants to pay them.

But the thing that you have to understand is that artists don't really want a collaboration. That's not really what they want. What they really want is to obviously make and release great songs that will move their career forward right.

A collaboration or a 50-50 split that is just one of the many vehicles to achieve that. So is hiring a producer. So is producing it themselves.

Those are all just vehicles to get what they actually want. That's not what they actually want. So that's how you have to think about it.

This is why it's worth always having the conversation so you can identify what their real situation and goals are. In my opinion this kind of communication the ability to do this is one of the top skills that separates successful freelance producers from the ones who are perpetually struggling. But you might be wondering how do you get good at having these types of conversations especially without it feeling like you're being pushy or making it awkward.

And the answer to that is just like anything else you have to practice it. So in Dark Label we have our producers come together to role play different conversations and scenarios that they've had out in the real world so that they can just get better at having them in the future. The rest of our producers get to listen in and learn from that as well.

So today I want to give you the listener that same opportunity so that you can see how my producers navigate conversations around different deal structures and situations like this with artists. Here's the clip. So I remember we talked a little bit about this last time we spoke but if you could just kind of paint the picture for me again like we talked about where you would ideally like to be as an artist in like two or three years time.

So if we just go through that again like let's imagine we're sitting down we're having coffee is three years from now and music is going amazingly well for you what does your world look like at that point? Yeah so for me it looks like I'm definitely playing some festivals and like some bigger shows because right now I've just been doing a lot of small bar gig kind of things like sometimes people aren't even listening and that's just frustrating I want to like have be headlining some shows. I definitely want to have like a consistent kind of reoccurring fan base and you know I think I definitely have felt this year for my releases like I've started to see some people latch on and like that's really exciting and so I want to have like a consistent fan base for sure. Okay awesome so I'm kind of hearing like playing shows is the kind of big picture here like playing festivals and headlining and the kind of route to getting there is building community around your music.

Yeah yeah absolutely. Okay awesome and so you said you've had some people kind of latching on already which is an awesome sign so I think like that that's a path that's opening up for you. I'm curious like if everything kind of stayed the same as you've been doing it up till now do you think you could get to that point or are there certain things that are kind of bottlenecks in that path for you at the moment? That's a good question yeah I think that it might be more of a five or six year path if I like keep doing it how I've been doing it lately.

The biggest reason is just that I'm like haven't been having a hard time releasing super consistently and like with content and everything it's just like a lot so I just don't know if I'm putting out enough music to like be there in three years you know. Yeah I think that's a super insightful thing consistency is really the thing I know it's what everyone says it's such a cliche but it's really true. Remind me do you mostly produce your music from start to end or do you usually work with producers at some stage of the process? Yeah so I've been working with one guy and he's pretty busy so we haven't been able to do a bunch but yeah typically working with someone.

Okay cool and just out of curiosity what are your arrangements with this producer in terms of splits production fees that kind of thing? Yeah so we've been doing like on a splits basis so we just like split everything 50-50. I see yeah it's a pretty common arrangement for artists. Yeah just to be like fully transparent I think I've seen a lot where when artists enter a 50-50 split it feels like a good deal at the beginning because it's like okay cool like I don't have to front a bunch of money we're in this together kind of thing but my observation is very often those kinds of arrangements just make the process of producing and releasing the music just take really long like twice as long sometimes much much longer than that and you don't probably I mean do you feel like you could go back to the producer and be like hey can we kind of hurry this up a little bit? Yeah not super.

Yeah right because it's like you're both in it together and it's yeah effort right so that feels a bit awkward. So my experience has shown that if an artist is going to invest in the project and pay a production fee up front which usually is an advance on the royalties so you're not just giving money you're giving an advance on the royalties for the future then that turns things into a you know client relationship rather than a collaborative relationship and therefore and it gives you the power as the client to communicate timelines communicate a release schedule and that kind of thing. So I think when you were saying that you kind of feel things is moving a bit slow and if you want to get where you get right gets where you want to get doing the things you're doing now it's going to be five six years but you want half that what I kind of see is the solution to this is probably investing in production so that you can leverage that client sort of status in the relationship to speed up timelines and get things moving as you want them to the speed you want.

Does that sound about right? Yeah absolutely yeah that makes a lot of sense. Yeah so I think this is definitely something I can help with and that's an arrangement I tend to go with quite a lot. Okay.

So if you're open to it and I could talk you through my process and what working together might look like does that sound good? Yeah yeah definitely. Okay cool break. Okay cool dude that was incredible um phenomenal yeah I need to take lessons from you from now on um you're you're guys we've had so many conversations on these streams about talking about collabs into like paid work and I kind of you know do my best to fumble through what I say but like that like that was you crushed it dude I was literally I was amazing because what I thought you were going to say you said so just being really up front and I thought you were going to say I charge for work and I was like no you don't need it like you know I don't understand that yet and then you were like you know what I found is that like the the priority level on you know collaborate projects like and then you asked like do you feel like you could go to that producer and say like hey can we hurry this up and get it done and and that was so like because it's funny I wasn't like planning on being an artist who was doing a 50 50 split but I know that's come up a lot for a lot of us and and so I kind of was like oh yeah let's you know let's throw a curveball in there right let's throw and then you just like sailed through it and in the way you said that question specifically so that's such a good example and I want to highlight the power of using your professional knowledge to infer something that the artist is going through right there's I didn't tell him hey the reason I'm taking you know slowly on projects or whatever is because I don't feel like I can go to a producer and tell them to hurry up when I'm not paying them right but that is absolutely that makes total sense to feel that way in that situation right so Christian came in with professional knowledge of this is what an artist might be going through and he inferred it and it was spot on the money right and he asked he didn't just say here's how you feel he's like do you feel like you could do this right and I was like no I don't I don't feel like I could do that and then it was like boom boom boom boom boom if you change this he gave me a solution he gave me value that was value what we all felt there was well communicated perfectly placed value which was if you speed or if you change this one thing you will get this result because this is most likely the most like common denominator of like what's slowing you down right that's value so as you just heard there the producer wasn't saying the artist was wrong or trying to convince them why they should hire a producer all they were doing was asking questions identifying problems if there were any and then helping the artist come to a conclusion for themselves whatever makes the most sense to them producers don't have to be great at sales they really just need to be great at consulting what you just heard was straight up consulting and what you might find super interesting about the clip I just played is that the producer who was leading the role play the one with the british accent he wasn't even a full-time producer yet when this role play took place he had maybe been working with clients for like I don't know four months or something and I tell you that just to prove that this is a skill that can be learned early on and it should be if you go to producermanagement.com you'll find links to jump on our newsletter which I highly recommend because it's the perfect companion to the show and if you enjoy what we're doing here please leave us a five-star review or share it with a friend thanks for listening that's the episode.