music producers can make a ton of money on hit songs but if you're just starting out it can get super confusing trying to understand how producers actually make money off their songs how do I collect royalties what do I do if someone steals my beat and how much money will I make from a hit this video will answer all those questions and more so make sure you stick around to the end of this one to explain how producers get paid off their hit songs we're going to create a hypothetical scenario where you get your first hit song and you need to start from zero to make sure that you're collecting every single penny that you're owe and to make sure this information is 100% accurate I've brought on three experts on getting producers paid Kyle an amazing entertainment lawyer Mike the director of Music at beatstars publishing and Greg Matel the president of beat Stars publishing so you just got word that you got your first song with a major artist you're excited as hell but you have no idea where to start when it comes to getting paid so let's run through how it goes down the first thing that happens is the label will hit you up for all of your legal information this is going to be your legal name your address and possibly your DMI and ask cap numbers they'll also want your lawyer and Management's contact information and at this point you might be wondering do producers really need to get a lawyer I would definitely say yes they can help you navigate a lot of different things right they can help you navigate making sure that whatever that manager is saying oh yeah this is the deal we going to do is true send the paperwork and they can also help you you know negotiate placements and then working you all the way through the stage up until even get paid after all your information is sent over you're going to need to negotiate the actual terms of the agreement having a lawyer can be super help because you don't have to actually talk to the labels yourself your lawyer can be the bad guy and kind of push for you without you coming off bad to the labels team that being said it's good to know industry standard terms for agreements so you aren't out here getting screwed over what's a typical advance that a newer producer would get for a major placement a lot of times it depends on who the artist is it also depends on how many people are on the song it also depends on what that producer is able to negotiate and that goes back to having a good lawyer if we talking major label Advance there should at least be $2,000 there that should be the starting point you should work your way up to as much as you can demand what percentage do producers normally get on the publishing artist gets 50% producers get 50% and if it's more than one producer they spit it that's typically how p goes what percentage do producers normally get on Master side of royalties there's two sides of it there's the independent side and there's the major label side so let's start with the the most known side which is the major label side 2 to 5% whatever it makes on Spotify YouTube Apple all the big DSP platforms right now if an artist is independent typically a art a producer is going to be entitled to in my opinion 10 to 15 10 to 16% one thing I really want to mention is you never want to sign a buyou a lot of times the labels will try to take advantage of younger producers and try to get them to sign away their Master royalties and their publishing ownership but you do not want to do this in the long run owning all your publishing and all your Masters is going to be so much better than just getting a big payday up front also one big factor that can determine your percentage on a song is if you used a sample or not so what happens if I use a sample how do those typically get cleared typically what happens when there is a sample being used we tell the label what's the sample who the owner is or whatever it may be and then they reach out to clear this what's called approved sample artist producers will equally split all of the the money that has to be paid to the sample that's all it really is the main thing you want to make sure they're clear so let's say you got the terms of the contract all checked out and your lawyer gives you the green light to sign the contract the money should be rolling in once you send that back right well not yet once you sign the contract there's a few more Hoops that you need to jump through in order to get your Advanced payment this varies from label to label but at the bare minimum you're going to need to send over a signed tax form which is a W9 if you're from the US and a W8 if you're from outside the US and you're also going to need to send an invoice to the label your invoice should look a little something like this so feel free to pause the video right here and to make an invoice for free the best website that I found is invoic maker.com so definitely check that out once you've got the invoice and the tax form sent back over to the label they should pay you via bank transfer anywhere from a few days to a few weeks later now all this that we've been talking about is what will happen if the label hits you up before the release of the song like they should but what would you do if someone steals your beat and releases it first thing I do is I look at the track me how many streams does this have what platforms is it out on and then I go to YouTube and I'm looking to see who's the label I'm reaching out and I'm trying to get clarity on like the songs came out there no agreement in place we don't have any proposed terms Please send up be proposed terms to clear this record Property six times out of 10 they going to hit us back four times out of 10 we do what's called a dmca takedown so we go to all the platforms the major ones and we do dmca takedowns and take all the music down what should a producer who they don't have a lawyer what should they do to take action to like start getting paid for that placement that they got the first thing that you want to do is go and get your copyright there's a website called cosign docomo sign get your copyright as long as you have some type of application you can show to say look I got a copyright application that's already ready so when you go to them they'll know you're serious the second thing is if you don't know anybody typically what I do even when I know people is every YouTube page typically has an about and that about at the bottom it typically has view email address once you click the box and it shows you their email address so find a manager find the artist email the booking email put all those emails on one and the subject put urgent copyright clearance just write a message hi my name is such and such I produced this song you know this song was used without my permission I'm very you know interested in potentially taking it down before I do that I would like to see if there's someone can send up a proposed terms to clear this properly please let me know within 48 hours should get a responds back there's something I shouldn't even talk about this on here there's this thing called a CCV producers that don't have a lawyer literally go on the CCB I think it's cb. and for claims that are $25,000 or less you can actually file without a lawyer a copyright claim against anyone so let's say that all the terms are figured out and your hit song Finally releases it's time to properly register the song so that you're getting every penny on the back end that you're owe and to do that you need to understand the different kind of royalties that you can make and where you need to register your song royalties fall into two different categories Master royalties and the composition royalties what's the difference between the master side and the composition side of royalties so music separated into two sides as you said Master side is the recorded music meaning what you hear on Spotify or apple or like the finished version composition is the writers the producers that it took basically to make that song If you get a major song and you register it with BMI or ASCAP are you collecting all of your royalties you are not collecting all of them you have your performance side which BMI ASCAP seesack companies like that are are performance rights organization what that means is every time you hear a song like the radio or you go into a supermarket and they're playing a song that is a performance uh royalty and then you got Mechanicals which is essentially every time you push play on Spotify on YouTube on Apple music so to collect all the money you're owed you need to sign up with a p which would be like BMI or ASCAP if you're in the US you need to sign up with Sound Exchange you need to register with the label directly so that they can send you your master royalties and finally you need to get a publisher so that you can collect all your publishing royalties I personally use be Stars publishing to collect all of my publishing royalties and so far it's been amazing and it's super super easy to register songs inside of beat stars all you have to do is put in everyone's legal name and percentage and you're good to start collecting and one thing that's super nice with beat Star publishing is once you register the song in there it automatically registers with your pro like BMI or ASCAP so if you want to make sure that you're collecting all the money you're owed check out beatstars publishing it'll be the first link in the description down below I've been with them for over 2 years now and I swear by it but anyways one very confusing part of all these roties is knowing when you'll get paid so if I go on right now and I register a new placement that I got how long will it typically take before I start seeing any money come in from that 6 to 9 months I would say it could be sooner than that but it'll be like small increments it takes a while how much money would you typically see if you own 50% of the publishing on like a million stream songs on Spotify $1,000 per million streams then 50% you get 500 now Apple a little bit more and tidle a little bit more now those numbers numbers can change song to song as different countries pay different amounts per stream but if we take that number of $500 per million streams if you own 50% publishing on a song that got say a billion streams you'd be looking at over $500,000 in publishing income from streaming alone and then once you add in your pro checks and your master royalties you can see how this stuff starts to really really add up now all that's great but there's a ton of misconceptions and myths out there about how collecting your money for publishing or royalties work and this misinformation can end up costing you thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars but before I get into that if you've learned anything from this video so far hit that subscribe button so I can keep making more videos like this for you guys what are the most common misconceptions about collecting your publishing one of the biggest ones is people just think someone else is going to do it for you that's something that I hear all the time so the main thing you need to understand is you want to be registering all your own publishing and then obviously your PR is collecting on the performance side and then you're covered is it a good idea to hold out for a big publishing deal and not collect anything until you get a big Advance offered to you I would say 98% of the times no because what's going to happen is you're going to just rely on waiting on that big record so a lot of times what happens is yeah you could have a decent sized record and be offered a deal but in reality maybe that deal wasn't the right deal at that time if you do a deal too early you're going to end up giving up ownership on something and you're going to be stuck in a deal with with the songs you have and then if you have that big record that comes and you're already in that deal where's the leverage but if you're collecting your records and the money is Flowing cuz here's the other thing Publishers want to see that money claimed and moving then when that really big record comes where everybody's coming throwing half a million million dollar deals at you you have more leverage and you could probably get more from that how soon after a song releases of mine do I need to register it to make sure that I'm going to get paid and that my royalties don't get put in the black box after a certain amount of time where you can't collect it if you haven't registered it in time I say like no later than a year if you can don't wait around there's no reason to wait around if I have a place and it's been out for a while and I haven't registered it what are the steps I should take to try to get some money off of it first thing I would do is ask yourself is there an agreement if there's no agreement that means there probably was never any proposed terms sent over so once you have that that's how you really get paid at the end of the day you can go register the publishing on that secondly if you get in advance which you most likely should they will tell you how to get paid third thing is you'll have something called an LOD on your agreement that is going to be for your master royalities the labels pay out the master royalities and then the fourth thing which is Sound Exchange which you'll get another LOD called A Sound Exchange LOD that all ties all for the master side has nothing to do with publishing it's all on the master side but unfortunately man A lot of times we're dealing with people with no agreements they find out about songs and they want to hey how do I get paid what you should be doing is trying to get an agreement if you want to know all the ways you can get your first major placement with a big artist click this video right here