"The Elephant Diet" Day # 65 Curve Balls

Yesterday I had a full day at church and then went back again in the evening for a meeting. The only bite toward my project in that full day was an email to my producer with a link to a song that captures the feel of what I want for one of my songs. It's the song 'Night Of Miracles'.

If you have been following the blog, you might remember that this is the song I already had someone else produce on a trial basis to see how we worked together before hiring him to do the whole project. It was coming along quite well.

But he threw me a curve ball on Friday (after I had blogged for the day) that is changing things and has been rather upsetting. But since I've had time to process it, I think I'll share it here.

I share this to help you see what navigating the music industry can be like. I thought I had a good understanding of how things work in the business and what to expect when you do a project with a producer. I've worked with at least 6 different producers in various capacities in the past 15 years, but after Friday, I realized that I still have more to learn.

After telling the trial producer who was working on Night of Miracles that I had decided to do the rest of the project with my former producer, Eric Copeland, I received an email telling me that though it was fine to use someone else, he wanted to know if he could have 3-5% of the income from Night of Miracles for producer royalties/licensing, etc., like he would normally get from producing a song.

This was the first he had ever mentioned it to me.....after two face to face meetings in his studio in Nashville, many emails, a phone conversation and finally a project cost sheet listing his charge to do the whole project, sent to me 2 weeks ago. This was never mentioned to me until I asked him to send the rough mix of Night of Miracles to Eric, who would be producing the rest of the songs. I was hoping to use the current arrangement and add the other 11 songs to the project under Eric's direction.

I had never heard of such a thing and was quite alarmed upon reading the email requesting that I give him this percentage.

I began searching the Internet and discovered that indeed, this type of thing does exist. Of course, when I asked Eric about this, he knew all about it and confirmed what I read in the article on-line, but never asks that of his artists and works with other producers who never charge that either. Another plus in sticking with Creative Soul Records. This fee seems to be reserved for the major league players.

I now have another set of questions to ask if I ever consider a different producer again. I learned a very hard and costly lesson. It's hard to get the answers you need when you don't even know the right questions to ask. I could have saved both of us a lot of heartache if I would have known to ask him up front if he charges any producer royalty fees for producing a song.

I would feel much better about it all if he would have been up front about it before I began working with him, but fortunately I had only hired him for one song. And that's just the kind of thing that has made me cautious in this industry.

Learn all you can before committing to anything. I thought I had. I've been through this so many times before.

We are still in communication about this, and I have come to believe that this was not done maliciously, but without a lawyer, I don't feel safe to proceed any further with this song. I don't want to spend money on a lawyer, though I see why they recommend that you have an entertainment lawyer to help you avoid things like this.

So at this point, it looks like we will be starting from scratch with Night of Miracles again.

I never was good at curve balls, but every situation presents another chance to learn and become more educated about the music biz.

I didn't know elephants played ball!