How Do Producers Get Paid? | Wendy Day Interviews Deborah Mannis-Gardner

Hi guys, this is Wendy Day. I have the amazing Deborah Manus Gardner with me. Deborah Manus Gardner has been clearing samples for over 2 decades, and, and she started at 5 years old, so she's really not that old. I don't want to make her seem old. But today we're going to talk about producers and how producers get paid. Deborah, thank you so much for doing this. I love it.

It's a pleasure. You know, we need to do some more education and advice for the producers. I think they are forgotten. I think they're taken advantage of. And I think it's really exciting that we're able to spend time to educate and make this happen. And help them. Specifically for the producers.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So let me ask you the question that everyone is here for. How do producers get paid?

Stop giving your shit away for free.

Amen.

So as a producer, you know, it's like a business. You're not just making beats, but it's a business and you need to remember that. So the first thing I'm going to say to you is to create song sheet splits. So that when someone comes into your studio to record something, or if you're gonna submit a beat to someone, that you've determined what those splits are for that song. So even if there's an unknown artist that has a whole bunch of your beats that you want him to be able to pick from, you're gonna send paperwork to him saying, "I'm gonna own 50% of the song 'cause you're using my beat. You have the other 50% for whatever you rap on top of it, and should that change, then we'll negotiate at that time." Starting with a piece of paper with a split, the song split sheet, is a good way to start a paper trail.

Beautiful.

You submit that with the beat and you make sure they sign off or submit it to them before you send the beat and have them sign off on it. There's no exchange of money necessarily at that time, but there's an acknowledgement, a paper trail showing that you're going to own 50% of that song on the publishing side.

So it's the intention.

The intention is to start your paper trail.

And guys, I'll put a link to a split sheet down below this video.

Oh, so you— okay, so you've got that for them. Yeah, excellent. And so it's your job as a producer, you running a business, you're not just making beats, you're running a business. You're doing this to make a living and to grow that business. So this is, this is the start of it. Then when you give out these beats or you start sending beats to artists, you should be doing contracts, and I don't know if we want to create a boilerplate contract or how we want to handle this, but you need to do a contract of some sort. Is there compensation? You know, I'm assuming that you're going to get paid for it. This contract is not going to be a work for hire, it's not a flat fee. You want to make sure that, again, it reflects that you're going to own a piece of that copyright, including on the master side a royalty. You're saying, I'm not going to charge you a royalty at this time, 'But should this get picked up for distribution or should this, that, the other happen, that you're going to get a royalty and get compensated for it.' Beautiful. You're showing good faith that you're not asking for anything now, you believe in this artist, you're glad that they're getting a beat from you, but if that artist takes off, you should take off with that artist and see your compensation. Absolutely. That's all it is. You're not holding a gun to their head and you're not asking for them anything now, you're asking for something down the road.

You're asking for something when there is something.

And it's establishing a paper trail. And, you know, if you've got a team or someone with you, you need to push on getting that paperwork signed. Okay? So once you've established this paperwork and you've got that beat out there, um, so if it's someone that you're just doing a favor and you, you know, do it for $10 or $20 to at least give it a value. Again, you could say, well, I'm giving you this beat for $20, but again, if you get picked up, then there will be a backend due to me. Right. Whether it's $300, $500, or $1,000 or what have you, to show I believe in you and we've got good faith, but that I want to receive revenue when you receive revenue.

Exactly.

I think that's important. You need to be responsible and remember who you've given beats out to. I think that's the biggest problem producers do is they use samples, they create beats, they kind of forget, they don't label things. You know what, you know how to use your computer, you know how to use, you know, all these programs, you've got metadata, make the notes in the metadata if it's got a sample in it, what you sampled it, and make a note in the metadata if you've given it to someone. And don't double-sell a beat. I just went through that with someone really big who tried to screw my artist, my client, out of $50,000, and I busted him.

Good for you. It happens all the time here in Atlanta. I can't tell you how many local, well-known, established producers my clients have bought tracks from. And then all of a sudden you hear Future's album and it's there. You hear Migos and it's there. You hear Juicy J, it's there. It's the track that you bought.

Let's not also forget that there are guys out there, and it's probably you, that are selling beats on these websites and you're doing this non-exclusive license. And then I use Shazam and I hear your beat in like 20 different songs.

Yeah, I, I, I hate that.

And then that person registers that song and you got zero writer credit, zero publishing credit, and they just now stole your beat because it's part of it, right? And there's nothing you can do about it. So stop selling your beats on these websites with these non-exclusive $300 deals.

Exactly.

Because you're getting fucked. You're getting fucked.

Absolutely. And, and as a marketer, if I have a beat that's leased, I can't put money behind it. I can't work a beat that's leased because it's— it could show up on anybody else's album. It's just— it's not— it's not worth it to me. So a leased beat, I won't even— I won't even fuck with that producer, right?

So you, you've got to, you know, you've got to reevaluate that. You know, if you want to create a site with your beats so that they're good for licensing for film and television at low rates, that's a great idea because they're not going to take your beat and incorporate it into something else. They're going to use it as is and use it as a background for use in film or television, and you still own your beat and it's used in its purest form.

That's a great idea to start a website because it's so inexpensive. Expensive to set up a functional website today. That's, that's a fabulous idea.

So as a producer, there's, there's a lot of stuff that you need to be responsible for, or you need to have a manager, or you need to have someone on your team that looks after this stuff for you. It's great that you want to just make beats, but you need to be responsible for the beats that you're making, because I'm assuming you make beats not just for the fun of it, but to make money, right?

Can producers make a lot of money?

Absolutely. Not only do they make a lot of money, but then they become artists. Look at The-Dream, look at DJ Mustard, look at Metro Boomin right now. They all, they all started as producers. And, you know, I'm not saying many of these producers should be artists because I don't think they should, but as producers, these publishers absolutely offer lucrative publishing deals. Absolutely. They did.

Awesome. I'm glad you mentioned that. Um, I'm, I'm not a fan of publishing deals, so I'm going to ask you to speak to the positive side of publishing deals because these guys have heard me for months now saying that I don't like publishing deals, that they should keep ownership and get an admin deal. But if you've got some thoughts on why a publishing deal would benefit them, I would welcome you to talk about it.

I'm not necessarily keen on a big publishing deal unless you really need a lot of money, and then are you prepared to never recoup? Because I don't know how many poverty stories I'm hearing of these guys who get those advances, spend it, and now they're not seeing any money because they never recouped.

Right.

And that's a big problem for a lot of these guys.

Absolutely. And doesn't the, um, And this is fucked up because now I'm going negative, I'm going anti-pub deal, but don't the publishers own that split of the song forever?

No, it varies on the contract. You know, when we— when my partner administered Faith Evans, we, with the help of her attorney, got her publishing, a lot of her publishing back out of Puffy's deal and Sony ATV, and it reverted back to her. And it was with Yeah, then she screwed us and she brought it to BMG.

So, but that's awesome that you were able to— I might need to edit this, but that's awesome that you got to like get that back because that's the value. Like, publishing is to me, it's like land. It's the ownership, and you never give your land away.

You might sell your land, you might lease your land, But that's what people did. They sold the locks. I mean, they did. They sold their land. They can't get their publishing back.

Right.

They can't. So, you know, Jadakiss, I mean, I don't know how many times he's been screwed by people left and right, you know, being that ghostwriter. And as a ghostwriter, he got $10,000 here and $10,000 there.

No ownership.

No ownership. We all know Jadakiss was a ghostwriter. Please. Really? We all know who he wrote for.

Right, you can hear it in the songs.

You can hear it.

Ditto Nas. Ditto Jay-Z.

Right, I mean, he's a brilliant writer, you know. And so I say please think about this stuff before you take $10,000 and give away something Unless you're in jail and you need bail money, I don't know. I mean, it's really— this is your bread and butter and this is your future and this is what you need to hold on to. And you need to be smart and you need to ask questions. And hopefully I'll start doing a lecture circuit so I can advise you producers to understand how to do things. You want to be a producer, you need to be responsible and you need to set up your company properly. And that's your responsibility and job as a producer, not to just make beats, but to understand what that entails in making beats.

I love that.

Yeah.

It's, it's a business and you said it, you said it best, you know, um, my take on it is that producers are a brand and their goal is to build that brand and get as many placements as they can on music that will, that will last. For, you know, for life so that not only will they get to eat, but their children and their children's children and their children's children's children will get to eat, you know, and that's the whole point of the music industry.

I mean, think about what publishing and songs have been around as long as it has. And, you know, after the world of, you know, when public domain and then stuff is in public domain, this music just continues on and on. And our laws in the United States, a song has a good life to it. You know, in other countries, songs might only have a 50-year lifespan or 70-year lifespan, but under U.S. copyright law, I think songs have a nice lifespan where you can really generate some good revenue.

Exactly. I think right now it's life plus 75 years, isn't it? It's good, you know. You know, I'm glad you mentioned that about other countries because producers also need to be able to collect their money from other countries, whether it's from the performing rights organizations in other countries or sales, you know, overseas. Um, they need to have somebody on board that can actually collect their, their money for them.

That's, well, that's why they need publishing and publishing administration because the publisher will have self-publishing in other territories. To collect that money for them. And then any producers, you know, if you do anything outside the United States, besides you collecting on the artist side, the master side of things, you know, you're going to get a royalty. If you do anything, if you produce anything outside the United States, you can then collect on neighboring rights as well. Nice. I don't even know if you touched on that, but neighboring rights—

No, I haven't.

The United States has not signed the Rome Convention, So you start asking yourself, oh, why did Kanye or Jay-Z record in France? Or why does Santigold record in Jamaica? It's because of neighboring rights. Once you, you know, I was even trying to say, well, why isn't Marshall in Canada? But I got an answer why. But, you know, because he's being so close, isn't there a bridge now for him to go? Right. Yeah, but he can't. But if you go to Canada, even, it's outside the territory of the United States, you qualify for neighboring rights. And that's why, you know, Drake has kept his studio and he can make sure he records everything in Canada. In Canada, absolutely. So those are things that producers should think about as well. So if you're ever traveling and you're abroad and you make a beat outside the United States, states, make sure you make a record of, you know, make a notation of that.

Of that as well in the metadata.

Qualifies for neighboring rights.

Excellent.

Which is additional revenue. Right. It's more money.

Right, right.

Need more.

And that's what we're talking about. We're talking today about how producers make money.

Make money. And, and, you know, there's a lot of ways to make money. You have to, uh, you know, maybe we'll just create a how-to for you guys. I don't know. I mean, you—

That's a great idea.

You know, you as producers, you need to take a more aggressive role. I think you are screwed more than anyone, Wendy Day.

Absolutely, because you can't just go and get shows. You know, as I work with artists, the first income to come in is always show money because we give all the music away for free, and the producer can't go and do shows the way that rappers can, and they're always the last to get paid. It's It's very frustrating if in the case of a major label, the artist has to recoup really before you get the rest of your money. So you've got to really focus on your mechanical royalties and your publishing. It's important to understand how this works.

And you know, there's— yeah, because look at Swizz Beatz. He was self-published by Nacef up until just a month ago, and he just joined Reservoir. And, you know, because she was having a hard time chasing after his publishing and getting artist royalties. It wasn't going smoothly. I believe Reservoir handles both sides of that now. They can handle artist royalties as well, and producer royalties, as well as publishing.

Oh, that's awesome.

They've been buying labels, master catalogs as well. So I think they're now— I think Raul has set that up so that they can do that as well. So, I mean, look at him. He has been self-published— how long has he been doing this? Swizz?

God, 25+ years. He DMX— since DMX.

No, no, not Swizz Beatz. It's Just Blaze. Excuse me, not Swizz Beatz. Swizz Beatz is Universal. It's Just Blaze. Just Blaze.

Let's see, Just Blaze was the engineer when David Banner was recording Grey Skies, so he went from being an engineer to being a producer, so he's been doing it at least since '98, '99, somewhere in there.

Right, okay. So he just went with Reservoir.

Wow.

Faith Newman just signed him over.

Amazing.

And so a lot of these guys, you know, Scott Storch, he just went to Reservoir as well. You know, he's cleaned up and he's, he's starting to work again.

Yeah, he's starting to, um, do some big stuff. I've noticed he's been hitting my feed lately.

Yeah, yeah, he's starting to do stuff again as well. So these producers, again, as a producer, get your shit together.

Right, be business people. Or get somebody on your team that is. Again, know your strengths and weaknesses.

Look at the Dream. The Dream is represented by Thea Settlemire. His management is Roc Nation, and his publishing is Warner Chappell. DJ Mustard, isn't he with Reservoir also, or is he with Song— no, he's with Songwriters Guild. He's with Song Publishing, which is a small boutique, but up and growing because they've got huge financial backing. Exactly.

And it's run by Barry Weiss, who's been in the industry for, you know, longer than me. And I'm at 25 years, so he's probably at 30 or 35 years in the music business.

Yeah. And BJ Melcher's there. So, and look, look what he's doing now. Yeah.

Very impressive.

Yeah. I just like to make jokes about his name. You mentioned Ketchup again. But, um, so these producers, so again, they're being business people, you know, and that's what you have to be. You have to be a business person.

You have to be. It's the music business. It's not, it's not fun. I mean, it's, it's passion and it's art and it's enjoyable and it's flashy, but more than anything, it's a business, you know. You've got to treat it like, like that.

Just the fact that Roc Nation as, as, as a management company is managing producers as much as artist. That should tell you something right there.

Exactly, exactly. Definitely, definitely. And the last thing I want to touch on, if you don't mind, um, we're going to do a whole program about music supervisors, but if you could touch on the fact that producers could get paid by placing music, um, into TV and games and film, that would be wonderful.

Yeah, I mean, producers, you know, I have a producer that I work with, um, Wayno Brown from The Watchmen out of Harlem, New York. And he makes beats. And he works with Nobody down out of Florida. No was the one who discovered Akon and worked with the Steve Rifkin Company and stuff like that.

He actually found David Banner. He was the one that brought David Banner to Steve Rifkin when I did his deal. Oh, OK. Nobody's awesome.

So I'm sorry?

He's awesome. Nobody is awesome.

Yeah, so Wayno, um, is always pitching beats and working. He's one of the hardest working guys I know in the industry. He's up at 6 in the morning making beats until 11 o'clock at night. He lived under my roof for a year doing that. Maybe 2 years. Always just making beats, pitching stuff and making beats. But because he's got this huge library, when again, when I needed music replaced for a film, we were able to take these beats, these songs, this music, whether it was instrumental or he was able to add lyrics or vocals, to be able to reach out to this girl that he works with and say, hey, could you add some vocals here? I need something to replace Beyoncé's song. He was able to get 8 cues in a film. So what we decided is to set something up where he would become like a music library as a producer. So that his beats, hits would be available for TV and for film. So it's not a lot of money, you know, your beats that you get as a producer, what, $5,000, $10,000, up to $20,000 depending on what your level is as a producer. These beats when you offer for TV or for film can range from $1,000 to $5,000, still great money.

It's great money. Yeah, absolutely. And you're not losing ownership so that beat can go do something else later on.

And it's not exclusive. So that beat can be used over and over and over and over and over again. So again, there is so much you could be doing as a producer to, uh, to, to make money. You have to think like a business person. And so I think, uh, I think producers, what Wendy and I are saying is maybe we need to come up with something or maybe come down to Atlanta or go out and do lectures for you producers to get a better understanding of what you need to do. Artists are organized, labels are organized, publishers are organized, we need to organize the producers.

I agree.

Because without producers there'd be no music and no beats.

None.

None. And so I think the producers need to be organized and we need to do something about it.

I agree.

Thank you so much. You're welcome.

Okay guys, this is Wendy Day. This is Deborah Manus Gardner here, and you can find her at DMGclearances.com. Deborah, thank you again for joining us. I love you to death, and I'll see you soon.

Bye, thank you.