Kharmic Arithmetic
(How To Slice up the Song Pie)
by Molly-Ann Leikin

There are legal boundaries to the contracts we make and there are moral ones. Unfortunately, they are not one and the same. I learned this from the painful experience of a friend.

Several years ago, a movie-producer I knew, who'd just been nominated for an Oscar, had a meeting with a director who wanted my friend to buy the movie rights and produce the film of John Belushi's tragic life. The industry was anti-drugs at the time, and my friend couldn't find backing for the movie. The director still wanted to do it, and my friend continued looking for financial backing. With his ego inflated from his recent Oscar nomination, my friend decided to raise the money himself, and show 'em, putting up his own funds for the project. Along the way, my friend got reconnected with an old buddy who was a director, needed to get back on the A list and would work for a more favorable financial position than the director who brought the project to my friend's attention in the first place. The film was finally made with the second director, much to the outrage of the first, who claimed he had a moral right, if not a legal one, to the job. The movie was a disaster. My friend the producer lost all the money he'd invested, plus everything his investors had put in, and even declared bankruptcy. I told him then and I'm even more convinced now that the cloudy moral issue killed the deal. So when these questions come up for my clients, I refer them to this "Wired" disaster.

Like last month. I got a frantic phone call from a client before the sun was even thinking of coming up. Biff, my client was yelling: "My friend wrote half of the first line of a lyric. I wrote the rest of it myself. Then I did a rewrite, and in the version I just finished, his half line isn't even in the lyric. Do I have to give him credit?"

There have been various versions of this dilemma crossing my desk for as long as I've been holding a pen and making it sing. Biff counted the words in the lyric, found them to total 224, and wanted to give his non-co-writer 4/224ths of the writing income under the table, without putting another name on the song. Biff was irked when I told him if it were me, I would put both names on the lyric.

He thought I'd gone dotty. But I no longer base my business decisions on what is purely fair and legal, nor on what will make the best argument in court. Now I always try to do the "mensch" thing, be the bigger person, and make my decisions so everybody goes away happy, and I can sleep peacefully at night.

The rule that I have come to use in these tricky credit-giving situations is whoever is in the room as the song is being written, gets an equal share, including the chihuahua and his fleas. Even if you only contribute a comma or a semi-colon, you should be given the option of accepting an equal share. If there are three of you in the room, everybody gets thirds. Four, fourths. If, however, you feel in your heart you don't deserve it, it's on you to graciously refuse and back out. But it should be offered to you. And you should get all of this clear in front, before anybody picks up a pencil. After the fact, it's too late.

Biff kept insisting he shouldn't have to share the lyric credit, and I couldn't understand why he was so adamant. He finally told me he and his non-co-writer were in an art gallery deal together, and Biff had been laying out all of the money for it for over eighteen months, with no return in sight. His argument was he should try to cut his losses on deal A by cross-collateralizing it with deal B.

I told Biff that was inappropriate. One deal had nothing to with the other, and it wasn't fair to contaminate one with a second. But my client still protested.

"Okay," I said, "draw a circle." He did. "Cut the circle in half." He did. "Now cut it in half again." He did. "Let's assume the circle is a song, and now you have four slices of song pie, right?"

"Right."

"Good. Each of those slices represents part of the song. The top two slices make up the full writer's share - one quarter for the lyric, one quarter for the melody. The bottom two slices represent the publisher's share - one quarter for the lyric, one quarter for the melody. You with me?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Now take the slice representing the lyric, and cut it in half."

He did.

"What portion of the whole song is it?"

"One eighth."

"Good. Now if you gave your colleague half of the lyric-writing credit, counting the publishing, you'd still own 7/8ths of the song, right?"

"Gee, yeah..."

"Now, suppose your song is a hit, and it makes eight million dollars, and you have to give your co-writer one eighth of that. What does that leave you with?"

"Seven million dollars."

"Do you think you could squeak by on that?"

"Yeah, I guess so..."

But he still wasn't convinced. Biff finally told me that in addition to being in the art gallery business, his non-co-writer was a singer/songwriter, and several major labels were trying to sign him. Biff felt this guy would make plenty of money on his other songs, and wouldn't miss the eighth of this one we were discussing.

I wanted Biff to realize that while technically he might be entitled to 100% of the writing credit, morally it was questionable. And certainly, from a business point of view, giving up an eighth and getting on the album was a very good trade indeed. These days, with records so hard to come by, you need every bit of ammunition you can get.

If you're having similar problems with co-writers, consider this. With two names on a song, both writers will be working to promote it. If it's just your song, with your name on it, the entire promotion campaign is up to you. The more writers, the more energy can potentially go into the marketing. I'm not suggesting you give away portions of your work to aggressive schnooks who weren't even in the same zip code while the song was being written, in the hope that they'll run it and get you a cut. But I am trying to show you how to justify co-credit. The bottom line as I see is to do what's best for the song, not your ego. Biff finally did, and just called, again at dawn, to say his co-writer just recorded their song for his album. My movie producer friend, on the other hand, still has that bankruptcy clouding his name, and in spite of his once-great career, has been reduced to producing B- puppy movies for the makers of Minnie Mouse.

© 2000 Molly-Ann Leikin

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