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I'm Matt Lange.

I'm an artist, producer and composer, and I work in the genres of electronic music, rock and film music.

As a producer and an artist I've collaborated with every other musician under the sun every kind of producer, engineer, you name it.

And there is a real lightning in the bottle moment a real magic to collaborating with something where you actually stumble upon just a moment, a feeling that you never would have found on your own.

There are also more things to think about in terms of rights, ownership, and registering when you work with others to create a new musical work as opposed to when you actually work solo.

Every person who makes an original contribution to the musical work shares ownership rights in it under copyright law.

And by this we mean each person who contributes something individually that involves some level of creativity.

They're all legally referred to as authors.

The size of each person's share usually corresponds to the size of their contribution to the musical composition or lyrics with some exceptions of course.

The point is this is something you all need to ultimately discuss and agree on and you'll want to do it as early as possible to avoid trouble later.

Since each share is calculated as a percentage of the whole that means each new author who's added and the size of their share will likely have an effect on the size of your share.

Documenting these shares or splits properly is the first step for each creator to get their rightful share of the earnings when the musical work is used.

Collaborating When Songwriting

2 min read

What does it mean to collaborate?

Collaborating is when two or more songwriters work together to create a musical work.

When writing , collaborating with others can be a rich experience that brings many creative talents together to produce a truly unique work. But when two or more collaborate to create a , there are more things to consider when it comes to ownership, , and than when working solo.

Making sure every collaborator is correctly identified with their correctly spelled full names and is essential for Getting Credited and Paid. See our page on Registering Musical Works for more.

Copyright ownership when collaborating

When multiple songwriters, such as , , , , etc., make an contribution to a musical work, they might be considered under . Therefore, they can each own a share of the rights in the musical work. These ownership shares are typically called .

When there is more than one songwriter working in collaboration, agreeing on songwriter splits as early as possible is vital.

You can learn more about this on the Songwriter Splits page.

In some cases, the collaboration is financed and organized by a , and either by contract or by law, all songwriters’ rights are then owned or transferred to the record producer, usually in exchange for a flat fee.

A similar situation arises whenever songwriters create a song under an employment contract, which provides that all rights belong to the employer. Visit our topic Rights Transfer and Licensing to learn more about this.

Video credit: Tiffany Orvet, Daniel Sundström, Eric Ivar Persson, Christine Miller, Nikki Skelly, Jeff Noble, Tony Bollas, Kelly Wright, Tobias Leo Nordquist, Ponny Höijer, William Engström, Parapix