If you edit drums.. are you entitled to some creative rights/royalties?

[AD Chaos]

Hello everyone!

Been wondering about this for quite some time..

Not that it would matter a great deal in this day and age of 'no money from record sales', I guess, but I'm still curious to learn if you think drum (midi) editing services entitle the engineer to some sort of shared copyright ownership, creative credits, or even some (additional?) monetary compensation -after the fact-.. Or does the engineer completely 'relinquishes' any and all creative input altogether by having charged for the service, to begin with?
(Say, a nice groove or fill of 'your own', that the band later makes theirs).

Is this the kind of thing that you'd consider to put in small print or even bother discussing with a client, do you disregard it as a non-issue, or has a client ever asked you how the deal goes about with it?

(I guess this is more a question for the forumers performing this service on a regular basis)



Thanks much for your responses

 

[Lasse Lammert]

Royalties or even copyright for drum editing? Definitely not, no.
Neither for reamping, coffee making, selling guitar strings for recording artists,....
Not even the tracking and mixing engineers hold copyright to the song material why should they).
You COULD of course have a separate agreement with the band, asking them to pay you in points instead of your regular fee, but that's just an individual agreement with the band, you're definitely not entitelt to any copyright for editing/cleaning stuff

 

[AD Chaos]

Well, I meant 'editing' more aggressively, as in things like 'beefing up' drum parts, humanizing them (not the attack times or the like, but for example correcting ITB-written parts so as to make them playable for a real drummer), improving/altering the cymbal accompaniments; improving the fills -or coming up with new versions of your own altogether-, replacing/creating whole sections of the songs, etc..


Not so much just mild, technical stuff..

 

[JeffTD]

I'm going to be perfectly honest and say that based on the work you described and the fact that this hasn't been discussed with you by the artist/management already, I'm guessing you're not working with clients where points matter and you're better off getting upfront payment and being happy with that.

 

[~BURNY~]

You meant programming right?

 

[Chainsaw Calligraphy]

If I recall correctly, unless you've had input on writing/changing the lyrics or melody of a song you aren't automatically entitled to a share of the royalties. Chord patterns and drumbeats don't count as they are usually pretty generic and can't be copyrighted.

 

[Kellii]

If I recall correctly, unless you've had input on writing/changing the lyrics or melody of a song you aren't automatically entitled to a share of the royalties. Chord patterns and drumbeats don't count as they are usually pretty generic and can't be copyrighted.

+1

You basically have to write a substantial part of the music like the backing music itself or the lyrics, or you have to write a memorable part like a Hook (lyrical, vocal melody, guitar melody etc).

 

[Jind]

Well, I meant 'editing' more aggressively, as in things like 'beefing up' drum parts, humanizing them (not the attack times or the like, but for example correcting ITB-written parts so as to make them playable for a real drummer), improving/altering the cymbal accompaniments; improving the fills -or coming up with new versions of your own altogether-, replacing/creating whole sections of the songs, etc..


Not so much just mild, technical stuff..

If you use Slate samples or Lasse's samples to "beef" up drums do you also think they deserve royalties? Do the plugin manufacturers of the tools you use deserve royalties, how about AVID if you use ProTools? How about ESP or Gibson, perhaps Tama, Ernie Ball, Maxon, Peavy, ...

One can endlessly come up with situations to extend the number of people with a hand in the till if you want to go down that route. But logical reasoning will answer the question for you.

 

[Sloan]

As far as I know: When you do a 'service' type of thing you are basically contracted for the work and you hold no rights to the product. The best you can hope for is some credit in the liner notes or something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire

 

[egan.]

The bottom line is you're entitled to whatever rights, royalties, credits and compensation that you have a signed contract for. Anything else is theoretical. Plenty of producers take points or writing/arrangement credits but you're entitled to hold your dick in your hand if you haven't gotten it in writing. The presumption is that you are performing work for hire.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

The answer to the title of the thread is no IMO.

 

[AD Chaos]

Thanks for the input everyone

Yeah, I meant drum programming, which I guess by the definition of some could be another thing entirely than 'drum editing'. In essence the question was if the engineer has rearranged, improved, or even largely written the drum parts (for a client without a drummer, or to compensate for a crappy drummer), if that creative input could be construed as him being 'a part' of the band or the project.. Guess not, then. It makes sense that it'd have to be specified in writing.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

An editing or programming credit is nice but they don't have to unless there's a contract.