Deal Strategy

The Paperwork Is the Career

In the producer and songwriter business, income follows paperwork. A record can do enormous numbers and still pay you nothing if the producer agreement was never signed, the letter of direction never reached the label, or the composition was never registered. Deal strategy is the discipline of getting those documents right before and after the record comes out.

What We Handle

• Producer agreements. Fee, points, royalty base, and credit, negotiated to reflect what you contributed to the record.
• Letters of direction. The document that instructs a label to pay your royalties directly to you. Getting the LOD executed is often the single highest-value fix for a producer with unpaid royalties.
• Publishing deals. Weighing admin, co-publishing, and full publishing offers against where your catalog and career are headed.
• Administration placements. Connecting songwriters and producers with the right publishing partners to collect what their compositions earn.
• Session and side deals. Work-for-hire terms, split sheets, and collaboration agreements handled before they become disputes.

How We Work With Attorneys

We are not a law firm and we do not replace your lawyer. We set the business strategy: what the deal should look like, what the market rate is, what to trade and what to hold. Your attorney papers it. When a client does not have counsel, we help them find the right one for the deal at hand.

Why Whetstone

This practice sits inside a firm that manages producers and songwriters full time and builds royalty and catalog tools through Whetstone Digital. We have seen where deals go wrong from both the management side and the data side, and we negotiate with that full picture. Learn more about the firm.

Further Reading

• What are the different types of producer deals?
• What is a letter of direction (LOD)?
• How do producer royalties work?
• What kind of publishing deal should a songwriter sign?