is the artist on a label already? To be honest, you dont have to do any contract shit. If the artist is signed the label is gonna give you the contract to sign. You should have a lawyer read it, but you wont have to draft anything. Also, since you're not a big producer, the business on the track is for the most part, non-negotiable. Well, it's always negotiable, but my point is, good luck getting a major label to pay you more than you're worth in this day and age, when they're all posting losses on their annual income. If you don't like the deal you get, you can always say no, u cant have the record. If the song is VERY important to the artist and album, maybe they'll give you a generous deal. But then you have to worry about the A&R who's pissed you want more money, and never calls you to do a track again. And that A&R tells all the other A&R how much of a pain in the ass you are to do business with....Anyways, moving on with the generic deal most producers get
They'll give you the standard which is like 3-4 points, and a $10k advance (maybe less), which is recoupable on the income you make from sales. But the album's all have 12 song caps in most cases. This means, the label only pays out for 12 songs, so if the artist puts 18 songs on the album, that means 6 other producers have to split your share evenly. Your 3 points just turned into 2. This accounts for the money you make based off sales. Now if the album only sells 100,000 units, you're not gonna see a dime on the backend, because they already cut u a check for 10k anyways, and only selling 100,000 units will not recoup that. The artist will likely have to sell 300-500k copies to break even.
Now publishing is different. This is money you make from Radio/TV etc. The songwriters own 100% of the writers publishing. So if someone made the beat, and another person wrote the lyrics its usually split 50/50. If there's a production team of 2 people who made the beat, and the artist wrote WITH the producers, it might be split 33/33/33. This is all negotiable. Keep in mind, if your beat used a sample, your 50% might actually turn into 0. When trying to clear the sample, the owner of the samples publishing might say, fuck you guys, u can use it, but we want to own 100% of the publishing on it. If that song is important to the artist, most cases they will agree.
You will even have cases with larger artists where, even if the artist doesn't write a single word, they will still take 25% of the publishing. Beyonce in particular. Any songwriter who works with Beyonce has to be prepared to give up 25%, because Beyonce feels her star power brings more to the record. It's a legitimate argument. That same single with a lesser artist would do fractions as good at radio. So its more a matter of, do you want 100% of $10,000, or 75% of $1,000,000. Some songwriters dont mind, and others do. It's more or less take it or leave it. You don't like her dipping into your pockets, dont work with Beyonce, very simple.
Anyways, this has gone on long enough. Hopefully it clears some things up, although I'm sure it just made it more confusing. lol