[AmbersLMP]

Would love some advice please.  A musician friend has recorded some backing tracks for me on her keyboard.  They are mainly to nursery rhymes and some simple tunes I composed myself.  She has only charged me £5 per song as they were pretty simple to record and didn't take her long.  I now want to put them on my website shop as digital downloads at £1 each and I'd like to give her a cut each time one is sold.  I asked her how much she would like and she didn't know, so I wanted to ask if anyone has any experience of this and would know how much is a reasonable percentage to pay.

Many thanks.

[Oldbutyet]

Nice thing to do but you already pay your musician friend for recording only backing tracks, did she help you with any of the writing of your songs lyrics/tunes, is she giving you back the money you already pay her, also who owns the copyright to the nursery rhymes.

If she only recorded backing tracks and you both agree £5 per song and she was pay then as far as i know she not entitle to any percentage, also you do know more than likely you own no rights to those nursery rhymes.

[MartynRich]

I have hired musicians to do some sessions and then negotiated afterwards. The advice I was given is that it is always wise to do a contract beforehand and get it signed and witnessed in order to avoid any future conflicts. You can basically negotiate what you like, but the standard contract for the type of thing you describe would be a "work for hire" agreement where you just pay them a one-off fee.

As I only decided to try to promote the track many years afterwards I decided to negotiate a percentage of any synch payment I receive (10%), but I keep 100% of the rights and royalites because I wrote the music they played. They were more than happy with this.

As for selling the songs, the issue of copyright was already mentioned. If you sell something you don´t own the rights to it could cause problems if the copyright owners get wind of it.