Know Your WORTH!

I have a lot of clients who come to me asking what they should charge for their services. It could be a producer wondering what to charge for production services or a beat. It could be a songwriter wondering what to charge for writing a song for another artist or a jingle for a commercial. A lot of the time they're just wondering what percentage they should take of the song (this shall be discussed in another blog!). I'll try to keep it simple when explaining how to determine your value, otherwise this would turn into a series of blogs.

In order to determine your value or your WORTH you have to figure out how much your time is worth. Say you applied for a job to work for McD's (Hey it's a living!). You'd go in negotiating what you want as an hourly rate. You and the hiring manager would go back and forth over what the pay rate would be and finally settle on a number that's satisfactory to both of you. Going in you at least know the minimum you should get, that is, minimum wage ($5.15/hour)!

Going into any negotiation you have to know what's the MINIMUM you will take. You can base this on something simple like an hourly rate such as what you are making at your current job. So if you are working for McD's at $8 an hour, then that's the minimum you'll take!

As an example, if you're a producer and you're not sure how much you'd charge a person for a beat, you could determine your mimimum fee by taking your hourly rate (i.e., $8/hour) and multiplying it by the number of hours it takes you to produce the beat. Now in the music world, making a great beat could take hours or days, and as we lawyers say: TIME IS MONEY!! So assume it took you 200 hours (that's about 8 days for you mathmaticians out there!). 200 hours times $8 per hour equals $1600 for a beat!

Now I know most of you are thinking, "It would never take me that long to do a beat!!" What you forget to factor in is all the EFFORT it took to produce this beat!What this involves is your BRAIN STORMING time (i.e., you just lounging around thinking about what the beat will be about, how many instruments will be involved, what the hook will be, etc.); your PRE-PRODUCTION time (i.e., what people and instruments you have to find or bring together to make the beat a reality); your PRODUCTION time (i.e., actually being in the studio or bedroom putting the beat together); the POST PRODUCTION time (i.e., editing of the beat, changes, remixes, etc.); and finally the "X" factor...your GUT FEELING about how much you feel the beat may be worth to the other side! Add all that time up and you may exceed 200 hours or more!!!!

When you think about it, the above advice can be applied to producing a beat as well as writing a hit song. You just have to figure out your MINIMUM and then negotiate up from there! Hopefully, you'll negotiate a number that's satisfactory to both sides, but before you begin...KNOW YOUR WORTH!!!!

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I'd first like to thank you for visiting my blog spot. What I hope to accomplish with this column is spreading awareness about different legal issues that many people will face in pursuing a career in the Entertainment, Music, Film, Television arenas as well as any general business advice.

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