 Recently I talked about how during the coronavirus crisis, the collaborations with other artists are the most effective marketing you can do, since you can use these to build both your audience and your collaborator and your whole community together. Incidentally, during this crisis, I've been like everyone else and bingeing a ton of TV. And the best show I've been watching is rapper Lil Dicky's show Dave. If you're not familiar, it's a fictitious take on an up-and-coming rapper navigating his way through life and building up his career as a white rapper. It's not only hilarious, it's the most accurate depiction of the music business I've ever seen on television. But what I'm really blown away by is there's a scene in the first episode that's just absolutely amazing that shows exactly the wrong way to deal with any collaboration or feature. Everyone who sees this scene can see it going comedically bad. So this video I'm going to tell you not only how to make sure features and collaborations go well, but also how to properly deal with the business side and market them successfully. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon and this is Muse Formation. So like I was saying, now that touring and big multi-person video shoots are gone for the time being, there is nothing more powerful than marketing with cosigns and collaborations. So because of that, it's time to talk about doing collaborations and features, since they are always a powerful way of marketing, but for now, they're the best there is. So I want to discuss everything you need to know to make a collaboration or feature work well. But let's first distinguish this. A collaboration and a feature are basically the same thing. And if you ask five people what each are, you're going to get five different answers. But what I will say is the feature tends to mean that the main artist is on all the parts of the song, like the verse and the chorus, and the featured artist is only on a single part where they are featured. Pretty easy, right? Now, this is music and creativity, so there can be exceptions and the rules are extremely malleable. But a collaboration can be anything from playing on a song to writing it with the person and not performing on it, just as long as two artists are going back and forth on the creative side. Let's first talk about how you even find collaborators. The first thing I would do if no one comes to mind is to start to get to know your community. If you haven't watched my video on finding community, you really should. It's one of my most popular videos and people really find it enlightening since I came up with the concept myself and it's a specific technique that I use to make sure I find everybody who should be talking about my music and who I should be collaborating with. It's in the cards for this video and linked below. To find them, search around tags for the genre you're looking for on SoundCloud and Bandcamp. And if you think this won't work, this is how even some of the biggest acts in music do this. Many people don't know this, but the Chainsmokers... Oh, that's a bad taste in my mouth. They built themselves up just by finding the best talent on the hype machine, which is a blog aggregator that shows the most popular up-and-coming tracks on the internet, and you can find up-and-coming vocalists and collaborators there that you can work with. Here they tell the story that they did this for their hit song Roses long before they were mega stars and they were kind of just bubbling under the surface. Wow, whatever we even begin, I guess where we started and found Roses and started with vocal and all that stuff. So basically, Drew and I came up on Hype Machine. It's this blog aggregator on the internet that shot up Hype Machine. A lot of great indie artists and a lot of songs kind of start there. A lot of huge pop songs nowadays like all started on Hype Machine. So basically, we always are on there looking for new songs. And Roses, the singer, had this track called Limelight on Hype Machine that we were big fans of. She has a really unique voice and the song got really cool. So usually what we do is just make a list of all these singers that wanted to head up and she was on there. And Drew would make these demo sketch ideas that essentially were like half-finished tracks or even less than that, kind of just melodies and really stripped down things that kind of let people do and go wherever they wanted. And I would send them out to these different singers that we were interested in and she was really cool and nice and she was super pumped. Now let's talk about the creative side of collaboration. Outside of all the marketing opportunities for collaborations, the best part of them is when you work with another artist, you can often get a piece of them creatively. One of the reasons major labels and managers have artists write together so much and you hear about the tracks never even coming out is they know when you put two creative people together, they often grow immensely from it. If you work with both of them and profit off them and they're continually getting better and better, this is a very big win-win situation. So I often see any collaborative session where two artists I work with get together as a big win since they will always pick up some new trick or creative skill from one another that will help them make huge creative leaps for the future. But what's truly amazing about a collaboration is when the energy is explosive and the two artists vibe off each other and they create an excellent track. But that brings me to my next point. All collaborations should go in with the thought that there's no pressure for any of this to be released. Now, I know when money's involved, that could be a big deal and you're paying for studio time, but this helps put the environment at ease. It should be stated in the initial agreement that both parties must agree to release it and there's no expectations that it has to be released. Now, if one artist is footing the bill, they should get first dibs on putting that release out under their own name and having the other artist be the featured artist. This is also much different if you are paying for someone to do a feature where you will not be in attendance. If that is the case, you need to settle on recourse for this. Many people put it in the initial agreement that they will be on Skype for the session so they could approve the direction and work on revisions with the artist to get it to their taste. Whereas others get what they get and if they aren't happy, the second part of the payment does not get paid. But let's get back to the creative side. Every artist has a different attitude towards what they do. Some release everything they make whereas others hoard hundreds of tracks that the public never hears. I'm looking at you, Prince. Depending on who you are as an artist, that needs to be accounted for. This happens with both the biggest and smallest artists. I mean, hell, Lululusi Verges ghosted Grimes on a collab they recently did. We're fine. I actually made the beat for Lil Uzi but then he didn't write me back, so. But another thing to remember about collaborations is this does not make them your friend. Far too many artists think by paying someone to collaborate with them that all of a sudden they're best friends. I mean, if the track does go well, it may be the start of a great relationship though. I have actually been backstage at Webster Hall before with an artist who did a feature on another act song and they were about to perform with them that night and we got kicked out of the backstage because they didn't know who they were. I mean, some artists do so many features, they don't even know what fans are talking about when they bring up some of the features they've been on. And yes, you may vibe during the session and the relationship may grow there but that's not always the case. So never go into any collaboration thinking this will lead to playing shows together or our friendship is a given since it's often forgotten about in a week. So let's now talk about the agreement side of this since this is really important. If you do a simple Google search you will find numerous contracts that are all free and there's tons on the music message boards about working on features and collaborations. But what I would suggest is let's remember the truth of all contracts is they are working agreement but what's in them is not enforceable by death or jail most of the time. The fact is you probably don't have the money to sue someone who renegs on anything in the contract that you have about a collaboration. You also probably don't have the incentive since if things go wrong you aren't at a high enough level that this matters. But we also have to remember that contracts protect you if this collaboration is successful and things should get bigger like we want them to. Obviously the right advice is always have a lawyer look over every agreement you make since they know more than any of us do and can help protect you if things go well. But let's remember most of these contracts are just agreements that are made with the inferred fear that if you disobey it it may get you sued or not paid. So what I would get in any agreement on a collaboration or feature is this. Let's talk about before you work together. You need to get an agreement on the upfront money if there's gonna be any. If you're a small artist looking to collaborate with someone bigger, the advantage is in their court to say what they are comfortable with and generally that will be the upfront fee since they know your song is probably not likely to go much of anywhere and they're not gonna make many royalties off of it so they might as well get some money for it. A performance and writing royalty should be agreed on and while it is possible to get that canceled in the contract most people are not gonna agree to that. And there are laws that protect musical performances that are not imalable and unless you do the proper legal recourse the musicians you work with can sue you for performance royalties and writing royalties and the proper compensation no matter what. If you're spending more than a few thousand dollars on this collaboration, spend a few hundred to get a lawyer to look over it. And let's also go over some basics. Yes, emails can be used in a court of law to prove things and make sure the transaction is not cash. As well, make sure the studio and engineer and any editing is covered in this fee as you don't wanna get a bill later and be sure to include that it needs to be recorded in a professional environment and not on a phone because yes, I've had to mix those before. You also wanna specify in this agreement how many parts they will be working on in the song so you can determine a royalty rate. We do need to discuss how royalties will be split. If you're only having them do a melody on a single verse and there's three other parts distribute the royalties beforehand but realize if magic happens and they perform on more of the song you will need to compensate even further in the royalty agreement and this will need to be altered. But let's get into what you really wanna talk about which is the promotion side. It's super common to pay half upfront and half later. Instead of just doing the payment in an upfront and an after completion way, pay it in thirds instead. I pay upfront upon receipt of high quality tracks and then when promotion is completed but more on what we're gonna ask for in this promotion in a second. You need to get a timeline in your agreement. As we see in this episode of Dave I was talking about before his collaboration with YG decides to not be very concerned with Dave's timeline to put it nicely. A date when a recording should be completed by and come to needs to be put in there otherwise a refund should be issued of the payment. If you are concerned about getting that refund or any of this money going wrong you can use an escrow service. There's tons of them and they will hold the money and release payment as it's proven that each part of the agreement has come to. These could come in real handy when dealing with strangers to show them that you have the money and you are serious but you wanna be sure you get what you're paid for. As well in this promotion part of this get the language the artist is gonna use in their promotions. We have all seen what it looks like when an artist clearly gives no fuck about what they're promoting on social media at all. In a world where you can pay $10 to get someone semi-famous to endorse you on Cameo we all know what it looks like when someone endorses you and they don't actually mean it, like this. Yo, what's up? It's your boy Gated from Dave. I need everybody to go check out this YouTube channel man. It's hot, Jesse Cannon running it. It's called Muse Formation. Go tap in with your boy Gated. This is not what you want from social media. Everyone knows he's never watched my YouTube and I paid him for this. People will also know when someone's faking it on social media and they don't really wanna promote the track so get the language you wanna use in the agreement. What I would ask for in particular is five posts on their socials. Look at the language they've used in the past and put that in there so it reflects their own brand. I will probably ask them to get a teaser in the studio and put that up two days before the song drops. Then do two posts the day the song drops, one a week later and another when the lyric video drops and the last one when the music video drops. Which also brings me to something new I've been seeing recently which is requiring them to be at a music video shoot on a certain date. This nails down part of the agreement that there's gonna be two phases for this which will also obviously carry more of a fee. Some of my friends when I was talking to them about this video said that this is becoming more and more common since music videos are so crucial to promotion now. And while we're getting ultra-modern with these agreements, part of the promo should definitely be that they put it as their featured track on Spotify for at least a week, if not more. And while I shouldn't have to say this I have heard of people doing collabs and then they demand that they are not credited or tagged on streaming services because they don't want people to see that as part of their discography so make sure you get this in there. And if they ask to not be tagged on there take the agreement off the table since they will never promote this anyway. So you're probably doing this collaboration because you hope their audience will see what you do. So how do we make more eyes see that? While I never condone using Facebook ads to build a fan base because it never works when you're a small artist, this is my one exception. If your collaborator is big enough that you can target them on Facebook and you have to remember smaller pages can't be targeted, you should devote some of your promotion budget to making sure you do Facebook and Instagram ads so that people see you worked with this artist since that cosine is so crucial to promotion and can really build your fan base up since their devoted fans will listen to your track and probably come to know your music and see you as somebody that is part of their community that they should know about. You can even use these ad dollars to entice them as they will see that this will build them up as well since more people will hear their music and their talent and it can help make the deal more worthwhile for them. That's it. Let me know if I missed anything since I'm gonna do a part two of this video. I'd love to hear from you what else you wanna know about collaborations and features. I hope you liked this video and if you did please like and subscribe and get notified for my future videos since I'm gonna be breaking down the concepts in this video along with tons of others on promoting your music and how to make music you're more happy with. As well, I have a Facebook group that's linked below that has only helpful information. No one tried to sell you anything, playlist or con artist, only helpful information for musicians looking to be better themselves. If you wanna learn more about me, make a record with me or check out any of my books, podcasts or anything else I do, head to jessecanon.com or at jessecanon.com on any of the socials. Thanks for watching. One last thing, if you liked this video, there's two playlists here with tons more videos that you'll probably enjoy. One's about how you promote your music and the other's about how you make songs you're happy with. Otherwise, you can hit the subscribe button here to see the rest of my videos. Thanks so much for watching.