Live in studioThe business desk
Two decades of label, publishing and entertainment practice compressed into the parts that change what you write and what you keep. No mystique, no gatekeeping.
One page naming every writer, their percentage, their PRO and their publisher — signed in the room.
Inside the business: Nothing clears without it. A record with unsigned splits stalls at legal and can sit unreleased for years while a hit window closes.
Your move: Before you leave any session, write the splits down and get names, PROs and IPI numbers on the page. No exceptions for friends.
Two separate copyrights: the recording (master, usually the label side) and the song (composition, the publishing side).
Inside the business: Deals get argued in these two columns. A writer who understands which one they own negotiates a completely different conversation.
Your move: Write both columns for your own song. Who owns the recording? Who owns the words and melody? If you can't answer, that's your first fix.
First 12 seconds, then the chorus, then whether it survives a second play in a car.
Inside the business: Nobody hears your intro the way you do. Records get skipped on the pre-chorus when the payoff is late.
Your move: Time your song. If the hook hasn't landed by 0:35, move it and see what breaks.
Permission from both the master owner and the publisher, negotiated before release, usually costing points plus an advance.
Inside the business: Uncleared samples don't get sued first — they get pulled from DSPs and quietly killed. Interpolations (replaying a melody) still need publishing clearance.
Your move: If your idea leans on someone else's line or melody, decide now: clear it, replay it, or write past it.
A demo built to be heard by a decision-maker in under a minute: no long intro, no talking, clean vocal up front.
Inside the business: Rough is fine. Unclear is fatal. The vocal has to be audible on a phone speaker in a hallway.
Your move: Bounce a phone-speaker mix of your best 60 seconds. If the words disappear, the record isn't ready to leave the room.
PRO registration (performance), publisher/admin registration (mechanical), and the ISWC that ties it all together.
Inside the business: Money doesn't get lost — it gets held. Unmatched royalties sit in a pool because two writers registered the same work differently.
Your move: Register the work under one exact title and one exact spelling of every writer's legal name. Keep that spelling forever.
Placing a song in film, TV, games or ads — needs both master and publishing sides to say yes.
Inside the business: Music supervisors search by emotion and by clearance ease. One-writer songs with clean splits and an instrumental stem get placed first.
Your move: Deliver instrumental and a cappella stems with every song and label them properly. That alone puts you ahead of most catalogues.
A catalogue is valued on predictable earnings over time — usually a multiple of net publisher share.
Inside the business: Songs that keep earning are the ones repeatedly re-used: covers, syncs, samples. Longevity beats a single spike.
Your move: Ask of every song: could someone else sing this in ten years? If the answer is no, that's a choice — make it consciously.
An advance is recoupable: you earn it back from your own royalties before you see more money.
Inside the business: Signing writers often celebrate the cheque and miss the recoupment schedule. Term, territory and reversion matter more than the number.
Your move: Whenever a number is offered, ask three questions: recoupable from what, for how long, and when do rights revert?
One page: hook paragraph, book paragraph, bio paragraph. Comparable titles from the last three years.
Inside the business: Agents read the first two sentences and the word count. A wrong word count for the genre gets a pass before the story is read.
Your move: Write your hook in two sentences with a name, a want and an obstacle. If you can't, the book's spine isn't clear yet.
Two recent books that share your reader — not your genius. Used to position and to price.
Inside the business: Comps tell the sales team which shelf and which number. Comping a mega-bestseller reads as inexperience.
Your move: Pick two mid-list books from the last three years your reader already owns. Say why yours belongs beside them.
A multi-page structural critique from your editor, followed by line edits, then copyedits, then proofs.
Inside the business: Structural notes come once. Fighting them at line-edit stage is how books miss a season and lose their slot.
Your move: Practise on your own draft: write the three-paragraph structural note you'd get, then fix only what it names.
Film/TV option, audio, translation, serial. Often the difference between a modest deal and a career.
Inside the business: Publishers want to acquire as many as they can; agents keep back the ones they can sell better. Audio is the most quietly contested right today.
Your move: Know which rights you're granting before you get excited about the advance.
The moves nobody explains publicly because they sound too simple to matter.
Most drafts truly begin on page three or in chapter two. Cut everything before the first irreversible action and see if you miss it.
Why it works: You wrote chapter one to get yourself in. The reader doesn't need the door you came through.
After drafting, write one line per scene stating what changes. Any scene where nothing changes gets merged, cut or given a turn.
Why it works: It exposes structure without rewriting a word — the fastest diagnostic there is.
Read the last sentence first and work up. Your brain stops predicting and starts seeing.
Why it works: Copyeditors do this. It catches doubled words and dead phrasing you've read past forty times.
Write twenty titles before a single line. Pick the one that already implies a chorus and a point of view.
Why it works: A great title does structural work: it tells you what the chorus must resolve.
Sing nonsense over the beat until a melody sticks, then keep the vowel shapes and replace them with real words that keep those vowels.
Why it works: Melodies fail when words are forced onto them. Vowels carry the feeling; consonants can be moved.
Write your song's single claim on a sticky note. Any line that doesn't serve it gets cut, even if it's your favourite line.
Why it works: Records that say two things well are worse than records that say one thing completely.
Change the camera in verse two: later in time, other person's view, or the same scene after it went wrong.
Why it works: The most common dead song is a second verse that says verse one again with new rhymes.
One naming convention for every file, stem and registration: Title_Writer_BPM_Key_Version. Never rename mid-project.
Why it works: Money follows matching data. Sloppy names are the number-one reason royalties sit unpaid.
Deliver a full mix, an instrumental, and a 'TV mix' (backing vocals, no lead) with every song.
Why it works: Supervisors on deadline pick the song they can drop straight into a scene.
One line per session: date, room, everyone present, what was created, splits agreed. Kept for years.
Why it works: Disputes are won on documentation, not memory. This page has settled seven-figure arguments.
Real rooms, real deadlines. What to do, in order, and the trap that catches everyone.
A producer, a topline writer and you. Everyone's excited, nobody's talking about paperwork, and someone has to leave in ten minutes.
The trap: 'We'll sort it later.' Later means one person has leverage and the others have a memory.
They need something that feels like grief with hope, no explicit language, and it must be clearable immediately.
The trap: Sending five options. Send one, plus the instrumental. Choice slows a decision.
Your novel is finished, read aloud, and at a word count that fits the shelf. You have twenty agents on a list.
The trap: Mass-querying all twenty at once. If the letter is wrong, you burn the whole list in a week.
Eleven pages of notes. Your instinct is to defend the middle, because you know why it's there.
The trap: Fixing sentences in a structural pass. It feels like work and changes nothing.
A number is mentioned. It's more money than you've made from music so far.
The trap: Negotiating the advance and ignoring the term. A long term at a big number can cost a decade.