Today I'm going to discuss something known as a buyout deal. This type of deal is most common among production music libraries. A buyout deal is a deal where a music production library will buyout the rights to a track, or several tracks and will own the publishing rights to the tracks they buyout. The composer will typically still receive writer's royalties on the backend if and when their songs are placed. There are however variations on this last part, so make sure you understand fully what you are signing before you sign on the dotted line.
This type of deal has its pros and cons. On the upside this arrangement offers the composer upfront money, typically in the range of $150.00 to $500.00 per track. The downside is that the library now owns the rights to this track and the writer can no longer shop these tracks to other places. This is why this type of deals tend to be more commonplace for production music. At least theoretically these types of tracks can be produced more quickly and I do know several writers who make as much as $30,000 a year solely from what they make from buyout deals upfront, not including additional revenue earned from performance royalties.
The writers that I know who do the best creating instrumental music tend to take a balanced approach and pursue both buyout and non exclusive publishing deals.
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