Royalties question

[fzit0]

Well, a few months ago my friend and I started making music just for fun. I made the instrumentals (beats) and gave them to a more established producer who is a friend of mine and he worked with it and gave it a different sound.

Since then we've started taking music more seriously and we've recorded a few songs with "famous" artists on our genre. We joined BMI and we're registering all of our songs in preparation to the singles or mixtape we'll release this year.

So now to my question. We paid cash for the instrumentals (some of them I did a part and the producer just modified it, others the producer did 100% of the work). And we never spoke with the producer about royalties, he just told me "give me $300 and I'll make the beat". Now, if I paid for the instrumentals, is the copyright mine or his (the producer)? Do I have to include him as a composer in the work registration?

I was going to include him and give him 50% of composer shares if I gave him the unfinished beat for him to finish it. But someone told me "If you paid for the instrumentals you don't have to register him as a composer."

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[DJ Charlie Hood]

Invest into your working relationship. He obviously did some good work.

If you would like to work with him again.

I have seen so many broken friendships and family over this b/c people get greedy.

There's good business versus shark business. This industry has a crazy karma sting to it.

My 2 cents.

[narcoman]

good advice.

It's bad business to invoke the "letter of the law". Makes much more sense to go for "the spirit of the law".... know what I mean?