If you told a person that you produced for Drake or Lady Gaga the first thing they’re going to do is google you and if they can’t find any information to confirm this they would simply think that you’re liar. You may have well produced records for both those artists and have pictures with them, but if you’re name doesn’t show up in the liner notes it doesn’t matter. Now of course this is the knee jerk reaction of the average music listener. Most people on the planet don’t know anything about ghost production let alone that your name may be on the split sheet but not in the liner notes. The main problem with this isn’t so much that the average listener doesn’t know who you are. Its the fact that if you were to approach an artist and say the same thing that they themselves, who may be your next potential client, can’t confirm that. It would totally turn them off and you’d look like a doof. Your credits are not only important, they’re actually your most valued asset.
Let’s say for both Drake and Lady Gaga you did in fact produce records for them and did it for free. Now let’s say not only did you do it for free, you actually signed off your publishing and receiving any mechanical royalties. However, when people google your name you appear in the list of producers for that album. Even if its just a B-side record, the fact that you are associated with such monolithic acts puts you on the list of producers that most major labels and artists would contact first for a record. From there you can charge a producer fee, negotiate publishing on a record, hire a lawyer and approach a pub companies about a publishing deal if you wanted. You’d have access that most producers just wouldn’t have. Now let’s say, they don’t credit you but both paid you $50,000 for your services. Pretty good right? But you don’t get any of the items I listed above. Ari Lennox doesn’t call you cause there’s no way she can find you, nor can you negotiate anything with Dreamville, and lastly you won’t even get an email back from Kobalt let alone Sony ATV about a publishing deal. You could choose to live off the $100K but you’d be spending that money trying to get into more doors hoping that Drake and Gaga refer you to other artists, but what if they don’t. This year you’re doing fantastic, the next you may be back at square one.
For those who send beats out for free as many of us have in trying to build our brand and network, please put emphasis on the artist and educate them on why they need to credit you. Its not even if its about the song possibly blowing up, its your resume. Imagine walking into Apple or Ernst & Young without a resume, you wouldn’t even get pass the secretary let alone a call back. You can always leverage your past credits for more work later and even a producer fee. Showing your work and proving to the world that you are for real is so crucial to your success coming up that I can’t even stress it enough. If you’re giving up any monies for the beat or production it may even be worth putting it in writing that the artist and/or label must credit you for the work. Inserting your name into DistoKid or Tune Core or CD Baby helps cumulate meta data for you as well as pushes your name up for SEO reasons too. Therefore when someone does google you, guess who magically has a Google Knowledge profession? Look at you! Looking all professional and shit.
Credit, credit, credit, it’s the name of the game.
