Interview with Kate Westwood of Westwood Management – Songwriting, Co-writing, Copyright Splits

I had the honour of spending some time on 9th August, 2020, with Kate Westwood, as we discussed songwriting, collaborations, co-writing and copyright splits.

Kate is a bubbly, friendly character and is full of insight through her own experience and the experience she has had in working with emerging artists. She is the founder of Westwood Management, a management business, that works with emerging artists, as well as the new Virtual Music Manager.

Below are the questions from the interview and will help you to gain some valuable and important insight.

What was it that first ignited your passion for music? What got you into music in the first place?

If we go back to when I was three years old.. My first performance, I think I sang at a baptism when I was three. My mum was a singer.. She played guitar and piano so we grew up as a pretty musical household, and I played in bands in high school. I’ve always loved to sing and have been writing since I was about 13 or 14, playing guitar, and then singing in church a lot. Music’s been a part of my life for a long time. I don’t think I ever really dove deep into the whole thing of being an artist until the last couple of years but I’ve always loved music. You could find me singing at any given time of the day.. much to everyone’s delight.. or dismay.. I don’t know, but I primarily am a singer and a songwriter and so I just love listening to music and I love playing and being part of it.

Who is Kate Westwood is in everyday life?

Well, I live in a house with some housemates and a cool cat, Fonzie, who keeps me entertained.. I’m a radio host on the weekends – 89.9 The Light, which is a joy to be a part of.. Such a cool organisation here in Melbourne, providing positivity and hope in a really difficult time so if you never listen to The Light you should head over to 89.9! I’m an auntie.. I’ve got five nephews and nieces.. I would call myself an average gardener because I kill as much as I plant, but things die as much as they grow.. I’m a book and movie lover.. I love reading and I love watching movies. I’m a business owner as well now, I could say.. and as someone who’s passionate about music, I’ve also been to something like 29 countries. I’ve travelled a lot and so I’m so keen to go overseas again.. Who knows when that will happen but I definitely love the world and I love cultures and different people, different nationalities.. There is so much we can learn by getting out and about and I guess, here in Melbourne you can do that anyway because there are so many nationalities represented. oh yeah, that’s a little bit about me.

When you’re able to travel again, what’s the first country you’re going to visit?

I probably will go back to see my parents who live in Scotland. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been there and they normally come out for Christmas.. There’s that, and then I always say New York because I love, love, love, love New York.. If I had joked that if I could get a job there, I’m pretty sure I’d move. It’s an amazing place.

Is New York related to your music passion?

Ah, no.. It’s because I fell in love with New York in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. I don’t know why, but it just was always my favourite Christmas movie and I always wanted to go just like in the movies and when I went in 2012 for the first time, it just was over and above my expectations. I had an amazing time and I didn’t even get to see everything I wanted so I’ve been back a couple of times since. I don’t know, something about it that’s just a bit magical.

Would you be able to let our audience know what you do for work?

Just under two years ago, I quit my day job and my desk job, and I decided to start a business called Westwood Management. I studied entertainment management at uni and at the same time as creating my first album. In that space i realised that there was some help needed for emerging artists and so I decided I wanted to be that change that i wanted to see. So I started Westwood Management and it’s slightly a non-traditional management company, where I work with artists but rather than on commission basis, we work on a monthly fee. That means that I can help people that other managers wouldn’t even look at because they’re not making any money. We do management coaching, training and resources and really, my heart and desire is to give confidence and clarity for artists to know how to move forward and then to believe that they can.

Within a “normal” management system, what would they normally be looking at for taking on artists?

From what I know and have heard.. I’m not a massive expert in this space but usually, first of all they’re looking for a sense of talent and a sense of ‘Oh, I love this music.. I can envisage something’. When Scooter Braun saw Justin Bieber on YouTube, he got a vision of something that Justin Bieber could be. The story is is that he called every high school in Canada until he found the school that Justin Bieber went to, and then he was able to make contact. This was even before Scooter Braun even had any real money. He saw a vision and he said ‘I want to be a part of that’ and so most managers I think it’ll be a a mixture of that.. but also, do they have the capacity for them to make money because managers work on percentage. If it’s someone at the really baby start of their career, they’re not making it, they haven’t got any music out, there’s no income from their career.. usually, that equals that they’re not ready yet. Managers would be looking for some of those two different things.

What has your experience been, in terms of developing your own career as a musician?

I have been singing and playing for a long time. I’ve even been writing for a long time, but I’m a strong and independent woman and had this belief that to be a good songwriter.. to be a good artist, I have to be able to do everything myself. If my song needs help or I don’t know what to do here and I have to ask for assistance, that means I’m not a good songwriter and the song wasn’t good because I need help.. a weird belief and it sounds so strange when I say it now but I definitely believe that and so I didn’t share my songs with people, really until they were done. I wasn’t open for feedback and often in my writing, I would get stuck. I hit the limit of my experience.. my musical experience. I’d get stuck about how to move forward and so then I would give up. All of those things really meant that I didn’t really move forward, in terms of being an artist and a writer.

I did a songwriting course and I had this revelation that this is what I believe and then I said ‘well, I want to change that’, so I started collaborating. I had all these songs, found a producer who wanted to work with me, and made an album, but i had no idea what i was doing, which to be honest is the case for most of us. We’re having to try and navigate an industry without a map.. without any experience and usually without many people around us who’ve done it before. Even though I had some friends who have released and recorded before, my producer was great.. I could even ask him a bunch of questions, but there were things he didn’t, maybe think to tell me or he didn’t know to tell me.

I remember the date in which I was getting ready to get the masters back to send to the distributor, then I realised that, actually if we don’t do it on this date, It may not be ready for release date. I was freaking out because there was only four weeks out. I was like, ‘oh, I didn’t realise how to do this’, so there were so many stressful moments and I probably spent four months where I didn’t watch TV. I would get home from work and spent three to five hours on the computer doing online courses, working on my website, trying to figure out how to navigate this industry.. What the heck am I supposed to do.. I relished that and I enjoyed that because I love learning and the ‘why’ is really important for me.. but, it was really challenging and I made a lot of mistakes. I spent probably way too many hours doing too many things on my own and so even though I had great response from the album, I didn’t really know anything about marketing or PR at that point.

I had a lot of community around me who love it and I still get texts probably once a week from someone saying ‘I was listening to your song in the car and it really blessed me again today’ or ‘your album on repeat got me through a really hard week’ and that’s why we do it because it’s not so much about the money. I definitely didn’t make the money back that I put into it. It was a great experience because I learned so much but I also realised how overwhelming it can be and how little support there is for emerging artists – I say emerging is people who haven’t yet yet broken to that point of profit and of being seen.. It doesn’t mean ARIA award status but having the sense of where you get people coming out to your shows. It’s been a good experience but one that’s definitely been very challenging.

You were saying that you didn’t have the belief that your music was something to be shared.. What was it that turned that around for you.. that you were willing to share what you had created?

I have a belief that we can’t change something if we don’t know that we need to change it. If we don’t know something’s broken, then we don’t know that we should fix it. In leadership development or different spaces, if you don’t know what you don’t know, you can’t make a change, but as soon as you realise ‘oh, there’s a hole in my tire.. okay’, now I know that I need to fix it and if I don’t know how to fix it, then I find out how to fix it. That’s where the shift and change comes for anyone.. When you realise what you don’t know then you have a choice – I’m going to keep going with how it was, or I can make a change.

For me, I had just kept living in this space of ‘I don’t know what I don’t know’ and so I just kept getting stuck and frustrated in that space, in terms of writing. I did a songwriting course and it was ‘I’ll just sit around’.. I wasn’t really that involved and developed and there was one at one point where I shared a song in the group and I got some feedback. In my mind I was like, ‘who is he to tell me what’s good or not good?’. I realised this ugly pride rose up and I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that that was my response and so being a part of the songwriting challenge, recognising that now I’ve realised that there’s something that maybe I need to change.. That was really the shift for me.. I had that revelation that I felt like I had to do everything myself to be good, rather than recognising that help and support and collaboration was a way better ‘good’ than doing it on your own.. That was really the shift for me and things have really gone really well since then.

Could you tell us a little bit about what you do for your clients within Westwood Management?

There are three levels of what I do. The first one is connected to my Facebook and my email list so every week. I provide free training resources.. there’s a Facebook live every week where I’m really trying to unpack the industry and tips and tricks and secrets that I just don’t think should be secrets, because I really believe that information should be shared. There’s lots of simple things that people can be doing to build their music career and primarily what I help artists do, at all levels, is to understand that if they want to make any money from their music, whether it’s just as a hobby level or if it’s a full-time job, that they want to get paid full time for it, it means that they’re essentially wanting to run a business.. helping them to understand how to set up that as a really good foundation. What does it mean to be in business and most creators say ‘I just want to play music, mate’, well, that’s great but if you want to play music and make money, then you have to think like a business, or you have to pay someone to do that for you. It’s just helping people to understand and navigate through a lot of beliefs and a lot of ideas.

There’s heaps of free stuff on my email list and on my Facebook, every Tuesday I do a Facebook live where I interview people and we talk about current events and talk about what they’re doing. That’s been really great and then I have an online course called the Virtual Music Manager. That is a monthly membership and there’s heaps of training and resources and literally courses about social media, email list, releasing an album, music marketing. It also comes with an hour of coaching a month, so it’s information combined with real personalised support. That’s called the Virtual Music Manager and anyone can access that.

Then I have seven artists at the moment that I work with on a more intensive basis. Anywhere between four to eight hours a month and it’s really tailored to what they need and so it’s coaching, it’s management.. then often I’ll write emails or I’ll contact people or I’ll be setting up a Facebook ad or i’ll be doing whatever is needed practically for that person. In a monthly fee space, rather than a percentage base, which is more traditional management. The three levels of what I do.. it’s very hands-on.

Do you find that clients come in with a very different expectation of you?

I think in the first probably six or eight months there were people that we started engaging with and and who had an unconscious expectation, so we talked about the fact that generally what I don’t do is get you gigs.. that I help show you how to do that really well.. so then you do it and then you keep all the money so I’m empowering you to really grab hold of your business and know how to manage it well. Unconscious expectations around ‘oh, but I just kind of wanted someone to do it all for me’ but we talked about how that’s not what I work here.

I realise that that’s really the unconscious expectations.. the ones that we didn’t realise we had until they weren’t met. They’re the hardest ones to deal with. What i realised is that you just have to talk out again.. be open about it and then the great thing about how I’ve decided to work is it’s not a contract now.. we’re locked in together and it’s hard to get out of it.. it’s just a month by month. Everything I do is month by month and so if my artists on the Virtual Music Manager or my Westwood Management artist say ‘I don’t have enough money this month’ or I’ve decided to move to Ecuador, which just happened with one girl, or for whatever reason, they want to finish up our partnership, that’s totally fine. It’s not locked in.

I really wanted to provide something different but the reality is that your music, as an artist is not going to be for everyone so not every person out there is going to be a fan. My business isn’t also for everyone.. there are some people who we’re right at the right time and that kind of thing, so that’s totally okay. I try to talk through those expectations at the beginning. Also, I’m developing.. the artists are developing.. we’re figuring stuff out as we go and I think the more that you’re willing to do that together, the more everyone benefits and grows.

If someone did want to get in touch with you in terms of the Virtual Music Manager or in terms of your one-on-one, how would they get a hold of you?

I’m on on Facebook and Instagram.. It’s at Westwood Management and the Virtual Music Manager. I only open it up for new members twice a year, so if you jump on any of my social media pages, you’ll see a wait list there. It’s essentially virtualmusicmanager.com waitlist. You can register for the waitlist and then you’ll find out all about it but i’ll be sharing it anywhere on the socials. Anyone can join the Virtual Music Manager but I only have three spots left in my artist roster, just because it’s more intensive so I usually reach out to people or we have a one-on-one chat and then I decide whether I feel that we’re right to work together. That’s a little bit more targeted. Check me out on Westwood Management, on socials, my virtualmusicmanager.com/waitlist.

We’ve spoken a little bit about how you’ve got a huge passion for songwriting.. What’s your personal creative process within the songwriting process?

Personally, I am a lyricist and so usually I’ll get lyrics and melody at the same time in my head. I’ll be out somewhere or I’ll be listening to some music or usually when i’m trying to sleep at 11 o’clock at night, my brain stops thinking and then starts thinking about music and I’ll hear lyrics and melody in my head, and then I’ll usually write it out.. or I’ll get my glorious voice memo out and record it on my phone. I usually go back in the next day or so and grab my guitar or sit on the piano and then I’ll just start to explore that.

Primarily, I start with lyrics and melody and usually that’s my focus so my focus is having really strong lyrics, telling a really clear story, having just one theme and keeping it really concise and then having really beautiful memorable melodies. I really work hard on that and then usually I’ll just throw some chords in underneath it to make it work and then I’ll record a voice memo of the whole thing, write down all the lyrics and the chords. Then usually what I’ll do is I’ll show it to one or two people that I have a connection with, and I’ll ask for feedback on it. Sometimes that will equal a little bit of co-writing, where they’re like ‘oh, I’ve got some ideas here, let’s work on it’, depending on how complete the song was.

I generally have a rule for myself that I don’t finish a song or record a song unless it’s gone through that process of feedback and collaboration, and then reworking at least twice, because I want the song to be the best it can be. Talking about my history, I tried to do it all myself and I would hit a limit of what I knew and could understand. I’ve really learned that the song has the opportunity to be the best and the fullest and most complete if there’s been other ideas and eyes and hands in the pie.

How do you choose those people that you go to for feedback?

That’s definitely a challenging one if you’ve never done that.. I was talking to a lovely guy named Daniel from New Zealand yesterday and he was like ‘but I just don’t know who’s around me’.. that’s probably the most challenging thing. I have four to eight people right now that I could call and I could set up a session tomorrow because I’ve looped myself in with a creative community. I’ve built relationship with people over the last couple of years and so it’s easy to choose because I have that.

It’s not like every writing session I do, it’s a new person.. usually it’s those four to eight people. Sometimes it’s in a writing retreat with four to eight people and sometimes it’s just on the team with Renee or Jared or Anna or Ali.. people who are already in my life and we have a songwriting relationship together.. but that’s because I’ve built that over the last one to two years so it’s easy to choose.

I would like to keep writing and keep doing, finding new people but that would be really challenging to do that every time I wrote, so it’s really wonderful to build some great relationships and then just keep doing it with them.

If there are people out there listening, and that you might be like Daniel, and you feel like ‘but, who do I.. Where do I go? What do I do?’, you just have to start somewhere and if I tell the story of my friend Renee, we had met but we’d never written together and I knew that she wrote. I went over to her house and we had big plans and it was a bit of a disaster.. It was a bit awkward and nothing really came out of it. We were like ‘okay, cool.. that was great’ and then we left. I was like, ‘no, we’re doing it again’ and so I brought my guitar over and I brought a bottle of wine and the next two times we wrote together, we didn’t write anything. We didn’t get the music out.. We just drank wine and we talked and we got to know one another and now when we write, in two hours we’ll have a full song.

I have a personal belief that I think creativity flourishes in a place of safety. If you feel known.. If you feel safe.. If you feel valued.. Then you’re going to share your ideas. You’re going to be ‘oh, but what about this?’ or ‘no, I’m not sure’ you’re not going to be second guessing yourself. You’re not going to be insecure. If you can take that time.. However you’re doing it whoever it is just find someone who writes and just go. Don’t try and write the first time. Just say hello and get to know them and build a place of safety and being known first and then I think creativity will flourish out of that space.

I’ve got a question here as well from Rebecca Lynch-Wells.. She’s asked ‘how many hours would an artist be expected to dedicate their time towards their artistry, especially if they expect to be working or studying full-time otherwise’.

It really depends on what they want to achieve back and also what you’re doing in that time. If I use the example when I was creating my album, I worked full time and I would come home, have dinner and then I would spend two to four hours every night. I didn’t watch TV, so from seven to ten o’clock every night, I would be on the computer, working on the lyrics or talking, organising the photographer, so I spent probably 15 hours a week in that period of time when I was doing my album. That was a lot, but also there was a lot of wasted time because I was googling ‘what is an online distributor’, ‘how do I find a producer’, those are intensely time-wasting searches and also doing a website yourself is like a black hole of time as well.

I would think probably two to ten hours a week and really that depends it on whether it’s about just the practice, whether it’s about you learning about what it means to be in business. If you’re really, really, really, really serious about it, I would think you need to do a day a week and whether that’s a full eight hours or it’s two hours a night, because essentially you need to study yourself, your career, your audience, what’s happening in the industry, what it means to be a business person, looking for other creative partners and businesses out there who can support you, rather than just hoping and waiting for a lightning bolt of something magical, like winning the lottery.

You still have you have to work at it. That would be my recommendation. If you’re serious about it, probably around eight hours a week. That could include songwriting or rehearsal or practising your craft as well.

Do you have a favorite song that you admire the artfulness or the creation of that song?

Not really.. If I think about it, I remember watching Bohemian Rhapsody.. that movie, and seeing how Freddie Mercury and the guys did really push the boundaries on essentially that song Bohemian Rhapsody. That it is not a typical song.. it goes for seven or eight minutes.. It’s very strange.. It’s very different and I liked that they pushed the boundaries and they knew who they were as artists.. They knew what they wanted to achieve and they stuck to that. That’s not something that we can all do, but I really do like that. I think I probably should spend a bit more time on the songs that I love, and looking at if there’s information out there about the background of them.

I definitely have some favourite writers. Two of them that come to mind are Jon Foreman from the the band, Switchfoot and Ryan Tedder from OneRepublic. They’re my two go-to songwriting crushes. I just think those guys are amazing and I love how diverse and I’m always inspired when I listen to them.. like ‘Kate, you’ve got to write more’ because they just have a way of telling a story and the lyrics and the melody just are amazing.

Do you feel that anybody can write music or do you feel that it’s something that some people were just born with?

The answer is yes to both of those.. that songwriting especially is a skill that anyone can learn. Nobody comes out of the womb already knowing how to do complex algorithmic and mathematical equations. We learn how to do that. Some of us have a predisposition to a certain sense of intelligence. Some people have.. like my brother is amazing at sports. He can pick up any ball, he can play any sport.. he’s amazing. Whereas I fumble around and it doesn’t come naturally. There absolutely is a musical intelligence, where people just get it. Their brains get it. They understand it. It makes sense to them. They can play any instrument.. They pick up the violin and in ten minutes, it’s not sounding terrible.

There’s a whole sphere of different types of intelligences. Not just book learning but, spatial and emotional intelligence, musical intelligence, kinesthetic, all that kind of stuff. Some people have a predisposition to being more intelligent in that way, but songwriting is a skill that anyone can learn. There are some really key principles and formulas that if you follow, you can create a good song. One that you know has a sense of structure, that fits together, that tells a story and so I think that anyone can write a song. You don’t necessarily have to have heaps of musical skill and I think it’s great to give it a go.

One of the things that I see a lot is that people say ‘oh, I have this creative skill.. great how can I become famous with it?’ or ‘how can I use it to make money?’ and that saddens me a little bit that just because you’re good at something, that means now it needs to be exploited in that sense, rather than just creativity for creativity’s sake. If you’re just learning to write songs, just do it for the love and the joy of creating something. If you like to dance, it doesn’t mean you have to be a famous dancer. If you like to sing or paint, it doesn’t mean you have to sell them or you have to go on and win awards and songwriting competitions. Just start by getting a love for the process of creating. I think if we can keep that value, I just love to create and I love to tell a story, rather than it always having to be for a purpose, I think that’s something that’s a little bit lost.

Do you find, from your experience that when musicians do go down that path where they’re trying to make money out of their skill, that it can often take away from what they’re trying to produce?

Yeah, I think it definitely can and I think sometimes it can sour their their view of the industry because they’re creative and they’re trying to make money out of that creative, but they’re not also a business person, so they are approaching that business with a creative mindset rather than a business mindset and so then it’s frustrating because ‘but, I’m doing all this stuff and I’ve got all these great songs, but no one’s hearing me and I can’t build my audience.. Now I’m really jaded at the industry, because it never gave me my break, or gave me the chance’ or I’ve worked harder I’m more talented than those other people, but they got that opportunity that I didn’t get’. That’s really sad and I feel for them, but it’s also the reality of this industry.. That there’s no line and it doesn’t work on merit.

For ethic I use the example of.. I did my album because I wanted to tell a story and primarily I wanted to tick that box that this is a big life goal that I had. The goal wasn’t to be famous or to make a certain amount of money. The goal was to actually write these songs, record and release it and go ‘yes, I finally did this’ and then there’s more things that have emerged out of that, in terms of ‘oh, maybe I could do this.. maybe I could do that’, but that’s not the original purpose of it and I think creativity should be for creativity’s sake and then as we grow and we we find that this is actually what I’m called to. It’s not just something I can do, but something I feel that call to do. That’s when you should start to pursue in that area.

If somebody’s looking to create that first song.. say, they’ve never gone out and taken it seriously, what are some places that they can look for ideas to develop that creativity and get things started?

Practically, nature is one of the best places to go out and just go for a walk and look for inspiration.. look for something that stands out to you. It could be a fallen branch, it could be a butterfly. It could be a cloud in the sky or it could be dark clouds. There’s a million things that you could see in nature. A bird building a nest.. and just allow yourself to then meditate.. okay, what does that mean to me? What’s come out of that? What’s the story that I’m getting out of that and that’s the thing about art.. That everybody sees different things in a painting. It means something differently and so we could both look at the same thing and get a different meaning out of it.

Allowing yourself to then write down ‘okay, I saw that bird building that nest and this is why.. It’s like the mother taking care of her kids but working hard to develop, but maybe it’s not going to last.. maybe, in a couple of weeks it’ll fall apart’. Then you start to allow yourself to explore the concept and then I encourage people, if they’re not a lyricist but just to write it down like a diary entry. Write down what you were thinking and then pick out lines that stand out to you and then start to form it together in a traditional kind of verse, chorus structure and then singing out.

It was really hard to tell people how to go about because I have a particular way about writing songs but there’s inspiration everywhere, even in the injustices that we feel. One of my artists, wrote a song called ‘House is on fire’. she wrote it middle of last year and then was recording it right when all the fires happened here in Australia, at the end of last year and it was around climate change but then it really fit together with that whole thing of the literally on fire. She wrote because she has this passion for climate change awareness and that’s a cause that’s really close to her heart. She wanted to write a song about ‘guys, did you know the house is on fire.. we’ve gotta talk about it’. I’m finding the things that have meaning to you and creating something around that is it’s a really good place to start.

If you’re somebody who has this great idea, and you’ve been inspired and you know what you want to say but maybe you’re not so natural at putting those lyrics together, in that kind of poetic sense, is there a way that somebody can develop that skill further?

I think there’s two options there. The first one is that you go and you just write a bad song. The first point is you just do your absolute best with what you already have and you write a bad song and that’s everybody’s beginning of their their songwriting journey. The first painting you do as a child, you know they’re bad.. they’re finger painting.. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s okay, you grow and you learn and you develop. Really at this point if you’re just starting in your songwriting journey, it’s going to be about a quantity over quality, so you just got to start writing and you’ve got to write every week and you’ve got to just write to the best of your ability, what you can do even if it’s terrible.. even if it’s the cheesiest song ever.. even if it’s all of the cliche lyrics and it just has three chords. Just write a song and then the more that you do it, the more it will grow and develop.

The second part of that is doing what you know and then finding someone to fill the gaps, so for me, I write lyrics and I do melody. I’m great at those, but the music side.. so putting the right chords or figuring out all the production stuff, that’s not where.. I just learned to play guitar so that I could put chords to my songs. I have a friend who was like ‘okay, you could do an E minor four diminished here’.. I’m just like ‘I don’t know what that is.. can you write that down for me?’. I just know how to sing it and so I will often go to him and say ‘Jared, uh what would you recommend? how could we make this more interesting?’ and often I’ll get suggestions or different things around the the chords underneath and so really, what i’m doing is I’m finding someone who is great at what I’m not great at. When you add those things together, you get a bigger and a fuller picture or you get a complete package.

How often do you think that artists should be collaborating when writing their songs?

Oh, you’re gonna get me started on something exciting.. I talked already about the fact that I don’t call a song finished and I definitely don’t record a song – it’s a personal standard – unless I’ve had at least two people look at it, give me feedback and then I’ve gone and I’ve reworked and I’ve really taken that feedback and said ‘okay, could this make this better? could this develop this?’ I use the example of ‘I want it to be really well cooked’ so it’s like a cake that looks great on the outside, but then when you look at the inside, it’s still stodgy.. You put this the cake in that’s not a well cooked song it looks fine on the outside, but when you really then go into it, it’s not complete and so collaboration, feedback and co-writing are the best ways to make sure that your cake is cooked really well in the middle and not just on the outside.

I personally am hoping that working towards at least half of my songs being co-writes and I’d like at least one of my songs for my next album to be a song that I gather from songwriters, that I know, that maybe I don’t even have a hand in, but I’ve just said ‘oh, I’ve taken submissions.. great.. that one is awesome.. I want to do that one.’ A lot of professional artists do that.. Rhianna often doesn’t write her songs, Adele, Celine Dion.. so many don’t actually write songs.. They just sing other people’s songs. I think that it should be part of if you want to be a songwriter and if you are an artist who’s serious about this, you want to be collaborating.

There are so many benefits to collaborating and co-writing. Everybody gets an opportunity to learn.. You get to hear from somebody else’s perspective on a story, or on how they write.. It grows everyone’s ability to understand about the craft of songwriting.. You also get to support another creative business. If we write a song together, Karen, then if I record that, you then get a percentage of that copyright revenue, so it benefits you. We write together, we support one another, then also the more people who are involved in a project, the more opportunity you have to network. When you release a song and you do that, it’s like now there are 10 people who are going to share about it because they were involved in it and it also is really going to help you grow as a songwriter.

I really believe in not necessarily being the best at everything, because you get to see and hear from other perspectives. There is a difference though, if I go into it, between feedback and collaboration and co-writing.. I often get someone saying, ‘oh, if I go to someone and they give me feedback on a song and then I use that idea, does that mean they own part of the song? Feedback is not songwriting and criticism and constructive criticism is not songwriting. It’s only when you use the actual words or the actual melody that they’ve given and you put that direct thing as a part of the song. That’s where it would be a co-write.. if someone says ‘oh, you could change the verse to be the chorus’.. that’s an idea.. ‘cool, alright i’m going to switch that around’, but if I do that, it’s the idea. It is not what’s copyrightable, it’s the action that’s copyrightable, so let’s work with your definition.

Is there a difference between collaboration and co-writing?

I think they’re a little bit same, same, different. Collaboration often can be around maybe there’s a producer who’s got a song and I just sing on it. One of my artists, Alexis, has just done a trance song with a guy named Jordan. She didn’t really write the song, but she is collaborating with them on a project, so she’s bringing her skills and her tools to that project. I don’t I think that there is some agreement there.. It really depends on what you decide, but if you’re lending your voice or your your musicianship to something, that’s usually where it’s around collaboration.

Co-writing is really specifically around, we sit down together to write a song, whether it’s from scratch or one that is in flux and you’re developing it and there’s an agreement that we’re both writing this song together. You just need to be really clear and I think collaborating can mean that same thing as well, but it’s just it’s very different from getting feedback. I think wanting to separate those two that collaborating and co-writing and feedback and criticism they’re very different.

What do you think are the biggest obstacles that musicians need to take into account when looking at co-writing?

I think very often, as a songwriter, and when we go into a co-writing thing, it’s really hard to not take it personally.. it’s really hard to to take somebody else’s feedback and that’s probably one reason why I didn’t do this for a long time. Who’s someone to tell me that my song isn’t good and there was a lot of pride and it was very personal, because it’s my baby that I created, and you know be careful with that baby. No, this is just a piece of work that has the opportunity to grow and develop and professional songwriters who are writing five to twenty songs a day, they’re not treating every song like a baby. It’s just something that they’ve created for a purpose and they don’t take it as personally and that’s really hard to do when you’re first starting out.

The more that you write, the less personal, the less of yourself is and your worth and your value is tied up in whether someone likes the song or not. Being able to move past that and I think the only way you do that is by doing a lot of collaborating and co-writing. That’s one thing definitely not communicating at the beginning of a co-writing session about what the intention is, what the goal is or having a belief that just because we wrote a song, now it has to go somewhere.. That’s not true.

Ninety percent of the songs that you write are probably aren’t going to go anywhere. Chris Martin talks about that in a great documentary, A Head Full of Dreams. I think it’s on Amazon Prime.. such a great documentary and talks about songwriting so much from Coldplay and he says that only one 1 of 10 of the songs that I write I even bring to the team and he was a genius at songwriting. There’s 90 out of every 100 songs don’t go anywhere. You think ‘what the heck’, if Chris Martin‘s gonna do that, that means that we need to do that as well, which often I guess we don’t even think about but you know these stars.. they have songs that don’t get out there.

Once an artist has co-written a song and it’s gone out to market, how do ownerships and royalties work between the different parties?

I get excited about this.. There’s heaps of great stuff on artslaw.com.au and the APRA AMCOS website, so if you want to know more about this, you really should. If this is something that you’re focused on as an artist, you want to be a writer, you really do need to understand your your rights as a writer and what it includes. My recommendation is that before you go into any songwriting session and also at the end that you would determine with everyone.

Let’s say I get in a room with myself and my friend, Renee, I’ve already talked about, and we would say ‘all right Renee we’re really happy to do 50/50’. Awesome, okay, great, so we’ve decided that no matter what we write and no matter who writes what in this session, we’re going to split the difference. We’re both going to own fifty percent of the copyright and this is what they call the Nashville Standard, so it’s an industry standard that whoever’s in the room and contributes to the song, whether they only contribute one line or whether they write the whole melody for a verse or whatever it is that everyone who contributes to the lyric or the melody and the part of the song in that session, who’s in the room is contributing to it, then they get a full split of the song.

What that does, is that it just makes everyone feel good that everyone’s contributing and it doesn’t prioritise one person over the other. The example that as we go into this, that the actual things that can actually be copyrighted are only the lyrics and the melody. There’s nothing else in a song that’s copyrightable and people might go ‘oh, but what about my drum solo? What about the beats that I made? What about the guitar riff? What about the chord progression? or the arrangement?’ nope, none of that is copyrightable.

If you were to copyright a chord progression, that means that only one song could ever use that chord progression and that is just not true, so if you look up The Axis of Awesome on YouTube one of my favourite YouTube clips in five minutes, they play 40 or 50 different songs all on the same chord progression, one after the other. Chords are not copyrighted if you decide it’s going to be E A B# C#, you still don’t own any of the song because you can’t copyright the lyrics. The guitarist who figures out the chords of the song actually, legitimately doesn’t own any of the song.

If Renee does all the piano and she figures out the chords and I do the lyrics and the melody officially I own 100%, but because of the Nashville Standard and how we’ve agreed because we’re writing together, we now own 50% each, because we’ve decided that’s how we’re going to run it. That makes everyone happy to write songs together and we’re not nitpicking over ‘I wrote 12 lines and you only wrote four, so you should only get five percent and I get…’ That’s horrible.. no one wants to engage in that kind of relationship. It is a very complex issue and it’s confusing.

I even had a question from a friend of mine, Jesse the other day about ‘if I’m writing for somebody else, should I charge them a fee?’ and we were talking about what that would equal and a lot of different things. My biggest thing at the beginning, just say are we all happy to do an even split? There’s three people in the room.. 33% for everyone, no matter what people contribute and then at the end, let’s say you agreed that at the beginning and then halfway through someone left and never came back, then at the end you would say ‘well, Susie you contributed this much, but actually we’re only going to give you, we’re thinking you only get 15% because you were only there for half the time, okay?’ You have an agreement at the beginning at the end and then you sign a simple contract.. a simple agreement saying Susie owns 15%, Kate owns 42.5%, Renee owns 42.5% and that’s the ownership of the song.

Are there contracts available that people can access, or is it something that writers can generally go and write up themselves, and agree between each other?

It can be a really basic thing just fill out the ownership of this song.. written on this day.. this is the split and just do a simple document printed out. Everyone signs it and has a copy of it, but you can go to artslaw.com.au and I think even on APRA they might have a few examples of things that you can do there. It’s really about just everyone being in agreement and that being in writing doesn’t have to be a really fancy lawyer document but that’s always helpful. You just want to have something in writing.

Is copyright law the same across different countries or does that vary from country to country?

The rule across the world is that copyright begins as soon as you write down your idea. You don’t just write the idea of I’m gonna write a song about this.. That’s not it.. When you actually write the lyrics and you record the music that’s when. That can just be, again written down or recorded on your phone. That’s when that song now has a copyright you now own that song.

In Australia, You don’t need to register it as soon as you’ve written down or recorded your intellectual property, your music, your lyrics, your melody it is copyrighted there are some countries where you do need to register that copyright like in America. There are a few places where you actually have to go and register so it’s like a patent or a trademark thing. You’re essentially saying, this is my melody, this is my lyrics and you register it. We do not have to do that in Australia, so if you’re not in Australia, make sure you check with your local performing rights organisation to find out what requirements there. In Australia you don’t have to do that. As soon as you create it, it is now copyrighted.

Are there any obstacles that come up if somebody is working with a person who is from another country, that may have different copyright laws? Have you ever experienced that?

I would think, not.. Just still get a contract on that and then register the song in your performing rights organisation and just make sure you have your your agreement there with this person. If America owns ten percent, I own 90 percent.. great.. but then they’ll need to register it according to what’s important in their country. I don’t have any particular experience with that.

Once we’ve got our copyright right splits all established, what formats of playing the artist’s music, would then entitle them to start receiving royalties?

Once you’ve registered your song with.. so in Australia it’s APRA so it’s called a pro performing rights organisation and these are the people who look after the people who own the composition.. so not the sound recording. The sound recording is.. I can have compositions that haven’t been recorded but any song that I record has a composition royalty and a sound recording royalty or revenue and if you’re a label, if you’re assigned with a label, usually they own the sound recording, but you own the composition revenue because you wrote the song.

Because i’m an independent artist I own everything, but there are some songs that I co-wrote with people, so the percentage of the copyright split for the composition is split between those people. Anytime the song is used, that the sound recording is used, it will incur a revenue and a royalty so one of my songs is called ‘Not too late‘, so anytime ‘Not too late‘, is played or streamed on Spotify, I get my point six cents and then 91% of that point six cents.. 91% of it goes to the owner of the sound recording and that is me, because I own it and that comes through my distributor so CD Baby, Tunecore, Ditto or whoever you uploaded your music to, to put on all the online stores, that’s called your sound recording revenue because I own the sound recording.

If i was signed to a label, that money would go directly to my label and then they would give me a percentage of that, according to our agreement. I always receive whether I’m signed or not signed. I always receive my nine percent royalty because I own the song. So maybe Karen, you recorded a version of my song.. you didn’t write it, but you recorded it, so you get the 91% revenue from the person who owns the sound recording but I always get my nine percent copyright revenue and APRA grab that from the revenue and they give that to me because I own the song.. You write the recording but I own the song and so anytime it’s played, streamed, performed, sold CD, there’s royalties that come through all of those things. Anytime there’s a remix and there’s another version of it, I would get royalties from that and so the more songs you can have out there, the more ways that it can get strained.

Every time it’s played on a commercial radio.. community radio is different because of the way that it’s set up, but every time it’s played on commercial radio you get a revenue from that. There’s hundreds of ways that you can get that, but the best way that you actually get that money is by being registered with APRA and then having it distributed via your online distributor and then that’s the way that you get the those two revenue streams.. and then if someone plays your song live at a show, they should be legitimately.. they should be filling in a performance report saying I played a Coldplay song.. I played two of my songs.. I played a Kate Westwood song.. and then because my song is registered, then I get a nine percent copyright royalty because they played my song.. They didn’t play the sound recording but they played my composition so it’s very intense and complicated. For this right thing there’s lots of things involved there.

When you’re looking at distributors to put your music out there, is there an average percentage that is taken out with distributors? Is that something that you need to look very closely at when you’re choosing who you go with?

I think for a first release they’re they’re all same, same, different.. They all do exactly the same thing and there isn’t a better one to go with because I’ll be more on Spotify or i’ll be more on Apple.. No, no matter which distributor you choose, they will put your music in the stores that you ask them to, but it doesn’t put them on a higher shelf or get it more awareness in that platform. They all do the same job. They will charge you different amounts every year, to have your your single or album or your EP registered and on the store. Some of them take a percentage of the revenue but you just have to check and see. Some of them you can do it for free and then you they just take a revenue percentage. It’s really up to you they’re they’re pretty much same, same, different.

Is there anything else about copyright splits that you’d like to share with the audience?

My recommendation is that they’re actually sitting down, like I did with Renee.. I go down and we sit together, when we write.. That you just do the Nashville Split.. the Nashville Standard.. that everyone who contributes to the song, in that period gets an equal split because what that’s going to do,.. it’s called generosity.. it’s called openness. You’re not nitpicking about all the different things everyone is contributing, whether they’re writing the music, whether they’re doing the lyrics or the melody, whether they’re figuring out a riff, whether they’re the person recording it all on the production thing. If you’re contributing to the song, being written, you get a split and then people are going to want to write with you more and more.

Make sure you get that agreement and get that written down. I will say that if someone writes a really recognisable riff, because a riff on a guitar or piano is actually a melody, maybe you’re not singing the melody but if you think Eye of the Tiger.. that’s almost more recognisable than the lyrics and the melody of the song.. and so if they didn’t split it, that person would have said ‘you know what, I think because that’s so iconic, you should get a split of the song’, because of that, even though it’s the guitar.. it’s not actually the lyrics or the melody.

I will say one thing that I’ve come across, is people going into a studio and and then producers saying well, because I produced the song for you, now I should be getting a split of the song and the answer for me is that is pretty much no.. That’s not how it works.. If you’re you’re paying your producer to do a job for you, whether they contribute to the arrangement which is we going to get the guitars to come here and we’re going to have drums in this section, that’s what arrangement is or they say no let’s do a double verse here and then we’ll do a triple outro or we’ll go back to the intro here.. That’s the structure of the song.. that is not songwriting and so you need to know your rights because I know there have been a lot of smaller artists who felt a bit bullied because the producer was part of helping them develop the song, but it wasn’t actually the writing of the song. They didn’t understand the difference.. so you need to make sure you understand the difference and talk with your producer at the beginning, about what their expectations are.

With that one of my songs on my album, it’s called ‘Not too late‘.. once I was figuring out all the splits and I recorded the songs with my producer, I realised.. ‘Joel, this song wasn’t really anything until you jumped on board’. The other ones had identities.. the other ones were written.. this song, I want to give you a split and I gave him a 25% split because I just wanted to do that, because he made it into something amazing. I wasn’t required to do that. You need to know and understand.. don’t get taken for a ride here.. There’s heaps of great information on the APRA AMCOS website if you’re Australian.. if you’re not Australian go and have a look at the pro in your country.. make sure you understand about registering your songs.

You don’t need to send it in to yourself in the mail there used to be a thing that people would do.. If i send it by a registered mail it comes to me then that legitimises the copyright.. no that’s not true.. You don’t even have to put the copyright symbol you know the (c) that just says that this person owns it but it doesn’t actually mean any more copyright so there are some myths around that but don’t be ignorant.. Make sure you know what your rights are.