Shawn Setaro: People have a vague idea that when a hit song happens, people get money. With a song like “Drunk In Love” that has eight or nine credited writers on it, how does that work? [Note: the credited writers on Beyoncé's hit song are: Beyoncé, Jay Z, Harmon, Timbaland, Noel "Detail" Fisher, Andre "Dre Moon" Proctor, Rasool Diaz and Brian Soko, with Jordan "BOOTS" Asher credited with "additional production."] How do you split up the money? Who handles the negotiations?
Jerome Harmon: You have the artist side, and then you have the producer side. That splits it in half, so we don’t have to do much of the nitpicking – “I added a cymbal here” or “I added the word ‘the,’” [Laughs]. We don’t really have to deal with that.
SS: Because the people who make the music, as opposed to the words, get half of the total percentage of the song, and you go from there?
JH: Yeah. The artist and producer, we're separate. So with that song, maybe there was a lot of writers on the artist side that they had to break off. On the album, it all seems like it’s all together, but it’s not really like that. They split it into halves. Her hundred half, and our hundred half. And then we split whatever we got.
SS: And that’s just negotiation between parties? There’s not rules you go by?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/shawnsetaro/2016/07/29/jerome-harmon-business-secrets/#3e1968eb2dd4
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