Handing over an unfinished project to a third party? Need your advice!

[Lasse Rosendahl BangParticipant]

Hi everyone. Really need your help on this one.

So I've been working with a client for a couple of weeks now. He approached me with a song that he wanted me to produce. He told me that if I had any ideas for the arrangement and sound I should just go for it. Long story short, we ended up redoing almost the entire song with a completely different vibe and he absolutely loved it. I recorded the drums, acoustic guitar, electric and piano myself and we just did his vocals on it a few days ago but now he wants his friend to do the bass on the song. Great. My only problem is that the client is asking for an mp3 file of the song to give to his friend so he can record it at his place.

I'm somewhat reluctant to release an ongoing project like that for several reasons but how would you approach this? Should I just hand over the mp3 file and let the creativity move around if it serves the song or should I ask his friend to come to the studio and do the bass thereby keeping the project within reach?

I really wanna do this right as it could lead to alot more work down the line but I have never had to deal with something like this before.

Really need your advice and would love to hear from anyone with this kind of experience, good or bad.

Stay safe.

- Lasse

• This topic was modified 3 years ago by Lasse Rosendahl Bang.

[Dave Le SangeParticipant]

<p style="text-align: left;">Hey Lasse,</p>
Sounds like a sticky situation, where you have the potential to get ripped off. Only you can judge if the client may try non-payment on you. Having been in this situation myself, there's a few questions I always ask myself now...

1. Have you been paid for the work you've done thus far?

If dudes bill is paid, you can't really refuse the request, other than explaining that you wouldn't be doing your job as producer if you didn't supervise bass tracking.

If it's not paid & he's insistent, drop him an mp3 with no bass & no FX, take out any ear candy etc. That way if he tries to use it, it'll at least be lacking compared to your work.

 

2. Do you trust this client? Simply put, do you think them the type to try to pull a non-payment scam?

3. Is this argument worth my time? Is the guy, if he doesn't get what wants, gonna blow up my phone constantly? Might they post bad reviews/try to tank my social media's?

 

Ive purposely exaggerated a bit for the sake

[Dave Le SangeParticipant]

<b>Sorry, split reply</b>

I've purposely exaggerated for the sake of the worst-case-scenario, hopefully you get the idea.

Few things you can do to protect yourself here - top & tail the mp3, literally cut off the intro & outro, unless it's needed to track the new bass.

Remove elements from the song before sending, bass player doesn't need those cool delays on the backing vox to do their job.

Flat refuse to send anyone any files til you've been paid for the work you've already done.

Unfortunately, these situations generally mean you're going to make the client annoyed unless you do what they want. Tough one.

Hope I've been helpful, or at least easy to ignore

Dave

[Lasse Rosendahl BangParticipant]

Hi Dave and thanks for all the great advice. I ended up sending the song to the bass player but without keys, FXs and backing vocals. Two days later he traveled out of town for two weeks stranding the whole project. I really thought that that was it and contemplated recording it myself but the client was determined to have his own bass player do the parts. Long story short, he came back and finished the track and it all worked out but man was I sure that I would end up getting ripped off.

I've actually written down all your advice should I need it some other time, so thank you very much for all your help.

Take care and be safe.

Lasse

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