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A man in a black shirt sitting in a recording studio. A man in a black shirt sitting in a recording studio.

What is a music producer?


2 min read


Understand the role a music producer may play in songwriting.

A music producer is in charge of the recording and can sometimes also be part of the songwriting process.

A , sometimes called a studio producer or record producer, typically helps a record a . A music producer is usually responsible for the entire recording process and can own a share of the of the made. But music producers can also play a role as a .

Can a music producer also be a songwriter?

Especially in some music genres like rap, music producers can also be part of the creation of a musical work, making contributions including writing , adding instrumentation, or manipulating a beat. These contributions can all be considered songwriting, making a music producer a songwriter in some cases.

Copyright ownership for producers

Under , music producers can be considered if they made an contribution to the musical work. This means they can own a share of the rights in the musical work.

If you are a music producer and you have a share of the rights in the musical work, and you also own all or part of the sound recording, you will have different rights in each of them, and will earn separate for each.

If you are a music producer and you have not made any original contribution to the musical work, you do not qualify as an author under copyright law, so you do not own rights in the musical work.

Learn more in the Recording and Getting Credited and Paid topics.

Music producers who have multiple creative roles

If you are a producer, you might also have additional roles when writing or recording a musical work, in which case you might also have additional shares in the ownership of that musical work and the sound recording.

Find out more about how this works in the Recording topic. To learn more about authors' rights, visit the Music Creators’ Rights topic.

Quiz

Test your songwriting roles knowledge

Video Credit: Tiffany Orvet, Dilun Riad Edmon, Daniel Hjellum, Tim Ljungstedt, David Lebna, Artu Kontkanen, Tobias Leo Nordquist, Ponny Höijer, William Engström, Parapix