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T.I.'s Reservoir Deal and the Publishing Blueprint Every Artist Needs · Clone Wars: The Spinoff

• 0:00
  Yo, yo - what's good, family, DJ Universe back in the building for another Clone
• 0:04
  Wars: The Spinoff, and today we ain't even gotta go looking for the story - the
• 0:09
  story came to us.
• 0:11
  T.I.
• 0:11
  just handed his entire catalog over to Reservoir.
• 0:14
  Hold on, hold on - T.I.?
• 0:18
  Twenty-plus years in the game, King album under his belt, Kill the King charting Top
• 0:23
  10 right now, and he's out here signing paper?
• 0:26
  That's not a man running out of options, that's a man playing chess.
• 0:29
  See that's what I want to get into today, 'cause from where I'm standing - still
• 0:34
  grinding shows, still selling shirts out the trunk - a deal like that feels like a
• 0:39
  whole different universe.
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  But the lessons in it?
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  Those apply to me too.
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  That's the whole point of today's episode.
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  Big deal on top, real money lessons for everybody listening underneath it.
• 0:50
  Let's get into it.
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  So here's what's public - July 9th, Reservoir Media announces a publishing deal with
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  T.I.
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  covering his entire catalog.
• 1:00
  We talking 2001's I'm Serious all the way through 2020's The L.I.B.R.A.,
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  plus his new album Kill the King folded in too, which already landed Top 10 on the
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  Hip-Hop and R&B charts.
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  And it's not just his own records.
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  This deal pulls in the writing credits from every feature he ever wrote a hook for
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  or dropped a verse on - B.o.B, A$AP Rocky, Slim Thug, Trey
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  Songz, Dave East, Sean Kingston, Big K.R.I.T.
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  Man's pen touched a decade of other people's hits.
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  Terms weren't disclosed, which - real talk - usually means it's a serious number and
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  both sides agreed to keep it out the paper.
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  But notice what he did not sell: this is publishing, not his masters.
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  Different asset, different math.
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  Break that down for me though, 'cause I hear 'publishing' and 'masters' used like
• 1:54
  they the same thing all the time and they not.
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  Your masters are the actual recording - the finished song file.
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  Your publishing is the underlying composition - the melody,
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  the lyrics, the writing.
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  You can sell one and keep the other, or split both up different ways.
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  T.I.
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  selling publishing means Reservoir now collects and administers those songwriting
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  royalties - mechanicals, performance royalties, sync licensing when a song lands in
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  a movie or a commercial - but the actual masters could still sit somewhere else
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  entirely.
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  And that's the veteran move right there.
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  You don't gotta sell everything to cash out.
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  You figure out which piece of the pie you're ready to hand off,
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  and which piece you hold onto for your kids.
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  From a culture standpoint, this is bigger than T.I.
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  too - you got Reservoir, Sony, all these publishers out here hunting for real
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  hip-hop catalogs like it's the new gold rush.
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  That's the industry telling you the culture is a certified asset class now,
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  not just a trend they license and move on from.
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  And here's the part y'all sleep on - every feature verse T.I.
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  wrote for B.o.B or A$AP Rocky, if that was registered properly with a PRO and split
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  correctly at the time, that's been paying him for years and just became part of a
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  whole catalog deal.
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  A sixteen-bar feature can outlive the song it was on.
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  See that's the part that's got me thinking about my own paperwork right now,
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  not gonna lie.
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  Alright, since we talking real numbers - let's talk about where artists like me
• 3:28
  actually live, which is the road.
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  New data out this year says merch is now 30 to 50 percent of a touring artist's
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  income at the club level.
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  Not ticket money.
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  Merch.
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  That checks out with everything I came up in.
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  The door money is unpredictable - promoter takes their cut,
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  venue takes their cut.
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  That merch table is yours.
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  Run the real numbers - a twelve-date run, fifteen-hundred cap rooms,
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  grossing around four-hundred-eighty-thousand combined ticket and merch.
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  After every fee, a four-piece act is clearing somewhere between thirty-five and
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  sixty-five thousand total, which is around eight to sixteen thousand a man,
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  for six weeks of work, before taxes even touch it.
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  And that's why what you sell matters as much as how many tickets you move.
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  T-shirts running sixty to seventy-five percent margin on bulk blanks,
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  vinyl at fifty to seventy percent, tote bags over seventy - that's real profit
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  compared to a ticket split three or four ways before you see a dollar.
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  That road money is what buys you patience.
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  You build that up right, you ain't desperate enough to sign the first bad deal that
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  comes across the table.
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  T.I.
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  had twenty years of catalog and leverage before he ever sat down with Reservoir -
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  that leverage gets built one merch table at a time.
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  Practical move for anybody out here touring - open a separate business account for
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  the road.
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  Every city's merch cash goes in, every expense comes out of it,
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  and you pay yourself last like a real business, not first like it's just cash in
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  your pocket.
• 5:00
  Y'all know I gotta close it out with the framework.
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  Knowledge is T.I.
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  putting in twenty-plus years before this deal ever made sense - that's the
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  foundation, that's number one.
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  Wisdom is knowing when it's time to sell a piece and when it's time to hold -
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  applying what you know.
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  Understanding is reading every line in that contract so you actually know what you
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  agreed to, not just what you were told.
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  Three things to walk away with today.
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  One - register your publishing splits on every song and every feature,
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  right now, today, not later.
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  Two - learn the difference between your masters and your publishing before anybody
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  puts a contract in front of you.
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  Three - treat your merch and touring money like a business with a budget,
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  not a bag you dip into.
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  That's the culture and the business, same conversation, every single time.
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  Real hip-hop DNA right there.
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  Straight up.
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  Go check your splits tonight, family, I'm serious.
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  That's the show.
• 5:54
  DJ Universe, Dandy Market, Calvin Blingwell, Dangerous Zygos - Clone Wars: The
• 6:01
  Spinoff, we out.