How much should I charge to ghostwrite a song?

Ghostwriting is the only songwriting job with no rate card. Nobody publishes what they paid, because the whole point of the arrangement is that nobody says it happened. So the number gets pulled out of the air, usually by the person with more leverage, and the writer finds out later that the fee was the smallest part of what changed hands.

The gatekeeper here is not an A and R. It is the paperwork. A commissioned song is not automatically a work made for hire. Under 17 U.S.C. 101, a specially ordered or commissioned work only counts as a work made for hire when there is a signed written agreement and the work falls inside one of nine listed categories, and a standalone song is not one of them. A transfer of copyright ownership is also invalid unless it is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed, under 17 U.S.C. 204(a). Which means the loose deal in the DMs did not move your rights, and the aggressive one-page you signed without reading probably did.

Then there is the money. Ghostwrites are delivered as files, and files travel faster than payments. You send the lyric sheet and the reference vocal, the artist says the label has to process it, and the invoice starts aging. Two failures compound: an underpriced deal, collected late, on terms you never read.

Price a ghostwrite as three separate decisions and the number stops being a guess. Decision one is the fee: what the work is worth on the day. Decision two is the writer's share: whether you retain a percentage of the composition or sign it away. Decision three is the credit: what you charge for staying off it.

Fee first. The honest bands in the independent market: a few hundred dollars for a topline or a verse for a developing artist with no budget, low four figures for a full song delivered with a demo vocal for an artist with real traction, and five figures once a label, a sync deal, or a name act is on the other side. Charge for the deliverable, not the hours. A hook, a verse, a full topline, and a full song with a produced demo are four different products with four different prices.

Then the share. This is where writers lose the most money without noticing, because a fee is visible and publishing is not. If you keep a writer's share, the composition keeps paying you through your PRO and the MLC long after the fee is spent. If you assign it, that stream is gone, and it should be paid for. Any deal that takes 100 percent of the writer's share should price meaningfully above a deal where you keep 25 or 50 percent. There is also a long tail worth knowing: under 17 U.S.C. 203, grants made by an author on or after January 1, 1978 can be terminated in a five-year window that opens 35 years after the grant, but genuine works made for hire are excluded from that right. That is exactly why buyers push the work-for-hire label, and exactly why the label does not fit a standalone song on its own.

Last, the credit. Anonymity has a price. If the artist wants your name off the song and an NDA on the arrangement, that is a product you are selling, and it should carry a premium rather than a discount.

Then collect it. The fee is agreed and the file is the leverage, so payment has to land before the file does. That is the half iKonX handles. You set the price, the buyer pays inside the app before you deliver, and the artist keeps 100 percent of the price they set, at 0 percent platform commission, with the buyer paying a flat 10 percent on top. iKonX is free to download and explore, full access to paid features is a flat 9.99 dollars a month, and the only payout deduction is a low, sub-5 percent withdrawal fee, below the industry standard. Straight about the boundary: iKonX is not a publisher and does not register your splits or your termination rights. It removes the other failure, the one where the song is delivered and the fee never arrives.