When should you keep the business side of the industry in mind?

The instinct is to keep them apart. Make the music first, deal with the business when there is business to deal with. It sounds like focus and it is usually procrastination.

The decisions get made during the creative part

The trouble is that almost every decision worth calling a business decision gets made during the creative part, by default, by not being made. Where the loop came from. Who was in the room. What everyone assumed their share was. Those are settled the day the beat is made, whether or not anyone says so out loud, and revisiting them later means renegotiating something people already believe is theirs.

Earlier than it feels necessary

So the honest answer to when is earlier than feels necessary, and specifically before the work has any value. A split conversation about a beat nobody has heard is a two-minute conversation. The identical conversation about a beat an artist wants is a negotiation with a deadline.

None of this requires becoming a business person. It requires about four habits, none of which take a lawyer to start.

Karl Fowlkes, who is an entertainment attorney and teaches music business, gives his version above.