The following is an excerpt from my ebook “Indie Music Release Checklist.” Download the entire Indie Music Release Checklist ebook for free by clicking here and signing up for my email list.
Register with ASCAP or BMI as both a Songwriter and a Publisher to Receive Royalties
You’ll need to sign up with one of the two major US Performing Rights Organizations, ASCAP or BMI, to submit splits and receive royalties as a songwriter and publisher. There’s no solid consensus over which is better but I personally have found ASCAP more common among collaborators and it has lower startup fees. Both major PROs charge a one-time sign up fee.
Two Types of Royalties
Performance
These are the royalties as they pertain to the PRO registered composition of a song. A small percentage of streams and sales are paid out this way via your PRO. Your song splits should always be registered in this fashion.
Mechanical
These are the royalties as they pertain to the recording itself. Rights for the song as a composition may differ from rights for the recording of the song. Most of the royalties generated by a song are paid out in this way. These are paid by digital distributors and physical CD & vinyl sales. These can be hard to track and pay out without a label structure and they’re often unfortunately small for indie artists, so these royalties are typically kept by whoever funded the project. Sometimes agreements are reached where a collaborator will be paid their split of streams via a platform like Distrokid.
Split Sheets
Before you can call your audio final you must make sure you have the rights to release it. Contact any collaborators on the project to negotiate splits if you didn’t make those agreements along the way. Producers, songwriters, and featured artists may expect to have a percentage of the masters attributed to them (rightfully so) . Not addressing these rights in the form of a Split Sheet with your collaborators could lead to disputes after your record is out.
Splits are agreed upon between the writers of the song and are registered with a Performing Rights Organization (PRO). Splits identify each contributor to a song and establish their ownership percentages, which will be paid out via royalties. This is often done on a signed document called a Split Sheet. You can easily find a template for one online by searching “split sheet template.” If not in signed document form, splits should at least be agreed to over email. You’ll need each writer’s IPI number (provided by PRO) for their songwriter and publisher accounts (or the IPI for their third party publisher if they have one).
Splits can be anything that the songwriters agree upon, but there is a typical starting point of 50% music, 50% lyrics. It’s then decided how much each songwriter contributed to the music and/or lyrics. For example, let’s say a song has a main artist that wrote the hook, a verse and a bridge, a featured vocalist on the second verse and the song was produced by a two person team. The main artist wrote three sections of lyrics and the featured artist wrote one section. The main artist may claim 75% of the lyrics and the feature 25%. Lyrics are only half song here so cut those in half to 37.5% & 12.5% respectively. The song’s two producers, if they feel they contributed equally, will split the music portion in half which equals 25% of the song for each.
Another potential approach is to split the full song evenly amongst contributors. Let’s take my example song with a main artist, featured vocalist and two producers and make it an even split. In this scenario, there are four total writers that will receive 25% each. Or will they? . .
Publishing Split
100% of the writers’ shares of a song actually account for only 50% of the total song royalties. 50% of the song is reserved for the respective publishers of each writer. If you aren’t signed with a publisher, which most indies aren’t, you’ll want to set up two PRO accounts, one as a writer and one as a publisher so you can claim both halves of your splits.
An Alternative to Royalties- Work for Hire
Collaborators on your project like producers, session musicians, and featured artists may waive their song split rights in exchange for a one-time fee. This is a common arrangement in indie music since most songs generate little royalties. You can search for a work for hire agreement template online to make your own contract for all parties to sign. In real life, I mostly see these happen as verbal agreements but it’s a good idea to at least have it in an email.
Drew Mantia
Feel Good Music Recordings
3146264270
feelgoodmusicrecordings@gmail.com