One of the most frustrating things you can do to a music supervisor, a coordinator, a producer, a sync agent, or anyone else who may want to represent or use your music is to send them something they find out later is impossible to clear because you didn’t confirm percentages of ownership with your collaborators.
You’ll waste their time, look unprofessional and make someone who may want to work with you and likes your music reluctant to contact you again or consider your music for future projects.
Obviously, you want to avoid this. I know I do.
The fact is, all too often, people don’t have the “who owns what” conversation with their collaborators until after the music’s been created, or even worse, after the music has been shared with a decision maker, which complicates things unnecessarily and makes your music much harder to license.
Let’s change that.
In this article, I’ve created a simple guide that will keep you from making mistakes when assigning, confirming and presenting the details of who owns what when it comes to your masters and your publishing (composition and lyrics).
Important note: If you are an artist that composes, sings and plays all your music, and you are self-published and own 100% of your masters, then you can safely say your music is one stop. And if you’ve created a cover and own 100% of the master, then the master is onestop, and it’s up to the person licensing your cover to clear the publishing.
Okay, so now with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s talk about split sheets.
First, what is a split sheet, what does it include and who signs it? It’s simple – a digital or paper document confirming the percentages of ownership of either a master recording (master) or the composition (music and lyrics), or both.
A split sheet can be as informal as an email chain where the collaborators agree on their percentage of ownership and confirm, a spreadsheet that’s printed out with agreed to percentages that everyone signs or a more formal document.
For the interests of clarity, your best course of action is to sign a quick formal document in addition to the email/spreadsheet confirmation. And if you can also include some simple language allowing you and your collaborators to pitch the music for sync on a onestop basis, all the better.
To help you, I’ve created two Split sheet templates you can use that will allow you to document ownership percentages and assign joint sync representation to all collaborators on your tracks:
Using these documents with your peer will give you all a clear, concise breakdown of who owns what that you can then share with anyone who needs to know.
Second, when should you sign a split sheet? As soon as you decide to begin to work together. This goes for both compositions (music and lyrics) and for masters (sound recording). The sooner you agree and sign your splits, the better off you are. I know from extensive personal and third-party experience, if you don’t agree on ownership at the beginning, you set yourself up for lots of potential problems later, or even worse, put yourself in a position where your music will not get used or even pulled from a project because we cannot confirm the rights.
Third, who doesn’t need to be in your split sheets? If you hired any artist as a work for hire independent contractor – meaning that you paid someone like a singer a fee in exchange for their work, and they have not specifically been given a percentage of the master, they do not need to be included in the split sheet. Just make sure you have signed a work for hire to confirm this.
By getting your split sheets done before you start work, you’ll avoid conflict, confusion and you’ll be able to easily confirm ownership to anyone looking to license your music.
