You made a song with a friend. Or a producer sent you a beat. Or your whole band wrote it together in a room. Great — now, who gets paid what when it makes money?
If your answer is "we'll figure it out later," stop. "Later" is where collaborations go to die, friendships get strained, and royalties get frozen. The good news: getting this right is genuinely simple if you do it up front. Here's how.
There are two different "splits" — and people mix them up
This is the part that confuses everyone, so let's nail it first. When you collaborate, there are actually two separate things that get split, because (as always in music) your song is two pieces of property:
- The recording split — dividing up the money your recording earns from streams and downloads. This is the one your distributor can handle automatically.
- The songwriting split — dividing up ownership of the song itself (the melody, lyrics, chords) for publishing royalties. This is handled separately, through a document called a split sheet and your royalty registrations.
You usually need to sort out both. Let's take them one at a time.
The recording split (the easy part)
Most good distributors have a splits feature built in, and it's genuinely handy. Here's how it works: when you upload, you assign percentages to each collaborator by entering their email. They get a request, accept it, and from then on the distributor automatically routes each person's share straight to their own account. No one person collects everything and then has to Venmo everybody else.
A few practical notes:
- You decide the percentages, not the distributor. They just enforce whatever you set.
- The percentages have to total 100%.
- Each collaborator usually needs their own account with that distributor to receive their share.
- Some distributors offer a nice feature called recoupment — where one person (say, whoever paid for the studio or the music video) gets paid back first, off the top, before the regular splits kick in. Handy for keeping things fair when someone fronted the costs.
This part is low-drama because the platform handles the actual money movement. Set it once, and everyone gets paid automatically every time.
Worth knowing when comparing distributors: not all of them offer this. Some charge collaborators a cut, some don't support splits at all. For anyone who makes music with other people, having free, built-in splits is a real dealbreaker feature — don't assume every platform has it.
The songwriting split (the part people skip — and shouldn't)
This is about who owns the song, which determines the publishing royalties (those mechanical and performance royalties we cover in our royalties guide). And this one isn't handled by your distributor — it's handled by a document and your registrations.
The document is called a split sheet. It's exactly what it sounds like: a simple sheet that records, for one song, who contributed and what percentage of the songwriting each person owns. It lists everyone's legal name, their role, their ownership percentage, their PRO info, and their signature.
A split sheet isn't fancy or expensive — it's a one-page agreement. But it's the thing that prevents almost every collaboration nightmare. Here's the rule the pros follow: sign it before you leave the session, or as soon as the song's done. Not later. Memory is a liar — everyone remembers their own contribution as bigger a month after the fact. Get it in writing while it's fresh and friendly.
How to actually decide the splits
There's no legal "right" answer — it's whatever the collaborators agree to. Common approaches:
- Equal splits — everyone in the room gets the same share, regardless of who did what. (This is sometimes called the "Nashville rule" — if you're in the room, you're in the song.) Simple, avoids arguments, very common.
- Contribution-based — divided by who did more. Trickier to agree on, but feels fairer to some.
- By role — e.g., split between music and lyrics.
One thing people forget: if a producer contributed actual musical ideas to the song — not just recording it, but writing parts of it — they may have a real claim to a songwriting share. This causes more disputes than almost anything else. Talk about it openly and early.
What happens if you don't do this
Skip the split agreement and here's what can actually go wrong — and it's worse than you'd think:
- Your royalties get frozen. If two collaborators register conflicting information (one says they own 100%, another says 50%), the collecting organizations don't pick a side — they freeze all the money until it's sorted out. Your song can be earning while none of you can touch it.
- Any co-writer can take the song down. Without a written agreement, a collaborator who feels cheated can file a copyright complaint and get the song removed from streaming. An unresolved ownership fight can pull your song down and keep it down.
- The law may not split it how you'd expect. With no agreement, the default in the US is usually an equal split among all writers — regardless of who actually did more. If you contributed 80% and didn't get it in writing, you might legally be entitled to a lot less.
- You can't get sync placements. Music supervisors who want to put your song in a show, film, or ad will often walk away if there's no clean, signed split sheet. A song with murky ownership is a legal risk they won't take.
The whole thing in one breath
- Two splits exist: the recording split (your distributor automates it) and the songwriting split (a split sheet documents it). Handle both.
- Set the recording split in your distributor by assigning percentages — money then flows automatically.
- Sign a split sheet for the songwriting, before you leave the session, while everyone's happy.
- Skip it and you risk frozen money, takedowns, and an even legal split you didn't intend.
Sorting splits up front isn't the fun part of making music. But it's a ten-minute conversation that protects the song, the money, and the friendship. Have it early, get it in writing, and then go back to the fun part.
Outloud includes free, built-in royalty splits on collaborative releases — assign each collaborator's share by email, for the whole release or per track, and once everyone accepts, they're paid their part automatically. Making music with other people should be easier, not a paperwork nightmare.