HOW DO WRITERS AND PUBLISHERS SPLIT ROYALTIES?

​I get lots of music business related questions on my inbox and this is a very common one. The business side of music is not as complicated as it seems. The contracts and “rule” can look pretty confusing and complicated but once you get it, it will be very easy. Just need to get that on click in your mind and suddenly it’s like the fog had gone away and you can see everything pretty clear. Here are the basics of Writer – Publisher deals and how money is split.

There are two shares of royalties for each writer when a song is created. Each writer has a writer’s share and a publisher’s share. So, if there are two writers on a song, there are four shares assigned to that song. Two writer’s shares and two publisher’s shares. The way those shares are divided depends on the contracts that the writers have entered into basically it’s going to both of them as a whole and depending on the type of agreement they have between themselves it can be divided. In Flipside’s case, we sign the writers to an exclusive publishing agreement.

And their deal with us is a 50-50 co-publishing type, which is the most common type of contract in the industry. That means that for every song the write, the get their writer’s share and half of their publishing share. On the other hand, Flipside gets the other half of publishing share. Many new writers get publishing deals that are called Straight Publishing Deals. That just means that the publisher gets all of the publishing share. I started out this way when I was a young writer and before I start my own publishing company. That’s a common scenario and reduces the risk for the publisher but it’s not exactly the best for the writers with bigger name.

Other type of splitting the money is to have single song deals. Those deals only affect one song at a time. Basically they are the music industry’s way of saying “it’s a project basis contract”. That song is split based on the contract, but most single song deals are straight publishing deals as well, with the publisher getting all of the publishing share and the writer gets all the writer’s share. When a song gets recorded and money starts rolling in, the publisher gets to first recoup the money they have paid a writer for advances and demo costs – for all songs they had done the demo for the writer and not just the one that got recorded. Then, the remining of the money and anything more than that coming in, is split according to the contract. Writers without any sort of publishing arrangement own both their writer’s and publisher’s share by default.
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The only exception to that rule is that, generally all around the world, most writers get their writer share directly from their PRO (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, SOCAN, COMPASS, etc), even if they haven’t recouped with their publisher. That’s why radio singles are extra nice. You get paid even if you aren’t recouped.
 
That’s it in a nutshell.  You now know the basics of Writer – Publisher splits.

Author

Hangi Tavakoli is our in-house established and professional music producer with more than 17 years of experience in songwriting, music production, mix and mastering. He has produced more than 3,000 and written more than 4,800 published songs to-date, including some major hits in international scale.