How to Read a Songwriter Splits Agreement

A split sheet is a short document and people treat it as a formality, which is why it causes so many problems. It's the record of who wrote a song and in what proportion, and every registration downstream inherits whatever it says.

Get it wrong and nothing announces the error. The song just quietly fails to pay.

Short answer: a split sheet records each writer's legal name, IPI, society, and percentage. Writer and publisher shares are counted separately and each side must total 100 percent. Sign it before anyone leaves the room.

What the document actually is

A split sheet is an agreement between the people who wrote a song about how the composition is divided. It is not the recording, it is not a distribution agreement, and it has nothing to do with who performed on the track.

It exists because societies pay on registered shares. When you register a work at your PRO or the MLC, you are asserting a division of ownership — and the split sheet is the evidence behind that assertion when someone disagrees.

The 200 percent thing

This trips up almost everyone.

Publishing is counted on two sides. The writer's share and the publisher's share are tracked separately, and each one totals 100 percent. Societies frequently display both together, which produces a total of 200, and people conclude the math is broken.

It isn't. What matters is that the writer side independently reaches 100, and the publisher side independently reaches 100. A work where either side falls short or exceeds 100 will hold rather than pay, and that is the most common data problem in independent catalogs.

If you self-publish, you hold your own publisher share. If you use an administrator, they collect that share on your behalf without owning it — which is what publishing administration is, as distinct from a publishing deal where an ownership share genuinely changes hands.

What has to be on the sheet

For each writer:

• Legal name. Not the stage name. Societies match on legal identity, and a sheet listing only stage names creates a research job for somebody later.
• IPI number. The identifier their PRO issued them. Without it, their share can't be routed.
• Society. ASCAP, BMI, PRS, SACEM, whichever. Co-writers at different societies is normal and fine, but each side has to be registered consistently at both.
• Percentage. Their share of the writer side.
• Publisher, if they have one, and that publisher's share.

Plus the song title, the date, and signatures from everyone.

A writer who hasn't joined a PRO yet has no IPI, and that's worth catching on the sheet rather than at registration. Their share can be recorded, but it can't be paid until they have one.

Where splits go wrong

Nobody wrote it down. The most common failure by an enormous margin. Everyone remembers the session differently six months later, and by then the song is earning.

Stage names only. The sheet says who was there but not who they legally are, and matching becomes guesswork.

Splits that don't total 100. Rounding three writers to 33 percent each leaves one percent unaccounted for, and some systems will hold the work over it.

A co-writer registered a different number. Two writers filing conflicting shares at two societies stalls the work for both of them until it's reconciled.

Producers assumed in or out. Whether a producer has a writing share is a conversation to have in the room, not an assumption. If they contributed to the composition rather than only the recording, they may have a claim on the song itself.

Signed later, or never. Renegotiating a split after a song starts earning is a fundamentally different conversation from agreeing one before it does.

Practical advice

Do it in the session, on your phone, before anyone leaves. A photo of a handwritten sheet with every writer's name, percentage, and signature is worth more than a perfectly formatted document that never gets signed.

Then collect the IPIs afterwards. Getting the percentages agreed and signed while everyone is in the room is the hard part; chasing identifiers by text later is easy.

Where Davincii fits

We register works across the societies that pay songwriters, which means splits are the data we live in. Where a catalog arrives with shares that don't reconcile, that's the first thing we fix — because no amount of registration effort pays out on a work whose splits don't add up.

No upfront fee, you keep 100 percent of your copyright, and we're paid a commission only on royalties we actually collect: 15 percent on performance, 20 percent on mechanicals.