When you’re writing songs with other songwriters, there are two documents that you should be familiar with: a collaboration agreement and a split sheet. The purpose of both is to help everyone avoid any confusion or conflict when collaborating on music. This article will look at what these are and how they can help keep your creative process happy and harmonious!
You can create an agreement or contract on your own and not get a lawyer to write it up – lawyers charge a service fee. But if you don’t have a lawyer, it’s not recommended that you create your own contracts.
You could ask another musician or producer to create the contract with you—this is called a collaboration agreement. If the two of you agree to split the profits in whatever way makes sense for both sides (50/50, 60/40), then this type of arrangement can work well without hiring a lawyer.
However, there are pitfalls when trying to draft something yourself: liability issues may arise from conflicting terminology or ambiguities in language; lack of clarity in what type of relationship exists between parties; lack of clarity regarding ownership rights; etc… So unless you’re very familiar with music law (which most people aren’t), this route isn’t necessarily recommended either – especially since there are free templates available online which will do most everything needed for standard agreements between musicians/producers that are produced by record labels.
The term “split sheet” usually refers to one of two kinds of agreements. The first is a songwriter’s collaboration agreement, which is a contract that is signed by the writers of a song before they write it. The second type of split sheet is created after the song has been written and signed by all parties involved in its creation, dividing up ownership and royalties evenly between them.
Split sheets are generally easy to understand if you know how they work: each party agrees on how much they’re going to share in terms of owning the song (for example, 50% owner), publishing rights (for example, 75% publisher), or any other part of its production or distribution that could be negotiated like this.
A songwriter’s collaboration agreement is a contract that is signed by the writers of a song before they write it. The purpose of this document is to ensure that everyone involved in the creation process understands how their work will be used, who will get paid, and when.
Collaboration agreements are created before a song is written. A writer’s collaboration agreement is a contract between two or more writers (songwriters), who agree to work together on a specific piece of music.
Split sheets are created after a song is written. Once you’ve written the song, you create what’s known as a “split sheet.” In other words, a document that states who owns what percentage of the song. split sheets usually divide the ownership evenly between co-writers, but you can agree on any percentage splits you want (though I would suggest NOT making any one writer’s ownership less than 33%).
Split sheets are created after a song is written. Once you’ve written the song, you create what’s known as a “split sheet.” In other words, a document that states who owns what percentage of the song. Split sheets usually divide the ownership evenly between co-writers, but you can agree on any percentage splits you want (though I would suggest NOT making any one writer’s ownership less than 33%).
The split sheet should be signed by all parties and filed with your PRO (if there is one in your town), so it’s best to have it completed before anything else happens with this new tune!
A split sheet should be created and signed by all co-writers of a song before any publishing deals are made. This document is essentially an agreement between co-writers that outlines how they will share revenue from the song in question. For example, if you wrote some lyrics but someone else wrote most of the music, then you would have less stake in the copyright ownership than they do, and vice versa. A split sheet is a way to ensure that everyone involved with creating this particular song gets what’s fair for their contributions to it.
As mentioned above, an even split between all participants on the creative side is often preferred because it allows each party to retain full control over his or her publishing and copyright interests; however, sometimes this isn’t possible due to pre-existing publishing deals that were entered into before this song was created (e.g., one person owns all rights when he writes something alone). In these situations as well as others there may be other considerations like whether or not we’re talking about a single person who has multiple pseudonyms (e.g., “Dr. Luke vs Kesha”) or whether or not everyone involved with creating