Wendy Day explains why producers need split sheets before releasing music. A producer owns the beat and its publishing automatically, but split sheets document ownership percentages, publishing entities, and affiliations to prevent disputes. The typical split is 50/50 between producer and artist, though featured artists and samples can complicate this.
Chapters
Hi guys, Wendy Day here from Rap Coalition. Welcome back to Producer 2020 Vision. Yay! Okay, today let's talk about split sheets. Split sheets are a piece of paper that you send to anyone who recorded on a song that you created. So you already probably know that as soon as you create a beat, you own that beat. You own the publishing as soon as you create that composition. So in order for somebody to use it in commerce, they have to either have a producer deck, an agreement that shows that you gave them permission, Well, they don't have to either or. They have to have that in order to use your song. You have to assign the rights to them to utilize your song commercially. So they're going to come to you with a producer deck, or you're going to supply to them a producer deck, which gives them the rights to, to use, to utilize your song. But before that, that contract— and we're going to do, I'm going to do a whole episode on that, but today's episode is, is split sheets. Before you sign an agreement with them, you're going to have a split sheet. And a split sheet is something that you bring to the studio with you, or you pull up online while you're in the studio and fill out. Or if you're sending beats and they're recording without you, after you know that they've recorded on your beat, you send a split sheet. And a split sheet lists the name of the song, you as the producer, who the artist is, the name of your publishing company, the name of their publishing company, and whether you're ASCAP or BMI BMI affiliated. And then of course you're going to put in the ASCAP and the BMI information so that whoever goes to register the song from that split sheet has all of the information in it. But the reason that it's called a split sheet is it's going to show the splits in the publishing and the ownership of the song. So if you're the producer, you already own 100% of the beat. You're going to own 50% of the song and the rapper is going to own the other 50%. If there are two artists on, or two rappers or two singers on your beat, then they figure out how they want to divide their 50% share, but you still own your 50% share. And again, it's 50% of the song, but you own 100% of the beat. This is where publishing gets a little bit confusing, and I think the best resource that I've ever found for— actually, two resources that I've ever found for publishing. One is Donald Passman's All You Need to Know About the Music Business. There's a great chapter in there on publishing that explains it pretty clearly. And then there's a company called Songtrust at songtrust.com. They give away a free free, um, booklet on publishing so that you can understand it better. And they're a publishing company, so they do it more from, um, the, the commercial side of it, which you need to understand. But coming back to split sheets, so let's say that I am the rapper, which is a very scary thought, and you are the producer. You send me a beat, I record on it, it's just me. We now own that song together 100%. I own 50%, which is the lyrics. You own 50%, which is the beat, and together that makes 100%. If you sampled on that beat, then we're gonna have to go to a sample clearance company who's then gonna go to the owner of that sample and say, okay, what percentage of that song do you want? They might want 10% for that sample. They might want 20% for that sample. They might want 100% for for that sample, depending on what the agreement is. I work with a lot of independent artists and independent labels, so we try not to buy beats that have samples in them because we lose some ownership in the song, and we really don't want to do that. Not to mention the fact that it costs money to clear a sample, and I'm going to do a whole episode on sample clearance. I'm probably gonna, um, I'm probably going to interview Deborah Manus Gardner so that she can tell you about what she does for sample clearance, because I think that would be really helpful for you guys. But all that to say, if I bring somebody in to sing the hook on my 50% share, I might be giving up 12.5% or 15% to that person that's on the hook. If I bring somebody in to do a verse, I might lose a percentage. Where this gets a little bit confusing is if you're selling a beat to somebody that already has leverage in the music industry, they may want to take a percentage of your publishing as, um, as the price for using you as a newer producer. So Jay-Z or Drake may want to take half of your publishing on the song, or, you know, whatever percentage. And that's where you and your team need to sit down and figure out, okay, if I have to give up a percentage to be on this, um, to produce for Rihanna or to produce for Drake or produce for Jay-Z, will I make enough money and get enough on my, um, resume to be able to say, hey, I made a, a hit song for Drake or Rihanna or Jay-Z? Does it offset what I have to give up in percentage? And I'll do another video that'll talk about that, but for right now, just understand that there's something called split sheets, and you want to have them filled out and signed by anyone that's going to take ownership on this song. So anyone that wrote on this song, or anyone else that helped you make your beat on this song, you're going to give up some ownership to those people that help create. And you wanna decide either in the studio or right when you came out of the studio who owns what percentage. Because if you wait until that single blows up and it's successful, people will have selective memory and people that offered very little in the studio are gonna tell you that they feel they deserve 25% or 50% or whatever percent. Because they're going to want a bigger share of the pie once they see that it's successful. Success kind of brings out a lot of the sharks in the music industry, so it's just better to do it while everybody's fresh and everybody remembers exactly who wrote what and who gave what, you know, input to the beat, who gave what melody, who gave what, where, how, and when. It's just better to do it when everybody's friendly. Okay guys, I hope that's helpful. You can Google split sheets. Um, when this hits my YouTube channel, there will be an example of a split sheet below this video. There'll be a link to it so that you can download a split sheet for free. There's something there, it's something that's relatively easy to find online. It just basically breaks down your name, your address, what percentage you own, the name of your publishing company, whether you're ASCAP or BMI, where it was recorded, what studio it was recorded in, who else was in the room, what date you did it, um, you created the song. And if you're not in the studio, you're gonna have to do this by sending it to people digitally, but do it sooner rather than later. Okay guys, take care. This will appear tomorrow on my YouTube channel. Until then, it'll live right here on my IGTV. Thanks for tuning in.
