How to do a Royalty split and avoid drama
Recently there’s been a series of events in the African music space that as proved that discussing and having a Royalty Split Sheet for every project is a must. One that rocked the headlines is Carter Efe and Berri Tiga‘s issue on their hit single titled MACHALA. From the info gathered, the process of making the hit was based on “love”, and there wasn’t a split sheet involved. The song became an instant hit upon release, doing crazy numbers on all digital platforms and generating opportunities for huge revenues.
The music industry is one that evolves faster than the speed of light. Every day we get to learn new things that improve how we operate and expand our reach to different audiences. In most cases, to avoid issues, there are agreements to clearly state the roles of creatives and how rewards are to be split. And when we talk about splitting, a legal way to do that comes to mind, A SPLIT SHEET.
A Split sheet is a document that shows how the percentage of royalties coming from the composition is shared between songwriters and producers…In layman’s terms, A split sheet is a legal document that says “this percentage goes to this person” and “this percentage goes to that person” for a certain project.
Now the split sheet must show the song title, the date of the final recording, The recording artist’s name, the name of the record label (if he/she is dependent), source of sample used (if one is used).
Circling back to the initial story, Berri Tiga, the singer and songwriter of the hit feel cheated based on what he’s offered for his effort. On the other hand, Cater Efe, the song owner feels he didn’t do anything wrong. All this brouhaha could have been avoided with just a ROYALTY SPLIT SHEET before the project execution.
Another case that could have been avoided by a simple royalty split sheet is that of Dammy Krane dragging DMW’s Boss Davido (one of the biggest acts in African music) for unpaid royalties, for his contribution to Davido’s 2017 hit single titled PERE.
Now the question is, how do independent artists go about Split sheets? how can it be done right? and what’s Distribution company makes it easy to get this done?
Boomkit, a music-tech startup that goes beyond being a music Distribution company is confident that it can help artists get on the right path when it comes to ROYALTY SPLIT SHEETS and collection of its earned revenue. Banking on its industry experience, advanced technology solutions and its newly developed Boomkit 2.0 App, artists can now put their minds to rest.
The Boomkit App which can be downloaded on App Store and Google Playstore is user-friendly and it comes with options that enable artists to set their SPLIT SHEETS such that its revenue is deposited directly into the Local bank accounts of its contributors. No issue, no stress. isn’t that awesome?
Written by Daniel Scott Eleh, Edited by Abiola Hamzat.
Socials: @_daniellscott
11 Comments
A one record hausa music
Thanks with this website
Dear Team,
My Music is already on Boomkit platforms meaning that it is in all Digital Platforms, & I want to start earnings from it,now how can u people enable for it’s distribution and how can we go about this split sheet agreement and Royalties division.
Regards
Okay
Nice we can work
I understood with mistakes as you were stated. But I got one problem of declined subscription, even though I tried to make it by transfer but didn’t work out. Why.
Why Don’t Royalty withdrawal without Subscription & Only Withdrawal one Country PayPal Not Working And Others
This is really awesome
Just look at my
I can’t set my royalty split have tried all languages to set it but to no avail 50-50, 50%- 50% but still not accepted don’t know what to do
Please I don’t understand the royalty spit area. I never featured anyone. Is it a must that I fill up the featured artist section?? It’s delaying and annoying. I have every possible thing to get past this “percentage % stock” area but it just won’t disappear. It keeps telling me “undefined….” Whatsoever. Pleaseeee what can I dooooo. Or I’m deleting this soon
