Answers/Splits and ownership/When Should You Do a Split Sheet — and What Goes On It?

Splits and ownership

When Should You Do a Split Sheet — and What Goes On It?

By Boboy Watson·Last verified August 31, 2026·2,148 words·Splits and ownership

Two things get independent artists robbed: not registering, and handshake splits. The second one is worse, because it takes the friendship with it.

A split sheet costs nothing, takes ten minutes, and is the single highest-return piece of paper in independent music. Here is when to do it and exactly what belongs on it.

When should you do a split sheet?

The day the song is made, before anyone leaves the room. The reason is human nature, not paperwork.

On the day of the session nobody knows whether the song is worth anything, everyone is in a good mood, and agreeing that the person who wrote the hook gets 20% costs nothing emotionally — because 20% of nothing is nothing. The conversation takes ten minutes and is mildly awkward at worst.

Eighteen months later, if that song is earning, the identical conversation is about real money between two people with genuinely different memories of who did what. It is now a negotiation between parties with opposing interests, no contemporaneous document, and often a third party quietly waiting to be paid. Nothing about the song changed. Everything about the conversation did.

The split conversation is easy while the song is worth nothing and expensive once it is worth something. Have it now.

What exactly goes on a split sheet?

A usable split sheet has a header covering the work, then one block per contributor, then signatures. Leave nothing to be filled in later, because later is when people stop replying.

About the song:

• Song title, including any alternate or working title the file might be under
• Date written and, if relevant, the date of the recording session
• Studio or session location — the room where it happened, which is how sessions get identified years later
• Duration and, once you have them, the ISRC for the recording and the ISWC for the composition
• A one-line statement that the percentages below refer to the composition, not the master

For every single contributor, without exception:

• Legal name — not the artist name, not the producer tag, the name on the ID
• Artist or professional name, so the sheet is readable
• Contact details — email and phone, because you will need them at registration time
• Role — writer, co-writer, producer, topliner, featured artist, session musician
• PRO affiliation — ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR, or none
• IPI/CAE number for that writer
• Publisher entity and its own IPI, if they have one
• Percentage of the writing share, with all percentages totalling exactly 100%
• Signature and date

The last five fields are the ones people leave blank, and they are precisely the fields you need at registration. A split sheet without PRO details and IPI numbers is half a document.

Why does each field matter later?

Every line on the sheet exists because something downstream asks for it.

What is an IPI or CAE number, and where do you find yours?

An IPI number — the Interested Party Information number, historically called a CAE number — is the unique identifier attached to a songwriter or a publisher and used by ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and The MLC, as well as by societies outside the US, to tell one rights holder from another.

You get one when your membership is processed. ASCAP and BMI both display it in your member account profile. If your co-writer says they do not have one, either they have not finished joining a PRO or they have not looked. Writing "BMI, IPI to follow" on a split sheet is normal on the day; leaving it there for two years is how a work ends up registered with an unidentified writer attached to it.

Put the number on the sheet while the person is in front of you. Chasing an IPI from someone you have fallen out with is not a task you want.

Is a split sheet a contract, and does it need to be notarised?

A signed, dated split sheet is written evidence of an agreement between the people who made the song. It does not need to be notarised, it does not need a lawyer to draft it, and it does not need to be filed with anybody.

It is also not a full agreement. A split sheet says who owns what percentage of the composition. It does not cover producer fees, advances, master ownership terms, approval rights, or what happens if one party wants to license the song for something the others object to. For a significant record — a placement, a signed artist, a real advance — you want a producer agreement or a co-publishing agreement drafted properly, and the split sheet becomes an exhibit to it rather than a replacement for it.

For the other 95% of independent sessions, a signed sheet is the right level of formality and infinitely better than nothing.

A split sheet is not a registration - so what do you do with it afterwards?

This is where most people stop, and it is the step that actually produces money. The split sheet is the document you register from. Nobody at ASCAP, BMI or The MLC ever sees it. It exists so that every party files identical numbers.

After the sheet is signed, each writer independently does the following:

1. Affiliate with a PRO if they have not already. BMI charges songwriters nothing to affiliate. ASCAP charges a $50 one-time processing fee for the writer account, and $50 again for a publisher account, as of August 2026.
2. Register the work with ASCAP or BMI, entering every co-writer, their PRO, their IPI, and the exact percentages from the sheet. This is what collects performance royalties.
3. Register the work with The MLC, which is free to join, entering the same writer and publisher shares. This is what collects US mechanical royalties from Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and the other streaming services.
4. Register the recording with SoundExchange, which is also free — but note that this is master-side and follows recording ownership, not the writing percentages on this sheet.
5. Consider registering the copyright with the US Copyright Office. Per the current fee schedule, a Single Application is $45, a Standard Application is $65, and Group Registration of Works on an Album of Music is $65 for the whole album.

What does a completed split sheet look like?

Here is a three-person session written out. The artist wrote the topline and lyrics, the producer built the beat, and a friend came in and wrote the pre-chorus melody.

Separately on the same page, in its own box: master ownership — artist 100%, producer 0%, producer fee $400 paid in full on the session date. One document, two clearly separated statements, no ambiguity about which percentages refer to what.

Why do composition and master splits need to be recorded separately?

Because they are two different copyrights, and a single column of percentages does not say which one it means.

Someone can hold a share of one and none of the other. A producer might own 40% of the composition while the artist owns the master outright. A featured vocalist might have composition points and no master interest at all. A session drummer might have neither and simply be paid.

If your sheet has one set of percentages and never states which copyright they attach to, you have written down an ambiguity rather than an agreement. Say it explicitly.

What happens if the percentages do not add to 100, or two people register different numbers?

The registrations conflict, and conflicts do not resolve themselves.

When two parties claim overlapping shares of the same work, The MLC flags the work as having a conflicting or over-claimed share, and the disputed portion is held rather than distributed. Performance royalties behave similarly at ASCAP and BMI — the undisputed portion may flow while the contested portion waits. The money is not lost, but it sits, sometimes for years, and it only moves when the humans involved agree and re-file.

That is the practical function of a split sheet. It is not primarily protection against a bad actor. It is the thing that makes four separate registrations, filed by different people at different times, describe the same song identically.

What about samples, interpolations and purchased beats?

Put them on the sheet. A split sheet that ignores third-party material is describing a song that does not exist.

• Splice loops and royalty-free samples — note the pack and file name. They do not take a writing share, but the record of what was used matters if a Content ID claim shows up later.
• Cleared samples from another recording — the clearance terms usually assign a composition percentage to the original writers, and that percentage comes off the top before you divide the rest.
• Interpolations, where you replayed someone else's melody, also carry a composition share to the original writers.
• A purchased or leased beat — write down what the licence actually says about ownership, because "I bought the beat" describes a transaction, not an ownership position.

If any of these is unresolved on the session day, write "unresolved" on the sheet rather than leaving the line blank. A documented open question is a task. A blank line is a surprise.

Do it for your back catalog as well

If you have songs with collaborators and no paperwork, do those now. Everyone is still on good terms, nothing is earning enough to fight about, and most people will sign a document that simply confirms what they already believe.

The window narrows every month. It never widens.

Where do you get a split sheet template?

You do not need a special one. A plain document containing the fields listed above is a valid split sheet, and several distributors and publishing administrators publish free templates you can copy — Ditto Music and CD Baby's DIY Musician among them. Photographs of a handwritten sheet, signed by everyone and dated, have been accepted for decades.

What matters is not the form. It is that every field is filled, every person signed, everyone has a copy, and the numbers on it are the numbers that go into ASCAP or BMI and The MLC.

I am an artist who has been through this, not a lawyer or a publisher. For a placement, an advance, or anything already contested, get a music attorney to look at the paperwork before you sign it.