The process of splitting publishing money is often very confusing, especially because the splits for performing income and other types of income are not the same. For example, a writer might receive 45% of a publisher’s performing right receipts and 67.5% of a publisher’s mechanical right receipts.
To help you understand how splits typically work, here are a series of common scenarios that get progressively more complex. For novices (and even non novices), it is often useful to make diagrams with summaries at the end; as I have done here. These examples show the ultimate disposition of $100 in earnings, but can also be viewed as showing how 100% of income is split.
Artwork by Jake Standley
1. John is a 100% writer and Freudian Slip is the 100% publisher.
Diagram 1:
Summary
Performance income:
Performing right society pays $50 to John as writer share.
Performing right society pays $50 to Freudian as publisher share.
Other income:
Source pays Freudian $100. Freudian pays John $50, or 50% as writer share.
Thus Freudian pays none of its performing right receipts to John, and 50% of all other receipts to him.
2. John and Trevor are each 50% writers and Freudian Slip is the 100% publisher.
Diagram 2:
Summary
Performance income:
Performing right society pays $25 to John as a writer and $25 to Trevor as writer share.
Performing right society pays $50 to Freudian as publisher share.
Other income
Source pays Freudian $100. Freudian pays $25 (25/100, or 25%) each to John and Trevor as writer shares. Freudian retains $50 or 50%
Thus Freudian pays none of its performing right receipts to any writer, and 25% of other receipts to John and 25% to Bill.
3. John is the sole writer and has a 50%/50% co-publishing deal with Freudian Slip Publishing.
Diagram 3:
Summary
Performance income:
Performance right society pays John $50 as writer share.
Performing right society pays Freudian $50, which pays John 50%, or $25, and retains the same amount.
Other income:
Source pays Freudian $100. Freudian pays John $50 as writer (50/100, or 50%) and $25 as publisher (25/100, or 25%) while retaining $25 (25/100, or 25%)
Thus Freudian pays John 50% of performing income and 75% (50% + 25%) of other income.
4. John is the sole writer and has a 50%/50% co-publishing deal with Freudian Slip Publishing, which gets a 10% administration fee off the top.
Diagram 4: Mechanical Synchronization and Non- performance income & Public Performance
Paid by the performing right society to the writer and this case, to Freudian, which administer 100% of the song. We are assuming that there is no contractual right to double the administration fee on the publisher’s share of performance income.
Summary
Performance income:
Performing right society pays John $50 as writer share. Performing right society pays $50 to Freudian. Freudian then pays $22.50 to John’s publishing company (22.50/50 or 45%), retains an fee of $5 (5/50, or 10%), and retains $22.50 (22.50/50, or 45%) as its publisher. Note that 45% + 45% + 10% = 100%.
Other income:
Source pays $100 to Freudian. Freudian pays 45% to John as writer (45/100, or 45%) and $22.50 as publisher (22.50/100, or 22.5%), or $67.50 (67.5%) total, while retaining $32.50 (32.50/100, or 32.5%).
Thus Freudian pays John 45% of performing income and 67.5% of all other income.
5. John is the sole writer and has a 75%/25% co-publishing deal (in his favor) with Freudian Slip Publishing.
Diagram 5:
Summary
Performance income:
Performing right society pays John $50 as writer share.
Performing right society pays Freudian $50 as the 100% administering publishing company. Freudian then pays John’s publishing company $37.50 (37.50/50, or 75%) and retains the remaining $12.50 (12.50/50, or 25%)
Other income:
Source pays $100 to Freudian. Freudian pays $50 to John as writer (50/100, or 50%) and 37.50 as publisher (37.50/100, or 37.50%), or $87.50 (87.5%) total, while retaining $12.50 (12.5%).
Thus Freudian pays John 75% of performing income and 87.5% if all other income.
6. John and Bill are each 50% writers. John kept his publisher share, but Bill has a 50%/50% co-publishing deal with Freudian Slip Publishing
Diagram 6:
Summary:
Performance income:
Performing right society pays $25 to John as writer share and $25 to Bill as writer share.
Performing right society pays John’s publishing company $25.
Performing right society pays Freudian $25. Freudian then pays $12.50 (12.50/25, or 50%) to Bill’s publishing company while retaining $12.50 (12.50/25, or 50%) Bill’s publishing company while retaining $12.50 (12.50/25, or 50%).
Other income:
Source pays John’s publishing company $50. John (as the publisher) sends half to himself as songwriter (he really doesn’t have to do this) and retains the rest as publisher share.
Source pays Freudian $50. Freudian pays Bill $25 25/50, or 50%) as his writer share plus $12.50 (12.50/50, or 25%) as his publisher share. Freudian retains $12.50 (12.5/50, or 25%). Note that Freudian pays Bill a total of 37.50 or (75% of it’s receipts) and retains 12.50 (or 25% of its receipts).
7. John wrote 80% of the song and Bill wrote 20% of the song. They agreed to give half of the publishing money to the film company that was using it as a major motion picture opening title song. Of the remaining half of the publishing, John had a 50%/50% co-publishing deal with Freudian Slip, and Bill had a 75%/25% co-publishing deal (in his favor) with Freudian Slip Publishing.
Diagram 7:
Summary:
Performance income:
Performing right society pays John $40 (80% of $50) and Bill $10 (20% of $50) as writer shares.
Performing right society pays film company $25, or 50% of the publisher share.
Performance right society pays Freudian $25, which pays $10 to John’s publishing company (10/25), or 40% of receipts) and 3.75 to Bill’s publishing company (3.7525, or 15%) while retaining $11.25 (11.25/25, or 45%).
Other income:
Film Company collects $25 (we assume that the contract is such that the film company does not collect any writer share of income).
Freudian collects $75 and pays John $40 (40/75, or 53.3%) as writer, and $10 (10/75, or 13.3%) as publisher. Freudian pays Bill $10 (10/75, or 13.3%) as writer, and $3.75 (3.75/75, or 5%) as publisher. Freudian retains $11.25 (11.25/75, or 15%). Note that 53.3% + 13.3% + 13.3% + 5% + 15% = 100% of Freudian receipts.
