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What a “featuring” credit does to your royalty split

47 · · 18 min read · Español

A featuring credit moves money in exactly one place without anyone signing anything: the share US law pays to a recording’s featured artists, which is paid per recording and divided among everyone featured on it. Everywhere else — the master split, the writer share — the credit moves nothing; a written agreement or a split sheet does. So the guest is paid out of your share of one royalty automatically, out of the master only if you agreed it, and out of the song only if they wrote it. Three ledgers, one word in a text field, and the field only reaches the first.

  • A featuring credit touches three separate splits: the statutory performer share, which divides automatically; the master share, which moves only by written agreement; and the writer share, which follows authorship and not billing.
  • US law pays the featured-artist share “on a per sound recording basis” to “the recording artist or artists featured on such sound recording.” A guest is paid out of that share; the rights owner’s share does not change.
  • SoundExchange treats a recording with two featured artists as a 50/50 collaboration unless the collaborators direct otherwise. Shares are stated when the recording is claimed, and claims totalling more than 100% put the recording’s royalties on hold.
  • A letter of direction moves only the signing artist’s allocation. A producer paid through SoundExchange on a track with a guest needs a letter from each featured artist.
  • Registration with SoundExchange is free, and unclaimed royalties expire after three years. In Canada, ACTRA RACS pays 80% of a recording’s performer royalties to its featured performers, and a featured guest is one of them.

What does a “featuring” credit actually change?

A featuring credit touches three ledgers: the statutory performer share, which divides automatically; the master share, only by agreement; and the writer share, never.

Three splits, three documents. The first is written by a statute and moves the moment a second artist is featured. The second is written by whatever you signed with the guest, and if you signed nothing, it does not exist. The third is written by a split sheet, and the credit line has no vote on it. Which credit is which, and what each class of performer is paid, is the piece before this one. This one is the arithmetic in between.

Hold the three apart, because the sentence that collapses them — “it’s just a credit” — is true of two ledgers and false of the first. A released song carries a master split, a writer share and a publisher share, answering three different questions; a guest is one more name that may or may not appear on each list. Featured is a fact about billing and, in one system, a fact about money. It is never a fact about who wrote the song.

Who pays for the guest’s share of the statutory royalty?

The featured artists do. The statute pays the featured share per recording, so a guest is paid from that share and the owner’s is untouched.

The words that decide it are in the statute. Section 114(g)(2)(D) pays the featured artists’ share “on a per sound recording basis, to the recording artist or artists featured on such sound recording.” Per sound recording. Artist or artists. The share belongs to the recording, not to you, and a second featured name does not enlarge it. It divides it.

SoundExchange collects that royalty in the United States — for the noninteractive services and no others — and its own definition of who is featured is one sentence: “A featured artist is an artist that is prominently featured on a track or album.” A guest whose name is in the artist field is prominently featured. A session player is the other class — “not prominently featured on a track or album (i.e. a session musician or a back-up vocalist)” — and is paid through a different door, which this page does not open. Featured artists, the same FAQ says, “are receiving direct payments from SoundExchange.” Directly, and out of one pool.

Now the direction of the arithmetic, because this is the sentence people have backwards. The rights owner’s share is a separate allocation, and it does not move when a guest is added. The guest is paid out of the featured share — the share that, until the second name went in, was entirely yours. Nobody negotiated that. Nobody signed it. You typed one word into an artist field, and the statute damn well finished the sentence.

If the guest is a bigger name than you, that is the price of the feature and it may be a fair one. If the guest sang eight bars on a song you own outright, it is still the price, and nobody at the store or the distributor is going to mention it. It is the one credit that moves money by itself, and the money it moves is yours.

How does SoundExchange divide the featured share between you and the guest?

Equally, by default: SoundExchange treats a recording with two featured artists as a 50/50 collaboration unless the collaborators direct otherwise.

The FAQ entry is short enough to quote whole: “If you collaborate with another artist and they are featured on a recording, SoundExchange would treat that as a 50/50 collaboration unless directed otherwise by the two collaborators.” Half and half. Whoever wrote the song, whoever sang the hook, whoever paid for the studio. Solomon proposed the same split to find out who was lying. SoundExchange is not asking.

“Unless directed otherwise” is the working phrase, and the direction is yours to give. Where it is given is the claim: SoundExchange’s catalogue tool says that “when you claim a recording, you will have the capability to provide the shares for the performer(s) connected to your registrant.” So the split you agreed with the guest — seventy-thirty, ninety-ten, anything — is a number you enter when you claim the recording, and the guest enters the matching one when they claim it. Two claims, one hundred percent, no argument.

And when the two claims disagree, the recording stops. SoundExchange defines the case: “An Artist Dispute is a scenario when the total share (percentage) of featured artist royalties for a given recording is claimed by two or more claimants and exceeds 100%.” What it does then is put “all royalties related to the recording or recordings in question on hold” and notify everybody. What it will not do is decide: “It is the responsibility of the disputing parties to come to a resolution. SoundExchange will not interfere or take sides in any disputed artist claim.” Two people who each claim sixty percent are not in a negotiation. They are in a hold, and nobody at SoundExchange is coming to break the tie.

The group case is the one the sources do not settle. SoundExchange’s published default is written for two collaborators, and its signature rules treat a band’s members as separate signatories each. How a band’s allocation divides against a guest — one of five, or one of two — is not stated on any page read for this piece, and the piece does not guess. The shares are what the claimants provide. Provide them before the first statement, not after it.

What does a guest do to your producer’s letter of direction?

A letter of direction moves only the signing artist’s allocation, so a producer paid through SoundExchange needs a letter from each featured artist.

The letter is in the statute — section 114(g)(5) requires the collective to accept “instructions from a payee” to pay “a producer, mixer, or sound engineer” a portion of what the payee would receive — and SoundExchange’s form of it is defined by whose money it moves: a document “by which a Featured Artist directs SoundExchange to pay a portion of the Featured Artist’s sound recording performance royalties to a participant involved in the creative process.” The featured artist’s. Not the recording’s. SoundExchange says in as many words that it does not pay creative participants off the top, and the arithmetic of what that costs a producer on a shared record has its own page.

What it costs on a record with a guest is one sentence. Before the credit, the producer’s letter reached the whole featured share, because you were the whole featured share. After it, the letter reaches your half. SoundExchange’s signature rules spell out the rest: a creative participant who wants both allocations “would need to obtain signatures from both Artist A and Artist B,” and “If a recording is performed by a group, any LODs for that recording must be signed by each group member who performed on the recording.” One letter per featured artist, one signature per band member. Three points of the record, agreed in one conversation, now need a signature from somebody who was never in it.

Read it from the guest’s side, too. A guest who signed nothing pays no producer through SoundExchange — their statutory royalties are allocated separately and reached only by a letter they sign themselves. If your producer deal assumed the whole featured share, the guest has just moved half of it out of the producer’s reach, and the producer will notice before you do. Who a letter may pay, and who it may never pay — labels, lenders, royalty-advance companies — is on the points page.

What happens if the guest never registers with SoundExchange?

The guest’s share waits under the guest’s name, and SoundExchange states that unclaimed royalties expire after three years and may then be released.

Registration costs nothing — “It is free to register with SoundExchange,” the FAQ says, and the form is at register.soundexchange.com. What it costs to skip is on the same page: “after 3 years royalties expire and SoundExchange is authorized by regulation to release unclaimed royalties.” Where released money goes is a regulation this piece did not read, so it is not described here. What is plain is where it does not go: back to you. The guest’s half is the guest’s, registered or not.

Your guest’s money has a shelf life, and nobody told the guest it was in the fridge.

So the credit costs you half of one royalty whether or not the guest ever collects it. That is the argument for making the guest register — send the link with the stems — and it is the argument against the “exposure” feature where the guest has no idea a collector exists. The share leaves your allocation on release day. It only arrives in the guest’s if the guest shows up.

Does a featuring credit change the master split?

No. Interactive streaming pays the recording’s rights owner, and a guest’s share of that money exists only where a written agreement creates one.

Spotify and Apple Music pay the recording’s rights owner, through the distributor, and no credit moves that money without a written agreement. So the master ledger is the one where the credit does nothing and the paper does everything. There are four shapes the paper can take, and they are a partition rather than a survey: a fee and no share; a share of the track’s master receipts and no fee; both; or a swap — a verse on yours for a verse on theirs, and nobody invoices anybody.

A share needs two sentences the credit cannot supply. The first is the number and what it is a percentage of — gross receipts from the distributor, or net after a named list — the base question, which decides more than the number does. The second is whose share it comes out of when there is more than one of you on the artist side: off the top of the track’s receipts, or out of one named member’s share. That question has a page, and it applies to a guest’s percentage exactly as it applies to a producer’s.

One question sits underneath the share and is not answered by it: whether the guest owns any of the recording. The Copyright Office names a sound recording’s authors as the performers featured in it and the producers who shaped the sounds — the sentence the master-versus-publishing piece quotes — which means a guest who performed is not obviously outside the recording’s authorship. Whether they are inside it is settled by a signed assignment or agreement, the one-page document this site keeps prescribing, and never by the credit. Credited is not paid, paid is not settled, and settled is a signature.

Does a featuring credit make the guest a songwriter?

No. The writer share follows authorship, not billing: a guest who wrote may be a co-writer; a guest who only sang is not.

Two things make a co-writer — an original contribution, and the intent of the others that they be one — and neither is the artist field. A guest who wrote their verse holds a writer share whether they are credited as featured, as a side artist, or not at all. A guest who sang a verse you wrote holds none, however large the name in the parentheses.

The practical rule is one line. If the guest wrote, their name goes on the split sheet, with a share, at the session. If they did not, it does not, and the featuring credit is not a reason to put it there. The master split and the writer share are two documents with two different lists of names, and a guest belongs on the second list for what they wrote, not for what they sang.

This is also the ledger where “just a credit” is finally true. Nothing in the credit reaches the song. A featured guest who wrote nothing collects a share of one recording royalty by statute, a share of the master by agreement, and nothing from the composition, in any territory, ever.

What does a featured guest collect in Canada?

A featured performer’s share: ACTRA RACS pays 80% of a recording’s performer money to its featured performers, and names a featured guest among them.

The Canadian machinery is different in kind, and the piece on credit categories has the shape of it — performers and makers under section 19, Re:Sound collecting, the collectives paying performers directly. Re:Sound’s FAQ states the division “as set out in section 19 of the Copyright Act” and names the doors: “If you’re a recording artist (lead or background performer) you can sign up with one of Re:Sound’s member organisations – ACTRA RACS or Artisti.”

What that piece did not have, because it was not its question, is what happens inside the performer money. ACTRA RACS’s FAQ answers it: “RACS distributes 80% of the monies to the featured performer(s) on a recording and 20% of the monies to the non-featured performer(s),” with a caveat that large classical and jazz ensembles are split slightly differently. And it defines the class in a sentence that includes your guest by name: “A featured artist is generally credited as the main artist, featured guest or member of the featured band on a recording.” The other class is “any performer on a recording that is not a featured performer” — someone “engaged for a fixed period of time to record one or more backing performances.”

So in Canada the guest and the band are one class and the session player is the other, and the statute already wrote that too. What nothing readable says is how the featured 80% divides among several featured performers on one recording, so no default is stated here — ask the collective, before the release. Registration is free, and RACS pays “regardless of whether or not they are affiliated with a union.” Then Re:Sound’s own instruction, which is the line every guest skips: “Once registered, you must submit your repertoire information in order to claim your royalties.” Registered is not claimed. The track has to be on the list.

What to settle before you type the credit

Five things: who is featured, the SoundExchange split, the producer’s signatures, the guest’s master share and its base, and who wrote what.

  • Who is featured, by name. The guest is; the session player is not; and if you are a band, every member is. That list is the denominator for everything below.
  • The SoundExchange split, as a number. Half and half is the default; anything else is a number both of you enter when you claim. Agree it before release, and make the guest register — the link costs nothing to send.
  • The producer’s letter. If a producer is paid through SoundExchange, they need a letter from the guest too, or they are paid on your half alone. Tell the producer before the producer finds out.
  • The master share, with its base and whose share it comes from. A fee, a share, both, or a swap — written, with the percentage’s base named and the side it comes off stated.
  • Who wrote what. If the guest wrote, they go on the split sheet with a share. If they did not, the credit puts nobody on it.

Five decisions, and the upload form asks for one of them. The other four are made in the room or on the first statement, and the room is cheaper.

FAQ

Does the guest’s share come out of the label’s half?

No. The rights owner’s share is a separate allocation under the statute, and it does not change when a second artist is featured. The guest is paid out of the share the statute pays to the recording’s featured artists, which is the share that was yours alone before the credit went in. If a label owns your master, the label’s number is untouched by the feature; if you own it, your owner’s share is untouched too, and only your featured share divides.

Can the guest and I agree a split other than 50/50 at SoundExchange?

Yes. SoundExchange’s default applies “unless directed otherwise by the two collaborators,” and the direction is given when each of you claims the recording, where the shares for the performers connected to your registration are provided. The two claims have to add up: shares claimed for one recording that total more than 100% are an artist dispute, the recording’s royalties are put on hold, and SoundExchange leaves the resolution to the claimants.

We are a band. Is the guest one of two, or one of five?

No published page answers that. SoundExchange states the default for two collaborators and treats a group’s members as separate signatories on a letter of direction; how a group’s allocation divides against a guest is whatever the claimants provide when they claim the recording, and nothing read for this piece states a default for it. Agree the numbers among the band and the guest before the release, and enter them at the claim, rather than discovering the question on the first statement.

Does “feat.” versus a co-primary credit change the SoundExchange money?

Not by itself. SoundExchange defines a featured artist as one “prominently featured on a track or album” and says nothing about the preposition, so a guest is featured for its purposes whether the billing reads “feat.,” “with” or two names side by side. What the two billings do at Spotify and Apple Music — which profile the release lands on, who can pitch it — is a separate question with its own page.

Sources

  • US Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 114(g) — paragraph (2)(D), the featured artists’ share paid on a per sound recording basis to the artist or artists featured on the recording; and paragraph (5), the collective’s duty to accept a payee’s instruction to pay a producer, mixer or sound engineer a portion of the payee’s royalties. The allocation percentages in the same paragraph are stated on the credit-categories page and not repeated here.
  • SoundExchange, Frequently Asked Questions — the definitions of a featured artist and a non-featured artist; that featured artists are paid directly; that registration is free; and that unclaimed royalties expire after three years, after which SoundExchange is authorised by regulation to release them.
  • SoundExchange, What if there is more than one artist or a guest artist who performed on a song? — the 50/50 collaboration default, unless directed otherwise by the two collaborators.
  • SoundExchange, My Catalog update (2020) — that the shares for the performers connected to a registrant are provided when a recording is claimed.
  • SoundExchange, Artist Disputes: What Are They & How Are They Resolved? (2024) — the definition of an artist dispute as claims exceeding 100%; that the recording’s royalties are put on hold; and that SoundExchange will not take sides.
  • SoundExchange, Letters of Direction — the definition of a Featured Artist LOD as directing a portion of the featured artist’s own royalties; that creative participants are not paid off the top; who may and may not be paid through one. United States only.
  • SoundExchange, Letters of Direction — Signature Requirements (2025) — that a creative participant seeking both artists’ allocations needs signatures from both, and that a group’s letters must be signed by each member who performed on the recording.
  • Re:Sound, FAQ — that equitable remuneration is divided between artists and record companies as set out in section 19 of the Copyright Act, and that a lead or background performer signs up through ACTRA RACS or Artisti.
  • Re:Sound, Artists — that a featured or background performer on a released recording may be entitled to royalties, and that repertoire information must be submitted after registration in order to claim them.
  • ACTRA RACS, FAQ — the 80/20 division of a recording’s performer royalties between featured and non-featured performers, with the ensemble caveat; the definitions of a featured artist and a non-featured performer; that registration is free; and that royalties are paid regardless of union affiliation.

Every page cited here was read on the date at the top of this piece. SoundExchange’s help centre did not resolve and the AFM & SAG-AFTRA Fund’s site served no readable page, so nothing here is cited to either; the non-featured class is described on the credit-categories page. How a group’s allocation divides against a guest at SoundExchange, how ACTRA RACS’s featured share divides among several featured performers, and where released royalties go are not published on any page read, and this piece states no answer to any of them. This is not legal advice, and the percentages are the organisations’ own, current as of the date above. If real money is riding on a feature, have the agreement read by a lawyer in the relevant territory before the release goes up.

Keeping the register

Everything on this page comes back to two records that most catalogues keep as one remembered sentence: who is featured on the track, and what each of them is owed. CatalogTracker keeps the guest as a party on the track with a role — Main Artist, Featured Artist, Guest Artist — and keeps the master split as a separate record on the same track, enforced to a hundred and confirmed by every party before it is Confirmed. It registers nothing with SoundExchange and decides no split. It means that when the producer asks who else has to sign, the list already exists. In development for iPhone.