Split sheet template
Fill this in on screen, print it, and have everyone sign it. There is no email form, no download gate and no account — the fields below are part of this page, nothing is sent anywhere, and closing the tab discards it.
01Split sheet
Song
Writer 01
Writer 02
Writer 03
Writer 04
Total
Signature and date, one per writer, in the order above. Sign on paper — there is no signing here and a typed name in a text field is not a signature.
02Field by field
Most of these are obvious. Four are not, and they are the four that cause the trouble.
Writer share, and why it must total 100
This is the writer’s share of the musical work — the song. All the writer shares on a song add up to 100%, always. If they do not, a PRO or The MLC has a registration it cannot process, and the usual outcome is that the money stops rather than that somebody calls you.
Two conventions worth knowing before you argue about numbers. Publishers often speak of a song as 200% — 100% writer’s share plus 100% publisher’s share — so “50%” can mean two different things depending on who is talking. This sheet uses the 100% convention throughout. And an even split among three writers is 33.34 / 33.33 / 33.33, not three 33.33s; somebody has to take the extra hundredth, and deciding who takes it at the session is easier than deciding it later.
IPI / CAE number
The number your PRO uses to identify you specifically, as distinct from everyone else with your name. It is what makes a registration match, and it is the field most often left blank on a split sheet and then chased for a year.
You have one if you are affiliated with a PRO. It is in your ASCAP, BMI, SOCAN or PRS account. Get it from the person, at the session — not from a guess, and not from a search that returns three people with the same stage name.
Legal name and professional name
Both, always. The PRO knows one and the streaming service shows the other, and a split sheet carrying only the professional name is a document that cannot be matched to a payee. This is the single cheapest field to fill in and the most expensive one to reconstruct.
ISWC and ISRC
Leave these blank if you do not have them yet; neither exists at the moment most songs are written. The ISWC identifies the composition and is issued by a PRO after registration — you cannot request one. The ISRC identifies one specific recording of it. They are different codes for different things, and putting the recording’s code in the composition’s field is a common and quiet error.
If the ISRC turns out to be wrong once the track is out, that is a separate and more annoying problem.
03What this covers, and what it does not
A split sheet records who wrote the song and in what proportion. That is all it does, and being clear about the edges is what keeps it useful.
It does not cover the master
The recording is a separate copyright with a separate set of owners — typically the performers and the producer. A split sheet saying you own 50% of the song says nothing about who owns the recording of it, and the two are lost in different ways. That is its own question, and it usually needs a different document.
It is a record, not a transfer
This sheet documents what everyone agrees the shares are. It does not assign copyright from one person to another; a transfer of copyright ownership has to be in a signed writing that says so, and this is not that. If somebody is meant to be giving up ownership rather than confirming it, that is a lawyer’s document.
Signatures are the point
An unsigned split sheet is a note about a conversation. Every writer signs, including the one taking 5%, including the one who says it does not matter. What happens when nobody signs is the reason this page exists.
More than four writers
Print a second copy, number the pages by hand, and have everyone sign both. Four blocks is what fits on one page legibly, not a claim about how many writers a song is allowed.
This is a template, not legal advice, and it is written against US and Canadian practice. It has not been reviewed by a lawyer for your situation, your territory or your deal. If real money is involved, have one look at it — an hour now is cheaper than the alternative in every case where the alternative happens.
04Doing this more than once
CatalogTracker keeps the splits attached to the track they belong to and generates this document from them, so the second song does not start from a blank page and the fortieth is still findable. In development for iPhone.
This page stays here either way, free and ungated, because a template behind an email form is not a template.