October 21, 2021

The music industry relies on royalties generated by the licensing of copyrighted songs and recordings as a primary form of payment for musicians.

A “royalty” is a payment made to an asset owner for the right to use that asset. A “royalty interest” is the right to collect a share of future royalty payments.

What is a Share Split?

A share split explains how the royalties will be distributed between all interested parties. Performance royalties are typically split into two equal halves: a “writer’s share” (50%) and a “publisher’s share” (50%). Performing Rights Organizations (PROs) and Collective Management Organizations (CMOs) collect and account for each of these revenue sources separately.

There is no normal share split. However the combined total of the writer share must be at least 50 percent. You can only give yourself less than 50 percent if you’re adding co-writers. But even then you need to ensure that your share and their share add up to at least 50 percent.

How to manage a Share Split distribution?

Our solution will cater for the management of society member accounts including application of distribution splits and circulation of royalty statements. Microsoft Dynamics 365 can be configured to hold a society members information including contact details and preferences for payments and statements.  The Matching Engine agreement module, while usually used for publisher agreements, can be used to split an original writer or publisher share between different “dummy” IPs for the purpose of distribution.

The solution takes the in-tray works that have been identified as definite matches for a repertoire work and applies the configured merge rules to automatically merge the in-tray works information with their corresponding repertoire ones. These merge rules consider the IPs and shares that the submitter is authoritative for so as to maximise the potential for automatic merges in split copyright work registration and revision scenarios.

Whats Next?

To learn more about how our solution manages split shares, Contact us and talk to our team today!