Splits Before You Write

Friendships have survived world tours, drug habits, and creative differences. What tends to finish them off is a spreadsheet. Specifically, one that appears months after a song is written, when money is on the table and everyone’s memory of who did what has quietly rearranged itself to favour themselves.

Publishing splits — who owns what percentage of a song — are not a formality you sort out later. They are the foundation of the working relationship, and the time to agree them is before anyone plays a single chord or writes a single word. Not after. Not when the session was “so good we didn’t want to break the vibe.” Before.

The Standard Approaches

The most common convention in co-writing rooms, especially in Nashville and in pop, is the equal split. If three writers are in the room, the song gets divided into thirds — regardless of who wrote the hook, who brought the chord progression, or who sat in the corner and mostly nodded. This sounds crude, but it has a logic: it removes ego from the accounting, keeps relationships clean, and acknowledges that collaboration is genuinely hard to dissect. A great question at the right moment can be worth more than a verse written alone.

Negotiated splits attempt to reflect actual contribution more precisely. Someone who arrives with a fully formed chorus and a track might reasonably argue for a larger share than someone who suggested changing one word in the bridge. These conversations are possible, but they require honesty, trust, and the willingness to hear that your contribution was valued at forty percent, not fifty. Most professional co-writers default to equal splits partly to avoid this — not out of laziness, but because the alternative is a negotiation that can sour the room before the work has begun.

Then there’s what’s sometimes called the Beyoncé rule, though it predates her and applies broadly to any artist who arrives at a session as the performing artist rather than a traditional writer. The convention — not a law, just an industry norm — is that the artist takes a split as part of the deal, often equal to the other writers, in recognition that their voice, their identity, and their platform are what will carry the song into the world. Whether you think that’s fair is a separate debate. What matters is that it exists, that people assume it applies, and that assuming the other person shares your assumption is exactly how disputes begin.

Having the Conversation

The awkward truth is that the conversation feels awkward precisely because it’s important. Asking about splits before a session can feel transactional, even mercenary — as if you’re declaring the friendship a business arrangement before you’ve even made anything together. But the inverse is worse. Waiting until something valuable exists means the conversation happens under pressure, with real stakes, when both parties are already privately attached to their version of events.

The simplest version of the conversation is also the most effective. Before the session starts, say: “Should we just go equal splits today?” In most cases, the other person will agree immediately and feel relieved that someone said it. The conversation takes twelve seconds. If they want to negotiate, that’s fine — better to know now.

If you’re writing with someone who has significantly more leverage than you — a major label artist, a writer with a string of cuts — it’s worth understanding that they may have a standard deal they offer everyone. Ask. Not defensively, just practically. “Do you have a usual setup for sessions?” opens the door without positioning you as either naive or combative.

Whatever you agree, write it down. Not because you don’t trust them, but because memory is unreliable and circumstances change. A text message, an email, a note on your phone shared in the group chat — anything that creates a record. The music industry runs on contracts precisely because goodwill alone doesn’t survive success.

The songs that cause the most damage are not the ones that fail. They’re the ones that work — the ones that get placed, licensed, performed, or streamed in numbers no one expected. At that point, an unresolved split stops being an oversight and becomes a legal dispute, a frozen royalty account, or the end of something that mattered. Thirty seconds of mild awkwardness at the start of a session is cheap insurance against all of that.

Write first, talk money later is romantic advice. It is also how you lose both the song and the relationship.

Use the Resonillator Royalty Calculator to see how different split arrangements affect what each writer actually earns across streaming, sync, and performance royalties.