HOW IS SONGWRITING INCOME SPLIT WITH A PUBLISHER?
With the exception of print music, income from musical compositions is generally split on a 50/50 basis between the music publisher and writer. The publisher’s half of this income is called the “publisher’s share,” and the writer’s half is the “writer’s share.” To illustrate how this works in the real world, let’s take the following example. Imagine a publisher collects slightly more than $.68 (68 cents) in mechanical royalties from the sale of one of your CDs (actually 10 songs x $.091 cents per song x 75% rate for controlled compositions = 68.25 cents. I’ll round off the extra ΒΌ cent for purposes of this article). Assuming there are no collection costs deducted off the top, the publisher’s share comes to approximately $.34 (34 cents) and the writer’s share also comes to approximately $.34 (34 cents). This financial split is a basic, but important, concept. When discussing publishing income, be sure to remember this distinction between “publisher’s share” and “writer’s share.” WHAT TY
