Selling album on iTunes - splitting revenue

btownpro

New member
So let's say I am producing an album for an artist and we are interested in selling on iTunes. We agree on a 50/50 split of all sales for digital downloads.

Is it possible to set up the split for sales when we submit our album to iTunes? Or do we both have to register with royalty agency like BMI/Ascap? I was going to use either CD Baby or Tunecore for digital distribution/getting on iTunes.

If anyone has experience with this and knows, I would appreciate your help.:)
 
Good question...I would assume you can just do a split-sheet and one person(probably owner of publishing entity) receives the earnings and hopefully holds up their agreement. I would be curious too, how other people handle this.
 
Thanks for your response, Foot. I will have to learn more about royalties , split-sheets and such in the near future. I have registered for BMI but not sure if it even matters or is necessary for iTunes distribution.

maybe the best idea is to set up a company (llc, or other kind) and have a legal agreement on how all earnings are distributed among the owners.

You could just have one person handle the income and trust them with being very honest,.....good way to get burned tho
 
On a unrelated note, I downloaded "production 101" -- I really like "Take a ride" and "right road". Good stuff
 
first of all bmi or ascap doesn't have anything to do with it. thats your royalty for songs played on the radio. plus you have to register each song.

anyway. . .

if your the producer, then why not hash out the producer fees first. then say to the artist. 'we split the net 50/50.

say you both work on a ten track album to sell on itunes. the songwriter writes all ten songs but you compose all ten music tracks. you agree on a percentage of the sale price for downloads for production. you then agree to split the mechanical down the middle. and share whats left.

ex your album costs $8.99. it sells 100,000 units. you might get $5 a unit. you agree as producer to 3% of that $8.99. so record royalty is 3% of $8.99 times units sold for your producer royalty. the mechanical is a little more complex. the statutory rate is maybe 9.1 cents. most labels use the three quarter or 75% clause. so .091 times 75% times the total number of songs you produced. take that number and multiply times units sold. then divide by two. thats your 50/50 royalty split. then whatever is left from the album sales you can go half on. the point is that as producer you can come out with a little more if you want.

get the books 'this business of urban music' and/or 'this business of music'.
 
first of all bmi or ascap doesn't have anything to do with it. thats your royalty for songs played on the radio. plus you have to register each song.

anyway. . .

if your the producer, then why not hash out the producer fees first. then say to the artist. 'we split the net 50/50.

say you both work on a ten track album to sell on itunes. the songwriter writes all ten songs but you compose all ten music tracks. you agree on a percentage of the sale price for downloads for production. you then agree to split the mechanical down the middle. and share whats left.

ex your album costs $8.99. it sells 100,000 units. you might get $5 a unit. you agree as producer to 3% of that $8.99. so record royalty is 3% of $8.99 times units sold for your producer royalty. the mechanical is a little more complex. the statutory rate is maybe 9.1 cents. most labels use the three quarter or 75% clause. so .091 times 75% times the total number of songs you produced. take that number and multiply times units sold. then divide by two. thats your 50/50 royalty split. then whatever is left from the album sales you can go half on. the point is that as producer you can come out with a little more if you want.

get the books 'this business of urban music' and/or 'this business of music'.
Thanks for your reply.
I've already agreed to split the net 50/50 with the artist. I will have to get some books for more details like you said.

Has anybody placed music in iTunes and dealt with this? Besides having proper paperwork in place I guess you just need someone who is honest enough to split the money as it comes in?
 
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