10 Best Free Music Split Sheet Generators & Templates
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Written by Ramsey Brown.
When collaborating in a song, it’s essential that all parties involved document what they helped contribute to in the writing and recording process, before releasing it to the world. There are many instances where artists or producers get taken advantage of and never receive the payout they deserve because they didn’t take the proper steps beforehand. This inconvenience can easily be avoided with something called a split sheet.
This is not to be confused with a copyright, but a split sheet along with a copyright provides solid proof of your part in the collaboration of a song. A music split sheet rectifies the percentage each person contributed to a certain song that is or was written. More often than not, the songs you hear on the radio, television, and movie scenes have more than one creator. Because of this, artists have royalty split sheets to make sure all the people involved in the creation of the art secure the praise and payment they deserve.
The sheets can have different formats depending on the various producers, songwriters, and situational circumstances. Creating a music split sheet is known to be a difficult and awkward task, which is why it is often overlooked and forgotten about by developing artists, until they are made to learn the importance by an unfair incident. Without a signed split sheet, all the work from each collaborator is at risk. To avoid these types of complications, we are presenting you the 10 Best Free and Easy to Use Split Sheet Templates and tools available on the internet.
SongTrust provides a very simple and easy split sheet for collaborators to use. By visiting their website, anyone can easily download their plain split sheet document along with a filled example from SongTrust itself. All you have to do to download the template is provide your email and a little bit information about your music skills. The template is totally free and the downloading page allows you to even change or add all the necessary text there on the website in case you don't have a PDF editor or MS Word.
Protect your rights by ensuring your collaboration in a song is recognized and documented by the split sheet template provided by SongTrust. Avoid any sort of inconvenience or problems in the future through this easy and free to use split sheet template option.
This very elaborative template for a split sheet is provided by Templateroller.com is also easily downloadable and totally free to use. The template shows many things including affiliation, publishing companies and their collaboration percentage if there are more than one of those. For further security and assurance of no ambiguities, the social security or identification of each writer is also asked at the bottom of each writer column.
This is a great option because it not only asks for your collaboration as a writer but also as a musician if you have taken part in composing any part of the music in the song. All you have to do is agree on your publishing percentage with your fellow writers and composers and easily include in the the free template that they provide on the website.
On Sample.net you can find many split sheet templates and they range in versatility depending upon what type of split sheet a person or a group of song co-writers may want to choose. The documents vary from plain, simple, to elaborative and the most prominent three are in the first line of the website. You can view them according to your specifications and use whichever one makes the most sense for you and your project.
They even offer split sheets that can be used for various business agreements, household splits, and simple responsibility splits. With this said, make sure you read the templates carefully before filling them out so you know exactly what kind of sheet you are using. You’d hate to show up to the studio with a split household agreement template instead of a split song template!
Creative & Productive is a great website to use when you are searching for the proper split sheet template. They break down which type of split sheet you should use and offer examples of each with completely free downloadable templates. They clarify different scenarios like if you co-wrote a song with someone else or if you co-produced a recording with someone else.
These different options are beneficial for artists and producers because there are so many different scenarios you may find yourself in during the recording process. As a rule of thumb, it’s also a great idea to have these different templates printed out and ready to go before you ever step foot in the studio.
The Muziqueen template provided at squarespace.com is a very elaborative split sheet template option and boasts features like the Song ISRC along with the song title and completion date. It features things like the recording artist and record label as well as the studio name and address and whether there was a sample to it.
In the composer/writer section it shows their full details comprising address, publishers or publishing companies and also affiliations. It also shows composers signature, their ownership percentage, and CAE/IPI/SSN with their birthdate. The template is detailed enough to not cause any sort of problems in the future and the more detail has this sole purpose.
The song split sheet provided by ASCAP is not extremely elaborative compared to the other templates we listed, but it does provide all the necessary information that will help you formulate your split sheet for your songs that you either wrote or co-wrote. The template provided is for up to 5 writers that helped co-write the song, but you can always choose to include less writers or more depending on your situation.
You’ll be asked for the song title and the date of completion, then after that it shows the co-writer information including things like their name and address and type of their affiliations like ASCAP, BMI or SESAC. Then it shows the publisher information of the writer such as the publisher company, their name, phone number and other contact information. This template has no hard detail in it and is fairly easy to use for even your first time creating a split sheet, yet has the necessary details to sort out any problems you and your co-writers may be faced with in the future.
The TuneCore template can be downloaded, printed and can be handwritten very easily and it is a very small document and does not require much effort to fill out. The Template is very self explanatory and can be used for both a home music project or a more complex studio recording because of its fairly accessible format.
The template includes things like the date, recording artist names, album title and record label(s). It also shows the recording location. After that it has a very compact writer ownership section in which only the name and ownership percentage are required. The template can be downloaded easily in the hyperlink above.
This document can be easily downloaded from the link above and is a detailed split sheet form which ensures the collaboration or ownership of co-writers in a song. It can be filled by any musician with ease and has things included like the Title and completion date of the song, the recording artist and recorded label, the studio name and address and the sample assurance. In the composer section it includes things like the address and contact info along with publisher detail.
This split sheet template is very straightforward and easy to use. Similar to the other ones mentioned above, it will ask you to include information like the song title, recording artist(s) names, affiliated record labels, location of studio, etc.
This is a more lengthy template than some of the others, but details out all sections a recording artist would need to protect themselves from unwanted trouble in the future. It is also in a PDF format so you can easily print it off to bring with you to the studio, or edit from your phone or computer if you have the necessary PDF editing software available.
Not only does CD Baby provide artists with a free and easy-to-use split sheet template, they also go over the importance of creating a split sheet and the different scenarios in which a musician would need to make one. This simple 3-step PDF template will help you and all your collaborators clarify who owns what when it comes to your original music and protect you from any legal trouble in the future.
To get a free copy, just enter your email, name, and country you live in and they will email you a downloadable PDF copy of a blank split sheet. If you are new to making split sheets, no need to worry because it shows you step by step what to include and the right way to fill it out.
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