Good Splits: A Streaming Royalty Calculator for Music Creators
Equitable music accounting gets a much-needed facelift.
Although music creation and distribution has changed (hello, experiential album release parties, interactive song websites, and streaming), music royalty accounting has not.
We learned this all too well after we launched Good Folk Music Management last year. Good Folk was created with the vision of facilitating a more transparent and honest music business built on best practices and smarter technology. (You can read more about that launch here.)
Good Splits, our new royalty calculator, is one small piece of that grand plan. In order to tell you about how it works, first you need to know what creators are up against.
How do creators currently get paid for their music?
1. All songs must get on the internet.
In order for a song to be shared or streamed, it needs to be distributed to Digital Service Providers (DSPs) like iTunes and Spotify. The majority of creators today distribute songs via aggregator services like Tunecore, AWAL, cdbaby, Distrokid, Symphonic, and oneRPM.
2. Song royalties must get calculated.
When that song generates revenue through sales (downloads) or streams, DSPs collect the revenue and pays the sole individual who originally submitted the song.
3. The individual who collects the earnings must divvy up the funds.
Typically, whomever originally distributed the song receives 100% of the earnings from the DSP (yay!). But they’re also the ones responsible for paying co-creators their share (ouch).
And we know it takes more than one person to make a song. All those individuals — from co-writers to backup vocalists to producers, musicians, and sound engineers — could each be owed different percentages of the song’s earnings.
4. Song creators pay other people to do the math (or wing it themselves).
Typically big artists (people you’ve heard on the radio) will hire a business manager to do this. But most of the little guys (80% of the music industry) does it themselves. But the more music you make (and the more widely distributed it is…hello, Europe!), the more unwieldy that spreadsheet gets.
Most creators are tallying up these earnings and hoping for the best. There’s no way for their co-creators to audit them since they didn’t distribute the song and can’t check the data. That leaves a lot of unpaid people in the music royalty business. If they are paid, it’s usually six to nine months before they can see a paycheck.
Enter Good Splits.
Good Splits is a brand new tool that allows creators to quickly and easily calculate royalties from aggregator services.
This stand-alone program allows the individual who is responsible for divvying up the song’s earnings to upload their sales data, input percentage splits for each collaborator, and easily see who is owed what amount—no math required. So whoever’s cutting the checks (musicians or business managers) can do it more efficiently and on a shorter timetable.
Goodbye, Google Sheets and giant Excel files.
Good Splits hides the ugly math inside a simple UI that lets you scan for the most important info and won’t overwhelm you with extra data. It’s not a payment tool—creators still have to issue those payments themselves—but it does help speed up the process.
Good Splits hides the ugly math inside a simple UI that lets you scan for the most important info and won’t overwhelm you with extra data.
Users can sort and edit their data by composer, split, or album. The Composer view is anyone who has a share of the song. The Split view allows you to edit which percentage each party owns of each song. Finally, the Album view shows the total albums and amount of songs in each.
Good Splits Beta was launched for the Good Folk clients in fall 2019 and we’ll be sending out select invites to other creators in early 2020.
Why did we make Good Splits?
Because the royalty payment process is so complicated, it’s difficult for creators to have a good idea of how much their work is worth. Understanding their value in the marketplace allows creators to better plan for their futures and shape their careers. Good Splits helps deliver that knowledge farther and faster.
Understanding their value in the marketplace allows creators to better plan for their futures and shape their careers. Good Splits helps deliver that knowledge farther and faster.
Fundamentally, we believe the music industry can be better.
That’s the whole genesis of Good Folk. We know creators can feel like the music business is trapped in a digital rip current of change. But they shouldn’t have to accept inadequate treatment or underpayment for their contributions. With the right people, the right approach, and the right technology, we can all ride this wave together.
We can be more collaborative.
We can create more solutions and less problems.
We can all savor the output while ensuring an enjoyable and lucrative experience for those who do the input.
Want to test drive Good Splits Beta? Email us: hello@coalesce.nyc and let’s chat.
Visit goodsplits.app for more info.
