Agree the splits while everyone still remembers

The one distinction this page exists for

A recording of a song is two properties. There is the work — the notes and the words, which belong to whoever wrote them — and there is the recording, this particular performance of it, which belongs to whoever made it. They are licensed separately, they are paid separately, and they are very often owned by different people in different proportions.

Almost every split argument that ends badly starts with one set of percentages being agreed and nobody saying which of the two it was for. A producer who is given "20%" and a writer who thinks they gave away 20% of the recording are not describing the same deal, and neither of them finds out until the money arrives.

Why a sheet beats a memory

This page does not draft a contract for you, and nothing here is legal advice. What it does is remove the ambiguity while the ambiguity is still cheap to remove — in the room, on the day, before anyone has a reason to remember it differently.

The moment it becomes expensive is the moment the song does well. That is also the moment when everybody’s memory of the session becomes generous to themselves. A sheet everyone confirmed on the day is worth more than four sincere recollections two years later — and if the song starts earning, it is the document you take to a lawyer rather than the argument you take to one.

What the checks are looking for

That each side adds to exactly 100. That everyone with a share has a name, and a legal name, because registrations are normally held against a legal name rather than a stage name, and two artists can end up using the same stage name. That everyone has a role, because the role decides which pot the share is paid from. And that somebody on the composition side is actually named as a writer — if the song is traditional, whoever arranged it is still an author, and "traditional" is not a person who can be paid.

The link, and what it does and does not protect

The share button puts the whole sheet into the URL after the “#”. That fragment is the one part of a web address a browser keeps to itself — it is never transmitted to the server that hosts the page. So the sheet is never sent to us, and we could not read it if we wanted to.

What that does not do is make the link private in transit. You still send it over something — a chat app, an email — and that service sees the link like any other, keeps it in the conversation, and may fetch it to make a preview. Treat the link the way you would treat any document you would not want forwarded.

The practical benefit is what it lets you do without an account: a collaborator opens your link, sees the sheet exactly as you filled it in, changes a number, and sends it back — with no login, and nothing stored anywhere by anyone.