by Francesca | May 2, 2024 | Legal, Music Industry
Odds are you don’t write every song completely on your own. You’ve got co-writers, producers, and other creatives who have contributed to the creation of your finished song. If you want to ensure everyone is paid exactly what they’re owed, you need to master your split sheet game. In this post, we’ll give you everything you need to know.
Everything You Need To Know About Split Sheets
About Split Sheets
A split sheet is like a musical handshake that sorts out who gets how much credit when you write a song with someone. Whether that be divided between other songwriters, producers, lyricists, or whoever else contributed to the track, a split sheet legally identifies who wrote what percentage of the song.
During the process of creating one, each creator has to agree about how the percentages are defined. Some artists divide it evenly based on who is in the room writing and producing the song, but some base the percentages on the person’s specific contribution to the lyrics, hook, melody, and beats. However you decide to split things, it’s important everyone involved agrees on and understands the splits to avoid any disagreements down the line.
What Info Goes in a Split Sheet?
When it’s time to to fill out your split sheet, there’s a lot of info that needs to be clarified in the document. In addition, you need to make sure everything is as accurate as possible. That said, some information you’ll need to provide includes things like:
- Song Information:
- Title
- Names of contributors
- Contact information
- Ownership Splits:
- Percentage of ownership for each contributor
- Breakdown of ownership percentages for different song elements
- Signatures:
- Signatures of all contributors
- Date of signature
- Additional Terms:
- Any agreements related to royalties, licensing, or future use
- Provisions for changes or amendments
“Why is all this so important?”
If someone wants a cut of your song down the line, having a split sheet already defined will save you a lot of trouble. It also simplifies the songwriting process by eliminating that awkward energy that sometimes comes with dealing with money in any business. Not only that, but Performing Rights Organizations (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC), labels, publishers, and people who may sync your music will not pay out if there are concerns about who the creators of the song are, and who the money should be paid to.
Split sheets provide clear documentation of each contributor’s ownership stake in a song. This clarity helps prevent disputes and misunderstandings over royalty distribution and ensures that all parties receive their fair share of earnings generated by the song. Not only that, in the event of a dispute or legal issue regarding ownership, a well-documented split sheet can provide evidence of the agreed-upon ownership shares.
Now, you may be thinking… “When should I bring this up?”
Ideally, you should bring up the split sheet before you get into the studio. That way, everyone involved knows it’s coming and that you’re serious about what you’re doing. You’d be surprised how often artists just go off “vibes” when it comes to collaborating with others… (I wish I was kidding.) For example, they may be working with friends or possibly someone well-regarded in their community and not want to ruin the energy with business talk, but I assure you the vibes will definitely be ruined when you have to fight with your collaborators over money.
The more clear and direct you can be with this, the more respect your collaborators will have for your professionalism. In addition, having everyone on the same page just straight up makes things run more smoothly and stress-free until the very end. No stress, no mess… Easy as that.
Where To Get a FREE Split Sheet 👀
Our friends over at Songtrust offer a FREE split sheet you can download on their website to make things even easier. In addition, they include a sample agreement to help you see what it should look like.
[ Click here to download the FREE Split Sheet ]
To wrap things up…
If there’s one thing in life, not just the music business, that can ruin a relationship overnight… it’s money. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to protect yourself through avenues like this one. Whether it’s with split sheets or producer contracts to publishing and booking contracts, it’s up to you to cover your bases and protect future you. 💰
Good luck!
by Francesca | Mar 14, 2024 | Music Industry
Industry professionals and artists alike utilize music analytics tools to help them further understand their place in the market. Knowing where you stand and where you have room to grow is the key to excelling in this industry. To help you truly understand your stats, here are some of the best tools out there to guide you in the right direction…
Best Streaming Music Analytics Tools for Artists
SymphonicMS
If you’re a Symphonic Distribution client, you get access to some very helpful music analytics tools right in SymphonicMS that track key information from Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, Pandora, TikTok, YouTube and more. Under the Analytics menu, you can access pages that provide data like:
- Up-to-date streaming data from Spotify and Apple Music, with detailed breakdowns by artist, track, release, territory, and partners.
- Daily iTunes and Beatport download counts and overall download trends.
- Important Beatport statistics, such as subscriber counts and charting songs.
Navigate to this feature by clicking on Analytics ► Streams from the menu.
The landing page provides a catalog level view of performance across your entire catalog, broken down by several dimensions, such as Partner, Artist, and Territory. — You can also view breakdowns of an individual artist’s streams by clicking on them from the landing page. On the artist’s page, you’ll see breakdowns of their streams by several key dimensions, including partners, track, playlist placements, and many more!
All of these pages can be easily leveraged to help answer critical questions, such as how new releases are performing, where your audience is located, and which platforms your music is performing best on.
To access analytics for TikTok in the SMS, all you have to do is click on Analytics -> TikTok.
The landing page provides a catalog-level view of performance across the entire catalog on a given date range that you can change. Here, you can access details like engagement and Artist, Track, and Territory Analytics.
This tool makes it easier for creators to understand the TikTok metrics that really matter and helps maximize the impact of their future TikTok marketing campaigns. It delivers comprehensive and easy-to-read metrics on how many videos have been created using an artist’s music as well as how many views, likes, comments and shares the video generated. // To learn more about this, check out this article.
SoundCharts
SoundCharts offers social media data from six different platforms, playlist data from three different streaming platforms, and charts from seven different social and streaming platforms to give you actionable music streaming data, all in one place. Where’s this data coming from? Spotify, Apple, Shazam, YouTube, Deezer, Radio, SoundCloud, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Songkick, to say the least.
Spot On Track
Spot On Track is an analytics platform that lets you track stats from Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Shazam, TikTok and more. You can also see the current chart positions of your music, current playlists you’ve landed on, previous playlists, all your releases in each platform and more in an easy to navigate dashboard. Plus, it also offers radio play stats, retrieving all data directly from APIs. Although it’s pricey ($299/year), you can try it for free for 14 days first to see if you like it.
WARM
Get solid proof of your radio airplay to easily collect your royalties, discover where your fans are, and new emerging markets with WARM. With this platform, you can cover when and where your music is being played in real-time at the market’s most competitive price. By monitoring radio stations worldwide, WARM tracks your songs’ airplay in real-time in order to provide you with valuable insights that will help you take your music career to the next level. They also provide artists like you with the tools you need to improve your marketing and promotion strategies, and even accelerate your royalty collection.
Spotify for Artists
The best part about Spotify for Artists is their absolute count of artist’s streams, listeners, and saves. This analytics platform provides an easy-to-understand breakdown of playlist categories (algorithmic, editorial, and listener generated) and absolute counts for listeners and streams of an artist’s tracks on those playlists.
Detailed insights into streaming metrics like these are key for artists and their teams in this increasingly data-driven industry where Spotify reigns supreme.
Chartmetric
Chartmetric is an OG which gives you a bit of everything from every platform. With it, you get analytics and data from Spotify, Apple, Shazam, YouTube, Amazon, Deezer, Radio, SoundCloud, TikTok, Wikipedia, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Beatport, and more all in one place. Depending on if you utilize their Free or all-access Premium tier, you can get whatever you need depending on what’s most important to you. With Chartmetric, you can also do additional things like:
- Track current and historical playlist adds on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Amazon Music, and YouTube.
- Understand who your audience is and where they are in the world with audience demographics.
- Global Digital Artist Ranking with Cross-Platform Performance (CPP), their proprietary global digital artist ranking that lets you measure artist performance across 16 streaming and social media platforms and metrics.
ForTunes
ForTunes is an easy-to-use mobile app for music data analytics on the go, drawing data from Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. It gives you basic streaming and social media tracking results, just like the other platforms we’ve mentioned in this post, but having it all at your fingertips with the mobile app is life changing for artists and teams on the go.
Apple Music for Artists
With Apple Music for Artists, artists can keep track of the volume of their streaming plays on Apple Music and album/song sales on iTunes, all within a data set that updates every day.
In addition, artists can:
- Gain insight into how specific songs/albums are performing.
- See how their fans are growing in international markets in over 100 countries.
- Find out which locations they’re the most popular.
- Plan future shows.
- Specifically tailor set-lists for fans in each location.
Viberate
Viberate offers streaming analytics, airplay and social media monitoring, professional charts and artist comparison, industry trends and audience demographics, smart talent discovery, and so much more. Even cooler, this platform has tutorials, webinars, guides, blog posts, and more to guide you through the platform and get the most out of your efforts.
YouTube for Artists
YouTube for Artists offers an easy to use dashboard in their YouTube Studio with real-time analytics to help you monitor your audience, global reach and performance across the entire YouTube ecosystem.
The Overview tab shows you a summary of how your channel and videos are performing. The key metrics card shows your views, watch time, subscribers, and estimated revenue (If you’re in the YouTube Partner Program).In this tab, you’ll also see reports for:
- Typical performance // A comparison to your latest video to your channel’s typical performance.
- Top videos // Your recent videos ranked by views.
- Realtime // Your performance over the last 48 hours or 60 minutes.
- Latest videos // Your performance from your 10 latest videos.
- Stories // Your performance over the last 7 days from your latest Stories.
Even deeper, YouTube for Artists gives you specific details on your content’s reach, engagement, audience, revenue, and more. — Learn more about these features and how to use them right here.
In Conclusion…
When it comes to developing your audience, it’s important to understand which aspects of your strategy are working for you and which parts are falling flat. Having access to data that shows you where your streams are coming from, which streaming platforms are performing the best, and even which social media apps are creating the most engagement are all things to pay close attention to.
With services like these, it’s no longer a guessing game. You have concrete data to back up your every move. Use it wisely!
by Francesca | Feb 29, 2024 | Music Marketing
Planning to release a new music video? Congrats! Now it’s time to decide where to drop it. Both YouTube and Vevo offer many great benefits, but they’ve each got their own downsides. Before you release anything, here are some major differences between YouTube and Vevo to consider…
Differences Between Vevo and YouTube Videos
Before we dive in…
Even though your video is technically competing with a larger number of videos on YouTube, that doesn’t mean its capability for exposure is any less. By ensuring your channel and videos are optimized correctly, you can increase the visibility of your videos.
YouTube
1. Access to Creator Studio
- View, analyze and report your channel’s analytics.
- Manage and optimize your individual videos with tags, cards, end screens, etc.
- Set channel and video upload defaults.
2. Total ability to quickly and easily manage all parts of your channel at any time.
3. Ability to upload and take down videos quickly.
4. Livestream capabilities
5. Interaction with your YouTube fans through likes, comments and messages
6. No consideration for feature placement on Vevo.
7. Less likely for videos to go viral unless optimized correctly
Vevo
Vevo is the world’s leading all-premium music video and entertainment platform with over 23 billion monthly views globally. They deliver a personalized and expertly curated experience for audiences to explore and discover music videos, exclusive original programming and live performances from the artists they love on mobile, web and connected TV.
1. You cannot update your Vevo channel yourself, but you can have the below details updated through your distributor per request:
- Artist image
- Channel Banner
- Channel Trailer Video
- Channel Bio (found under “About” tab)
- Google Adwords Account linking
- Playlist Creation
- Video Description update
- Video thumbnail update
2. Vevo makes you look more “legit” as an artist, since mainstream artists also have Vevo channels like Billie Eilish, The Weeknd, Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, etc.
3. Vevo doesn’t guarantee more exposure, but has more potential to go viral, as Vevo videos tend to be surfaced more in searches due to their partnership with YouTube.
4. More likely to get your video featured in a well-exposed playlist, i.e. Vevo playlists.
5. Can be linked to your Official Artist Channel (OAC) so Vevo releases automatically show up on your OAC.
6. YouTube Premieres can be done with Vevo videos and are arranged through your distributor.
7. Vevo can set your personal channel as a Channel Moderator to the Vevo channel to manage comments on your Vevo videos.
8. Vevo also distributes music videos to Apple TV, Pluto TV, Samsung TV and Roku – just to name a few.
Can you release on both platforms?
Yes!
In fact, we recommend it. — Odds are your only content on your YouTube channel isn’t solely official content like music videos, live performances, track videos, or lyric videos (all of which that can be uploaded to your Vevo channel upon approval instead!). You can also upload to your personal channel videos like interviews, behind the scenes, teasers, fan contests, vlogs, etc.
If you decide you want to use your personal YouTube channel for all of these videos and then get a Vevo channel created to release more official content, you can easily get them linked together via an Official Artist Channel through your distributor.
- If you decide to do this though, please make sure you don’t upload the same video twice (once via a distributor to your Vevo channel, and a second upload to your personal channel) since doing so will cause two versions of the video to go live on YouTube – which divides views, confuses fans, and affects overall monetization opportunities.
Because of this, we recommend that you release your official music videos with a distributor to your Vevo channel, and then utilize your personal YouTube channel for interviews, behind the scenes, teasers, fan contests, vlogs, and/or whatever else that has made sense for your brand as an artist.
In Conclusion…
We hope that this article has given you some things to consider and gives you the direction you need to optimize your next video release.
Good luck!
by Francesca | Feb 15, 2024 | Music Industry, Music Marketing
Want to learn how to build a fanbase and improve your skills as an artist from one of the best in the business? Musician’s Fanbase Growth Workshop offers all of that in their weekly Wednesday workshop. Here’s how to secure your spot for free.
Reserve Your Spot for Modern Musician’s Fanbase Growth Workshop
Here’s the rundown…
Founder of Modern Musician and host of the Modern Musician Podcast, Michael Walker is hosting an in-depth “fanbase growth workshop” for artists who are ready to level up their music career, and thrive during these challenging times. In this workshop, he’s revealing some of their best techniques that are usually reserved for his $5000+ clients at Modern Musician. This is the first time he’s given away this information for free, and you don’t want to miss out on the valuable insights he has to offer.
“How do I get involved?”
Every Wednesday @ 3PM ET, they offer LIVE training in 3 main topics:
- Artistic Identity: Hone in your music brand to give you clarity about who you are as an artist, so you can attract the best-fit audience who will love your music.
- Thriving Fanbase: Set up your marketing so we can build your loyal fanbase based on your artistic identity and your strengths.
- Revenue Multiplier: Create an automatic monetization system to fund your artist lifestyle so you don’t sacrifice your talent or lose touch with your musical identity.
If you’re interested in tuning in, click this link to register in one-click:
Reserve Your Seat – Fanbase Growth Workshop
Once you’ve done that, you’ll receive a “welcome pack” with all the resources needed to take part in this special, one-time event.
——
Want to learn more?
In addition, you may have also heard about the Gold Artist Academy, Modern Musician’s flagship mentoring program. This program is a great resource for artists who are ready to truly commit and step up their game.
- Learn more about the program, plus testimonials and additional details, right here.
See you there!
by Francesca | Feb 8, 2024 | Music Marketing
It’s undeniable that TikTok has given many up and coming artists a chance at major exposure with its algorithm. As long as your music is on TikTok for you (and other creators) to use, you have the chance to promote yourself through challenges, trends and so much more. If you’re ready to promote your music on TikTok, here’s everything you need to know.
How To Use TikTok To Promote Your Music
First things first…
Before you can start anything, you have to upload your music to TikTok.
Back in 2019, we announced our partnership with TikTok which allows our clients to deliver their tracks onto TikTok for its millions of creators to use in their videos. This offers an amazing opportunity for our clients to spread their music through one of the most popular apps in the world, with us to guide them along.
In the meantime, think about what part of your track has the most potential for going viral. — That means 15 seconds of catchy, groovy greatness that you can imagine people singing or dancing along to. Don’t be afraid to dig into your back catalog to find songs that truly fit the bill. Oftentimes when one song goes viral, it may bring some of your other songs right up with it.
Hop On TikTok Trends
Every week, something new is trending on TikTok. Hell, it seems like something new has taken the platform by storm almost every day. Even if a trending challenge doesn’t necessary align with your brand, it’s still useful to get involved. If an unrelated video of yours goes viral, it may bring your other posts along for the ride.
Hopping on the latest trend is a great way to get seen by more people and blow up the engagement on your present and past posts. Whether you’re on the hunt for audio, effect or hashtag trends, there are tons of ways to find what’s popping off on TikTok. // To help you out, we wrote a whole post that gives you all the sneaky tips and tricks we know about how to find what’s trending.
Post Music Video Sneak Peeks
While you’re working on that new music video, take behind-the-scenes clips during the process. Even better, you can tease final cuts of the video by posting them as a Reel before the launch date. You can do this by using captions like, “Coming Soon… 👀” with the launch date worked in. You can even link to Spotify for presaves, YouTube premieres, or wherever else they can find your music once it comes out.
Create Your Own Challenges & Trends
If you want to go viral on TikTok, you’re going to have to get creative. The most popular challenges and trends on TikTok are lip syncing, dance routines and comedy type videos. That’s why it’s important to have songs on TikTok that are catchy enough to support these type of challenges.
Need some ideas?
- If you hate dancing, you can tell your fans to create their own dances to your song and tag you on TikTok.
- If you have a song with amazing lyrics, do a VoiceOver of you lip syncing along with the lyrics on screen.
- Want fan engagement? Tell your audience to do covers of your song and repost them when they do.
- Want to collaborate with others? Try the Duet, Stitch and Collaboration features.
Just how tagging other creatives can double your video’s reach, so can collaborations. Finding your niche is important in anything you do, as it helps engage a more loyal audience and helps you secure yourself in a more manageable, less saturated space. — Be sure to comment, like, share, duet, other artist’s work and encourage your followers/viewers to do the same.
Try Covers Of Your Song in Different Styles
One of my favorite trends that musicians like to do on TikTok is when they give new life to an existing song by creating new versions of it you would have never expected. For example, those videos captioned: “If my song, [blank] was a metal song” or “If my song, [song here] was an EDM banger”. As an artist, you have many strengths you can leverage when creating content. If you’re low-key really good at making beats, show off that talent with a cover. If you aren’t so good at another genre, you can ask your audience to do their own version.
Use The Right Hashtags
Hashtags are important on pretty much every platform. With the right hashtag strategy, you can increase the reach, engagement and visibility of your posts on TikTok in no time. Luckily, figuring out which hashtags will work best is fairly simple.
- First, go ahead and open the app, tap on the “Discover” tab on the bottom of your screen and scroll through the previews of all the trending hashtags.
- Now, let’s dive a little deeper. In the search bar at the top, go ahead and search whatever hashtags are relevant to you. Once you hit search, you’ll be able to see related hashtags and view counts for each of them.
- With a quick Google search, you’ll see that the most popular hashtags for musicians are: #music, #singer, #artist, #songwriter, #livemusic, #newmusic, and the list goes on and on.
However, these are just the most popular, overall hashtags. If you’re looking for more interactive engagement with a more segmented fanbase, we recommend looking into artists like you on the platform and checking out the hashtags that are popular in their circles. Then, you can make a solid list of these and keep them in mind for your own efforts.
Try TikTok’s Promote Feature
With Promote, you can turn any organic TikTok video into an ad, right from the app. You can start reaching new audiences, build a following, and drive traffic to your business website. Once you run a Promote campaign, you also get insights into your audience and how your videos are performing to help you improve your efforts moving forward.
We wrote a whole post that breaks down exactly how to do this; you can check that out right here.
Utilize TikTok Analytics
Driven by machine learning and a technical algorithm, TikTok thrives on data and metrics. If you want to improve your content’s performance, understanding your profile’s detailed analytics is the first step to improving your efforts. With it, your data-filled dashboard is separated into three main categories: Overview, Content and Followers.
By clicking through each tab, you’ll be able to see videos views, profile views, follower count, and follow demographics in terms of gender and geography. With this information, you can see which videos are working and which aren’t. Then, you can adapt your strategy as you go to improve in the future.
Not sure how to find them? Check out, “Where to Find Detailed Analytics for TikTok” to learn all the different ways to access these analytics.
In Conclusion…
Aside from being an addicting past time for most of us, TikTok is also a wonderful tool for your promotional efforts as an artist. If you work with the algorithm and all the features the platform has to offer, you’ll see your content start to thrive.
On that note… As you reach a wider audience on TikTok, you can funnel those users over to your socials and streaming platforms in the process. By taking steps like adding links to other platforms in your bio, cross promoting content on your feed and following the tips mentioned above, you can grow your audience everywhere in no time.
Good luck!
