Two songwriters walk into a co-write session. Three hours later they walk out with a song neither of them expected to be any good, and it ends up being the best thing either of them has written that year. Nobody talks about percentages. Why would they? They’re friends, they’re excited, and doing the math on a song that might go nowhere feels like the least Nashville thing you could do in that room.
Six months later the song is picking up real streaming numbers, a sync agent has reached out about placing it in a TV show, and the two writers remember that afternoon completely differently. One of them wrote the hook in ten minutes and thinks that’s worth more than the two verses the other one spent an hour on. The other one built the chord progression from scratch and figures that counts as much as any lyric. Neither one is lying. They’re both just remembering the session the way it felt to them at the time.
That gap between two honest memories is where most co-writing disputes actually live. It’s not fraud, and it’s rarely a bad actor. It’s two people who never wrote down what they agreed on, because writing it down felt unnecessary in the moment.
Why co-writes skip this so often
Country music runs on collaboration in a way a lot of other genres don’t. Co-writing rooms, session players brought in for the afternoon, a band splitting a bill on a week’s notice. That collaborative culture is a real strength of the genre, but it’s also exactly why the paperwork gets skipped. Stopping mid-session to talk percentages feels like it kills the mood. So the conversation gets pushed to “we’ll figure it out later,” and later usually means after the song has already made money and the stakes have changed.
The fix isn’t complicated. A split sheet is a one-page document that records what percentage of a song each contributor owns, signed by everyone in the room before anyone leaves. It takes ten minutes when the session is still fresh and everyone’s on good terms. It becomes a much longer, much more expensive conversation once a song has real value and someone feels shortchanged.
What actually needs to be on it
A split sheet doesn’t need to read like a legal contract. It needs a handful of things, clearly enough that a PRO or a publisher could read it and know exactly who owns what:
- Full legal names of every contributor, not stage names
- What each person actually contributed (melody, lyrics, chord progression, arrangement)
- The ownership percentages, adding up to 100%
- A line saying percentages can’t change unless everyone agrees in writing
- Signatures from everyone in the room
That last point matters more than people think. A text message where someone types “sure, 50/50 works” is a conversation. It’s not a signed agreement, and it won’t hold up the same way if a publisher or a PRO ever asks for proof of ownership.
The same logic applies past the co-write
This isn’t only a songwriting problem. The same gap shows up with session musicians booked by text the night before a gig, or a support act agreeing to a set time and a fee over a phone call. Whatever gets agreed verbally in the excitement of putting a show or a session together is the same thing that gets disputed later, once money or credit is actually on the line. The fix is the same one: put the terms in writing before anyone plays a note, while everyone’s still on the same page about what was agreed.
I work in music contract law, and I built a tool called Musilock so artists could put together something like a split sheet in plain language without needing a lawyer in the room. That’s not the point of this piece, though. The point is simpler: the ten minutes it takes to write down who owns what is the cheapest insurance a co-write will ever have. Skip it, and you’re betting a friendship, and possibly a real amount of money, on two people remembering the same afternoon the same way forever.
Andrés Arismendy – Lawyer – Musilock Founder. He’s written previously about what a split sheet needs to include.
This post was contributed by one of our wonderful readers. If you are interested in having your writing published on CountryMusicNewsBlog.com then check out our Guest Post Guidelines here!
