Manage Splits: How Royalty Splits Work

What splits cover: streaming royalties vs. direct sales

It's important to understand exactly what revenue this step applies to:

• Streaming and master royalties: This is the revenue collected when your release is streamed or purchased through streaming platforms and digital stores (Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, TIDAL, TikTok, and similar). Manage Splits controls how this revenue is divided among collaborators.
• Direct-to-fan sales: This is revenue from sales made directly to fans through your own EngineEars storefront. Direct sales earnings are not split through this feature. Whatever percentage is set here does not apply to direct sales, that revenue goes to you in full regardless of how streaming splits are configured.

You have two options for this step:

• Keep 100% of all revenue: If you don't want to split streaming and master earnings with anyone, leave yourself allocated at 100% and don't add any collaborators. This is the default.
• Enter splits: If other people contributed to the song (producers, featured artists, writers, engineers, etc.) and should share in the streaming and master revenue, add them as collaborators and assign each person a percentage.

Adding collaborators to a split

Click Add Collaborator to invite someone to the split. You can add anyone who contributed to the song, writers, producers, engineers, featured artists, or any other collaborator, and assign their percentage of the streaming and master revenue.

Here's what happens after you add a collaborator:

• Each invited collaborator receives an email invitation to accept the split. If they don't already have an EngineEars account, they'll be asked to create one before accepting.
• Collaborators only see the percentage they've been assigned, not the percentages or identities of other collaborators on the split. This keeps each person's arrangement private.
• If a collaborator declines or never responds to the invitation, EngineEars holds their portion of the revenue until the split is accepted.
• Once every invited collaborator has accepted, payouts are automatically distributed according to the agreed percentages going forward.
• To actually receive payouts, each collaborator (including you) needs to have Stripe set up and linked to a bank account on their EngineEars account.

Fixing a split that doesn't add up to 100%

The Total Allocated bar at the top of the page tracks your running total, and it must equal exactly 100% before you can continue. If it doesn't:

• Check each collaborator's percentage field and adjust until the total reads 100%.
• If you've added a new collaborator, make sure to lower your own percentage (or another collaborator's) by the same amount you gave the new person, since the total doesn't adjust automatically.
• Remove a collaborator entirely with the X next to their row if they shouldn't be part of the split.

A few things worth knowing about how changes to splits work after they've been submitted:

• Updating a percentage on a split that collaborators have already accepted requires all of them to accept the change again before it takes effect. If even one collaborator declines or the request expires, the previously accepted split stays in place.
• Changes to splits are never applied retroactively. Adding, removing, or adjusting a collaborator only affects earnings going forward from the point the change is accepted.