If you have a parent-child account setup, Artist Splits is the feature which enables your clients (children users) to create contracts in order to share their royalties with 3rd parties.


HOW TO ACCESS ARTIST SPLITS

  1. You need to have a parent-child account setup or be an API client
  2. You need to have activated the new UI (new dashboard) — Splits is not available in the old dashboard
  3. Splits is located in the Rights section of any music, video or ringtone release:




WHO CAN CREATE ARTIST SPLITS

Any child account user with the Administrator role can create splits.




THE CONTRACTS THAT ARTIST SPLITS CREATE

  • The contracts created are the same exact contracts that your team can create in the Rights section; and Artist Splits contracts will also appear there. When an Artist Splits contract is created, you will still be the one paying the various rights holders. Instead of just paying your direct client, you will also be paying their contributors. 
  • The Artist Splits feature creates track-level contracts so that the royalties from any track can be split amongst different rights holder whenever you do a royalty run.
  • For users who wish to create the same splits across an entire release, they can easily do so by creating splits for one track and then using the "Copy splits from track" option to apply the same splits to all the other tracks.
  • When the payees and splits differ on the various tracks of a release, Artist Splits will further automate the creation of the prorated release-level contract required to handle full-release downloads.


THE ARTIST SPLITS CREATION FLOW

Note that you can use the Impersonate function to explore the Artist Splits flow directly for yourself.

  • If you have enabled the Artist Splits feature for your account, your clients will see the Splits interface on the Rights page of any of their releases.
  • Creating splits is only possible once a release has been distributed as that ensures that the number of tracks can no longer be modified (and therefore that the prorated release-level contract will remain accurate).
  • For any or all tracks, an Admin child user will be able to indicate:
    • The payee name(s)
    • The payee email address(es)
    • The payees' revenue share percentage of the track
  • Note that all splits must be entered at once and they cannot be modified directly by your clients once the splits are saved. If a client needs to modify a split, they will need to contact your support team so that you can modify the related contracts.
  • Also note that if someone tries to add splits for a track/release that is already on a track/release contract, they will be blocked from doing so and notified that a contract already exists and that they should contact your Support team to add/modify the splits.
  • Once the splits are created, you will see new contracts appear in Rights > Contracts. All Splits contracts will have this naming convention:
    • Track contract: [Payee Name - Payee ID] Release Name - Track ISRC
    • Release contract: [Payee Name - Payee ID] Release Name
  • Emails will be sent:
    • To the Splits creator to ask them to verify the email addresses that they've added for their collaborators as providing a wrong email address would result in paying the wrong person.
    • To all the other payees to:
      • Notify them that they've been added to a revshare contract.
      • Add their payment information.
      • If they're already one of your child enterprise or portal payees, have them confirm that they are satisfied with the payee account assigned to them for this revshare.
  • There is no need for you to approve or review the splits. The entire workflow and responsibility for ensuring that the splits and payee setup is correct is delegated to your client and their collaborators.
  • When you do your next royalty run, you will generate statements for these new payees.


MODIFYING A SPLITS CONTRACT

  • You can easily find all Splits contracts by either searching for the Payee ID in the search field (since all Payee IDs are part of the contract name), or by using the Payee filter to filter contracts by Payee.  
  • The important thing to keep in mind when modifying a Splits contract (just like any track contract) is that it has an associated prorated full-release contract (to account for the case of a full release download/purchase) and therefore that you may need to update the prorated splits as well.