A split sheet is a short written agreement, signed by everyone who wrote a song, that records what percentage of the songwriting each person owns. It is usually one page. It names the song, the date and place it was written, every writer's legal name, their performing rights organisation and IPI number, their publisher if they have one, their contact details, and the percentage next to each name. Those percentages have to total exactly 100. Everyone signs. That is the entire document, and it can be written on a phone in five minutes.
The reason to bother is that without one, a song written by two or more people in the United States is a joint work, and absent a written agreement the co-authors are generally treated as equal co-owners regardless of who did more. Two writers, 50/50. Three writers, a third each. That default is the law's tidy guess at a messy room, and it is often not what anyone in the room remembers agreeing to. A split sheet replaces the guess with a record, signed while the memory is still fresh and nobody has anything to gain by remembering differently.
Templates vary, and any of them work as long as the fields below are present. What matters is that a stranger reading the sheet two years from now can identify the song, the people, and the shares without phoning anyone.
| Field | What to write | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Song title | The final title plus any working title the file was saved under | Sessions get renamed. The working title is often the only link between the sheet and the audio file |
| Date and location | The date of the session and the studio or city | Establishes when the agreement was made, which matters if anyone later disputes it |
| Writer legal name | Legal name first, professional or stage name in brackets | PROs and publishers register against legal names, not artist names |
| PRO and IPI/CAE number | ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR or the local equivalent, plus the nine to eleven digit IPI | Without it, registrations mismatch and royalties sit unclaimed |
| Publisher and publisher PRO | Publishing entity name, or write "self published" or "none" | Tells a licensor who they actually have to negotiate with |
| Contribution | Music, lyrics, topline, production, or a plain sentence | Context for the number, and evidence of authorship rather than just presence |
| Writer share percentage | A number to two decimal places if needed, all shares totalling 100 | This is the point of the document. Sheets that total 99 or 105 get rejected at registration |
| Master ownership note | Who owns the recording, and in what proportion | A separate right from the song. Sync needs both, so record both |
| Samples or interpolations | Any sample, loop pack, interpolated lyric or AI generated element, with source | Undisclosed samples are the fastest way to lose a placement after it is won |
| Contact details | Email and phone for each writer | You will need to reach someone years later for a clearance that has a 48 hour deadline |
| Signature and date | Wet signature, initials, or a typed name in an emailed PDF | Makes it an agreement rather than a note. Email confirmation is imperfect but far better than nothing |
Streaming and radio tolerate ambiguity for a while. Royalties accrue, disputes get resolved eventually, nothing stops. Sync does not work that way. A licence is signed before the scene locks, the production's lawyers need a clean chain of title, and if the chain has a question mark in it the song is dropped and another one is chosen. The deadline does not move for your paperwork.
This is where the phrase one stop comes from. A one stop song is one where a single party can grant both the publishing side and the master side in one agreement. If you wrote a song alone and own the recording, you are one stop and you should say so in your pitch, because it is a genuine competitive advantage over a major label catalog that needs three approvals. If you co-wrote with two other people, you are not one stop unless you have pre-cleared authority to license on their behalf, and pretending otherwise wastes everybody's week.
Practically, that means your clearance status belongs in the pitch email itself, not in an attachment. One line: writers, shares, who controls the master, any samples. The pitch email templates show where that line sits, and the broader walkthrough in the sync licensing pitch guide covers what a supervisor is scanning for in the first ten seconds. If you want to see what a finished, clearance ready pitch looks like end to end, there is a worked example here.
Most writers reading this have a back catalog with no paperwork at all. That is normal and it is fixable, but not all at once.
Getting the catalog into that kind of order is the same preparation that makes every other route work. It is also what agents, libraries and supervisors are all quietly selecting for, which is the point I made at length in how to get sync briefs, and the organising habits carry over from building a sync ready catalog.
Pitchkit does not manage split sheets, store ownership percentages, generate agreements or verify clearance. None of that is in the app, and I would rather say so plainly than imply otherwise. Splits are paperwork, and paperwork belongs in your own signed documents and your PRO registrations.
What Pitchkit does is the step splits make possible. Paste in a brief and it ranks your entire catalog by fit, from the audio itself: tempo, key, energy, mood, lyrics and artist references. Your picks land in a clean pitch folder, named and ready to send. Clearance is what makes a pitch viable; matching is what makes it fast.
One caveat, stated plainly: none of this is legal advice. Copyright rules differ by country, and anything with real money attached deserves a music lawyer who can read your specific situation. What holds everywhere is that a written record beats a shared memory.
Related reading: how to get sync briefs, how to pitch a song for sync licensing, and how sync placements actually pay.
Two things, and neither is good. Legally, in the United States, a song written by two or more people with the intent that their contributions merge into one work is a joint work, and absent a written agreement saying otherwise the co-authors are treated as equal co-owners. Three writers means roughly a third each, whether one of you wrote every word or only suggested the title. This is general information rather than legal advice, and the details get complicated fast, which is exactly the argument for writing it down while everyone still agrees.
Practically, the bigger cost is the deal you lose. A supervisor with a Friday deadline who asks who owns this and gets a vague answer moves to the next song, because an unclear chain of title is a legal risk their production will not carry. Missing paperwork does not usually cause a lawsuit. It causes a placement that quietly never happens, and you never find out why.
You do not need an agreement with yourself, but you should still keep a one line ownership record for every solo song: 100 percent writer share to you, your PRO and IPI number, 100 percent master ownership to you, and a note on whether any sample, loop pack, session player or featured vocalist has a claim. That last part is where solo songs stop being solo. A producer who sent you a beat, a friend who played the solo, or a paid topline writer can all hold rights you forgot about.
The practical reason is speed. When a sync request arrives you will be asked to confirm ownership in writing, often within a day. Having a file that already says 100 percent, one stop, no samples turns a scramble into a copy and paste. Writers who can answer the clearance question instantly get asked again.
One stop means a single party can grant every right needed to use the recording in picture, both the publishing side, which is the song itself, and the master side, which is the specific recording. A supervisor licensing a one stop song signs one agreement with one person instead of chasing four writers, two publishers and a label across time zones with a deadline running.
That convenience has real value on short timelines, and it is one reason independent writers who control their own masters win placements against bigger catalogs. You cannot honestly call a song one stop unless the paperwork backs it up, which loops back to the split sheet: the document that proves who holds the publishing shares, plus a clear record of who owns the recording.
No. Pitchkit does one job: you paste in a sync brief and it ranks your entire catalog by fit, using the audio itself for tempo, key, energy, mood, genre, lyrics and artist references, then builds a clean pitch folder of your picks. It does not store splits, generate agreements, track co-writer signatures or check clearance, and it will happily rank a song whose paperwork is a mess.
So the two jobs sit next to each other. Splits live in your own signed documents and your PRO registrations. Pitchkit answers the question of which songs to send while the window is open. The free trial covers your first 30 songs with every feature working, and $39 once removes the cap.
The free trial is the whole Mac app with the catalog capped at 30 songs: brief matching, artist references, lyric transcription and pitch folders all included. No account, no card, no expiry. $39 once removes the cap.
Download free trial: 30 songs →