First things first, let’s specify what kind of royalties we are talking about. As you probably already know, every track has two copyrights: the “sound recording” and the “composition”. We are talking about the royalties that are generated from the “sound recording”, which is often referred to as the “Master”. This is the final product that the artist(s) and producer(s) have contributed to making, and that you have distributed to streaming services via Make Waves. The “composition” refers to the underlying musical composition of the track. The composition royalties are usually managed through a Publishing service and not a distribution service.
If you have recorded and produced your track on your own, the royalties are all yours! You own 100% of it. However, if there are more people involved, you should probably know how your royalties will be split before entering this information into the Make Waves platform.
Once you have submitted and delivered your release using Make Waves, you are then able to enter the royalty splits in the platform. When you are in the Release overview page, you can go to the tab that says 'Splits'.
If you have recorded and produced the track on your own, there’s nothing you have to add or change on this page. Because in that case, 100% of the generated revenue will go to you. If, however, you do want to add a producer or another collaborator that should receive a royalty split, you can go ahead by clicking ‘Edit split’ or 'creating a split'.
This will then take you to the following screen:
Let’s say I’m adding a producer who is receiving a 35% royalty split. I can simply click on 'Add split', fill in their email address and change their split percentage to 35%. This will then leave me with the remaining 65%.
If you are delivering a project with multiple tracks, you can easily copy the splits from another track within the same project. Simply click on 'Copy from'.
And select the track you want to copy the splits from.
When you press ‘Save splits’, the producer will automatically receive an invite to accept this share. You can monitor the status of the invitation or copy the invite link and send this to them via a text message under the 'Collaborators' section.
If the producer already has a Make Waves account, their split will become visible in their own account once they accept the invite. They will start receiving their revenue share once this starts coming in, which is about 2-3 months after the release has gone live.
It is possible to update the split % on a track, even after you’ve already sent someone an invite. You can go back in, edit the percentage breakdown and even invite a new collaborator if needed.
When a split percentage is updated, the person who previously received an invite will get an email saying their share has been updated. If someone’s split needs to be revoked, for whatever reason, you can find that option under 'Collaborators':
You will then get the following pop-up, after which you can choose to ‘revoke split’:
When you already have a Make Waves account and you receive a split invite from someone else, it's very easy to claim this. When logged in, you can go to the Splits overview page via the menu on top of the page. On the right, you have the option to fill in an invite code. This code can be found in the email that was sent to you.
If you don't have a Make Waves account yet, you can very easily sign up, accept the split invite and you will automatically receive your share once the royalties are coming in.