So Your Co-Writer Signs A Song Contract. What Does That Mean For You?

So, your co-writer signs a song contract. What does that mean for you? This is one of the top questions asked at SongTown.

Chapters

Chapter 1: You’ve written a song with your co-writer

Chapter 2: Do you have to sign the contract your co-writer signs?

Chapter 3: What if I’m pressured into signing the contract?

Chapter 4: Recap

Chapter 1: You’ve written a song with your co-writer

So, you’ve written a song and you’ve written that song with your co-writer John Smith. Now John takes that song and plays it for a publisher. The publisher loves it and says, “Hey, I want to sign that to a song contract and pitch it and get an artist to record it.” John contacts you excited about the contract he wants to sign with the publisher.

Chapter 2: Do you have to sign the contract your co-writer signs?

So, you want to know, do you have to sign the contract that John is signing? To better answer this question, let’s quickly break down the split.

Let’s look at a song on a pie chart. Your portion of the song for your half of the song is half of the circle and John’s is the other half, 50/50 split.

Now, in addition, the moment you write the song, each of the writers also owns the publishing, unless you have a publisher. And even if you don’t have a publisher, many people don’t realize, you are self-publishing that song yourself. So, if you don’t have a publishing company, you still own the publishing side of that song.

So now the song is split up into four parts. You have your publishing share and the writer share. Your co-writer John Smith will have his writer’s share, but the publisher he is signing with gets his portion of publisher share.

Chapter 3: What if I’m pressured into signing the contract?

Now, if John Smith calls you and says that he signed a contract with “Sketchy Publishing Company”. A lot of times, this is the next thing that happens. “Sketchy Publishing Company” tells John Smith to contact you and pressure you to sign your publishing away.

They will try to get you to sign your rights to your publishing over to “Sketchy Publishing Company”. That is your publishing, you own it 100%. So, if they do ask for it, don’t feel bad in the slightest about saying, no, I keep my own publishing.

Chapter 4: Recap

Just to recap, when your co-writer signs a publishing deal, it in no way affects your portion of the song. You are free and clear to do what you want with your portion. And if that song gets recorded, you will get paid for your writer share and you will get paid for your publisher share of your half of the song. Your co-writer will get paid for their half of the writers share of the song, but the publisher will take your co-writer’s publishing share.