Membership Change
Sometimes, a band member leaves and decides that they want to continue to use the bands name and logo. This can cause problems, for example when Roger Waters left Pink Floyd and the other band members got custody of the name.
When a band member leaves, all group contracts are no longer deemed to include that person, but if that person has signed a recording or management agreement, they will still have certain obligations. The leaving member is entitled to take back any equipment he/she brought to the group, or to the value of same.
Who writes the song – who gets what share?
The song writing aspects of a musician’s career have the biggest financial impact, due to the fact that songwriting generates more revenue.
The income from performance royalties will be sent to the writer or partly to his/her publisher. The recognised share from writing a song is usually divided into two, allowing 50% for the music and 50% for the lyrics.
Writers should agree and divide the shares at the beginning, not the end!
If group ‘A’ had a hit record written by four members, this following split may occur.
Lyrics written by Smith
Music written by Smith/Jones/James/Rogers
Shares are as follows:
Smith = 62.5%
Jones = 12.5%
James = 12.5%
Rogers = 12.5%
The majority share will go to the person writing the lyric and a contribution to the musical composition. There are no shares recognised for arrangements!
Royalty shares on A and B-sides
The share of royalty income generated by writers was traditionally divided as to ‘A’ and ‘B’ sides on a record. With more common formats such as CD, the royalties might be divided ‘Pro-Rata’ (between the amount of tracks contained on that release). For example a CD single may contain four tracks. The writer(s) of each song would each receive ¼ of the total publishing income. In the case of a compilation album, the writers would have a royalty shared between the various writers with tracks on that album.
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