Splitting royalties on a track versus track with vocal

[elser]

I've never been confronted with this scenario before. I have written a track which was originally instrumental. Later a friend wrote a lyric and melody for it. Now there's a listing that the instrumental track works for, without the vocal. Is there a general practice of how to handle ownership of the track? It's listed as the vocal version with our PROs as 50/50. But since it's the instrumental only should I still treat it that way? And if there isn't a general practice of how to handle the situation I would appreciate hearing anyone's opinion of how they think it should be handled.

[shorttonpro]

Fairly frequent situation actually.

When your vocal track is signed to a catalog, you always are required to send in the instrumental version as well. In these cases, the library will pitch either version of the track under the same title, and you and you're co-writer will split in the income from a placement, vocal or instrumental irregardless.

If you and your co-writer agree that you can non-exclusively also try to sign/place the instrumental version alone, you would simply need to create a new title for this instrumental version and register it you with you as the sole writer. So if the vocal song version was titled "A Sunny Day" any places that use this title will be split. If you title your instrumental version "Warm Summer" then when the instrumental is placed elsewhere, only you'll be paid.

To make this happen, you'll need to stick with non-exclusive contracts as once you've signed it exclusively , you've signed away the rights to both the instrumental and vocal versions. You'll also need to have a written agreement with your co-writer due to the fact that any work intended as to be a joint work is automatically co-written 50/50 unless otherwise agreed upon.

Otherwise, plenty of people still stick with 50/50 on all instrumental places with their co-writer, even if the other only contributed topline after the fact.