Splits get agreed the day you write the song.

The one-text rule

The day a song gets finished, someone sends the thread: song title, who wrote it, what the split is. Everyone thumbs-up. Done. That text is worth more than any lawyer letter written five years later, because it was agreed while everyone still loved each other.

Equal splits for everyone in the room is a fine default and a common one. So is splitting by who actually wrote words and melody. Either works. Silence is the only wrong answer.

Register, because live plays pay

Join a performing rights organization as a writer. ASCAP charges a one-time fee of about fifty dollars; BMI is free for songwriters. Pick one, register your songs, and then use the part almost no bar band uses: both organizations pay you for playing your own originals live. You report your setlist and venue after the show, and checks follow.

It is not rent money at first. It is real money over a year of steady gigging, and it is your money, currently unclaimed.

• Every writer in the band joins a PRO, once
• Every original gets registered with its agreed split
• Someone owns the job of reporting setlists after shows

The band agreement nobody wants to write

One page. Who owns the band name if someone quits. Who owns the recordings. How a member leaves and what they take. Write it in plain English, everyone signs it, put it in a drawer and hopefully never read it again.

Bands that skip this page are betting the name they spent ten years building on nobody ever getting angry. Bad bet. I watched it go wrong more than once.

Covers are someone else's paycheck

Playing covers live is fine; the venue's license covers the room. Recording a cover means a mechanical license, which is cheap and easy through your distributor. Putting a cover on YouTube without one means the money, if any, routes to the original writer. Know which game you're playing before you press record.