Masters, Publishing and Splits, Explained Without the Legal Jargon.
Here is the sentence that costs UK independent artists the most money, and almost nobody says it plainly:
Every song you release is two separate pieces of property, owned separately, collected separately, by different organisations, and you have to register for both.
Not one thing with two names. Two things. If you have only ever set up a distributor account, you are collecting on one of them and leaving the other where it falls.
The two copyrights
Play a track. Two entirely different pieces of property just got used.
The composition. The song itself: the melody, the chords, the lyrics. It exists before anyone records it, and it would still exist if you performed it live and never recorded it at all. This is what people mean by “publishing”. It belongs to the writers.
The recording. The specific performance captured on the specific day, with those specific musicians in that specific room. This is the “master”. It belongs to whoever paid for and made the recording, which for most independent artists is you.
Record a cover version and you own a master but no composition. Write a song for somebody else to record and you own a composition but no master. Do both, which is what most artists do, and you own both, in two separate places, needing two separate registrations.
The money is split unevenly, and not how you would guess
Spotify publishes the shape of it. Roughly two thirds of its music revenue goes out as royalties, and of that, “around four-fifths going to recording and one-fifth to publishing.”
So the master side is around four times larger than the publishing side.
That surprises people who have been told publishing is where the real money lives. What that advice really means is that publishing lasts. Master income is front-loaded around a release and decays. Publishing keeps paying whenever the song is performed, broadcast, covered, synced or played in public, for the whole life of the copyright. Smaller share, much longer tail, and far more sources.
It also means that the artist who never registers as a songwriter is not losing a fifth of their streaming money. They are losing a fifth of their streaming money and all of the other publishing income entirely: radio, television, live performance, public performance in shops and venues, and sync.
Who collects what in the UK
Three organisations. They are not interchangeable, and the names are unhelpfully similar.
PRS for Music represents “songwriters, composers and performers for the use of their musical compositions and lyrics.” This is the composition side. Radio play, TV, live performance, streaming’s publishing share, music in public spaces. If you wrote the song, this is yours and nobody collects it for you.
PPL represents “recording rightsholders and performers for the use of their recordings and performances.” This is the recording side, and it covers two groups of people: whoever owns the master, and the performers who played on it. That second part matters. If you sang or played on a record you do not own, PPL still owes you money as a performer.
MCPS handles mechanical royalties, which are generated when a composition is reproduced: physical copies, downloads, and the mechanical element of streaming. It sits under the PRS for Music umbrella but needs its own registration of the recordings.
In plainest terms: PRS is the song, PPL is the record, MCPS is the copy.
What it costs to be registered
This is the part that makes the omission hard to justify.
PPL is free. Registration is online and there is no joining fee. There is no reason for any performing musician in the UK not to have done this.
PRS for Music charges a one-off £100 to join as a writer member. It is a single payment, not an annual subscription. Since 2023 the fee has been £30 for creators under 25.
That is the entire barrier. One hundred pounds once, or thirty if you are under 25, plus a free PPL registration and an afternoon of admin, and you are collecting on both halves of your own work instead of one.
Compare that to the £79 microphone most artists agonise over for a fortnight.
Splits: the conversation nobody has in time
Registration only works if you know what you own. Which brings us to the part that ends friendships.
A split is simply the percentage of the composition each writer owns. It has to add up to 100, and everyone has to agree.
Three things go wrong, reliably.
It gets decided after the track does well. A split negotiated before anyone knows if the song matters is a five-minute conversation. The same conversation after a sync placement is a dispute.
The producer’s position is left vague. A producer who wrote the chord progression and the topline is a co-writer with a share of the composition. A producer who engineered a session someone else wrote is not, though they may be owed a fee or points on the master. Those are different things and the word “producer” covers both, which is why the word is useless in this conversation. Describe what someone actually did.
Master and composition get confused. They split differently and can split differently from each other. The person who owns 50% of the song may own none of the recording. Agree them separately and write both down.
The fix is unglamorous. Before the session, or at the latest as you finish, write one line per person naming their percentage of the composition and their percentage of the master, and get everyone to reply agreeing to it. A message thread is not a contract, but it is evidence, and it is infinitely better than a shared memory of a good night.
A worked example
Three people make a track. Ade writes the topline and lyrics. Jay makes the beat and writes the chord progression. Nia sings on it but wrote none of it, and Ade paid for the studio day.
The composition was written by Ade and Jay. Nia has no share of it, because performing is not writing. A 50/50 split between Ade and Jay is defensible, and so is 60/40 either way depending on who did more. What is not defensible is deciding in eight months’ time.
The master was paid for by Ade, so Ade owns it, unless they agreed otherwise in advance. Jay might reasonably have negotiated points on it as the producer, and that is a separate conversation from the composition split.
Nia is still owed money. As a performer on the recording she has a PPL claim, whether or not she owns anything and whether or not she is ever paid a fee. This is the part most singers on other people’s records never find out about, and it is free to register.
So one track produces: two composition shares registered with PRS, one master registered by its owner, and three PPL performer registrations. Miss any of those and somebody is not being paid.
What changes if you sign something
Every deal you will ever be offered is a deal about one or both of these two properties, and reading it starts with working out which.
A distribution deal usually touches neither. You keep both copyrights and pay a fee or a percentage for delivery to the platforms.
A publishing deal is about the composition. A record deal is about the master. A deal that takes both is doing two things at once, and should be read as two deals.
That is the whole reason this vocabulary matters. You cannot evaluate an offer if you do not know which of your two properties it is asking for, for how long, and in exchange for what. An artist who understands the difference reads a contract as a series of specific questions. An artist who does not reads it as a wall of text and signs.
The order to do this in
If you have released music in the UK and never done any of this, here is the sequence.
- Register with PPL. It is free. Do it today. Add every recording you have played on, including ones you do not own.
- Join PRS as a writer member if you write. £100, or £30 under 25, one off.
- Register your compositions with PRS, and your recordings with MCPS.
- Write down your splits for everything you have released, and get them agreed in writing by everyone involved.
- Then worry about your distributor, your artwork and your release plan.
Most artists do that list in reverse and never reach the top of it.
What to do
Register with PPL. It is free, it takes one sitting, and it covers work you have already released.
Then open a note and list every track you have put out where somebody else contributed. Next to each one, write what you believe the split is. If you cannot answer for any track on that list, that is the conversation to have this week, while it is still a five-minute conversation.
