New SPLITS App From Create Music Group Aims to Solve Songwriting Disputes

For collaborating songwriters, artists and producers, splitting up contributions to a song can be tedious and downright confusing -- often leading to thorny disputes. A new app called SPLITS aims to eliminate those hassles from the get-go, helping creators get paid in the process.

In the free app, launched by indie startup Create Music Group, collaborators can generate and sign a split agreement -- the document that clarifies individual contributions to a track for publishers -- straight from their phones. Create Music Group co-founder Alexandre Williams says he came up with the idea after experiencing first-hand the headaches that can come along with negotiating those agreements. 

“In the three years that we’ve been working with songwriters and artists, we’ve had to deal with thousands of tracks where the songwriting credits were either incomplete or where there were disputes, which ultimately resulted in less royalties for everyone involved,” he explains. “We’re introducing SPLITS to the creative community as an easy, non-confrontational way for creatives to agree upon songwriting contributions at the time of creation, all with just a few clicks right from the screen they spend the most time on everyday -- their phones.”

To create a new agreement through the app, users simply add collaborators and set a contribution percentage for each, upon which SPLITS will automatically send a notice to each collaborator, along with a snippet of the song. From there, collaborators can either click "agree" or make adjustments. 

Once everyone's on board, the official splits agreement is sent to the collaborators' publishers. 

For several months, Create Music Group has invited creatives to test the new app -- and received some positive feedback. "The opportunity provided to writers through SPLITS to deal with publishing from anywhere, anytime right from their phones is a game changer,” says producer PittThaKid (Jaden Smith, 2 Chainz) in a release. Producer GooseTheGuru (Trippie Redd, Lil Skies) adds, "if only there were something like SPLITS available back when I was coming up, I would probably have gotten credit on a lot more records."

The new app is Create Music Group's latest move toward improving rights management. In January, the company began offering clients streaming revenue figures from YouTube, Apple Music/iTunes and Spotify on a daily basis from its distribution platform, and it launched a full-service music publishing division last fall.