Songwriting, Publishing & Distribution
Standard Operating Approach @ The Wonder Space
Master Recording Royalties
At The Wonder Space, we operate on standard pop splits for sound recording royalties (masters)—evenly divided across all key contributors. As a Wonder Space artist or hired vocalist for a Wonder Space Project, you'll get an equal share via a SymphonicMS payee invite, with producer / studio retaining primary ownership.
Songwriting & Publishing
Songwriting splits are handled separately via split sheets—Wonder Space provides SoundCredit invites for easy collaboration and credits. As this is not legal advice, please make sure you do the [often tedious] research on songwriting and publishing. You will need to do things like…
Register with a PRO (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC)
Register with MLC
Consider a publishing administrator (SongTrust) or handle things on your own
Email your full PRO name and IPI number to your producer ASAP
Next Steps
Expect SymphonicMS and SoundCredit invites. This is our standard producer/studio process—equal master splits promote fairness while keeping projects moving.
In your independent research, you will want to understand all of the things….
Master / Master Recording / Masters
Publishing
Publishing Admin / Pub Admin deal
Co-publishing deal / Publishing deal
Credits
Pop splits
Song splits
Split sheet
Royalties
Distribution
Sound recording
PRO
IPI
ISRC
Catalog
Sync / Sync rights
Single
EP
Album
Instrumental
Stems
Production
Record (an individual song song)
Stream
Catalog
SONGWRITER / PUBLISHING RESOURCES
Ari’s Take - if you only look at one resource, consider this one. It’s a long article with lots of graphics to explain songwriting and publishing. It also has a comparison chart of TuneCore and Songtrust, two different publishing administrators. A newer pub admin is KoSign.
Note: two of the following videos will mention KoSign. I am not suggesting you do or don’t apply for KoSign. I do not use them, they’re a very similar website to Songtrust and TuneCore.
KoSign is an approval-based publishing admin. They are a part of a larger company called Kobalt that I am signed to in a publishing admin deal. Again, I am not endorsing either company. Videos below have a lot of helpful details regardless of if you choose to admin on your own or use a pub admin. —jg