For: Releasing and earning artists (RA, EA) and label managers (LM) You'll need: A release in progress, plus the email addresses of any collaborators you want to share royalties with Time: 10 minutes to set up, longer if you're inviting collaborators
Quick answer
When you create a split, every collaborator has to accept their share by email before any money is paid out. Until then your earnings sit safely in escrow. Once everyone has accepted, the split is cleared and earnings flow into wallets at the agreed percentages. If you later edit a cleared split, the old percentages keep paying until the new ones are accepted.
Step-by-step
Open your release and go to Royalty splits.
Choose Per release (one split applies to every track) or Per track (different splits per track — coming soon).
Add each collaborator by name, email, and percentage share. Recording splits and publishing splits are set separately — see "Why it works this way" below.
Make sure each side adds up to exactly 100%. The Save button stays disabled until it does.
Click Save & continue. Collaborators receive an invite email asking them to accept their share.
Track who has accepted on the splits page. You can resend or revoke invites from there.
Why it works this way
Royalty splits decide real money, so they need everyone's agreement. The three states you'll see are:
Provisional — at least one collaborator hasn't accepted yet. Any royalties earned in this state are held safely in escrow. Nobody is paid, not even you as the release owner. This protects you from an unhappy collaborator later disputing money that was already withdrawn.
Cleared — everyone has accepted. From this point, earnings flow into wallets at the agreed percentages as soon as our streaming statements arrive. This is the steady state most of your releases will sit in.
Proposing — you've edited a cleared split, but not everyone has re-accepted yet. The previous percentages keep paying out so no one's income stops. The new percentages only take effect once everyone re-accepts.
Becoming cleared for the first time is a one-way door — escrow releases at that moment, and any money that was held now flows to wallets at the agreed shares. After that, edits go through the proposing flow.
Recording and publishing royalties are tracked separately because they come from different sources. Recording royalties are the earnings from the master recording itself, paid by streaming services. Publishing royalties cover the underlying composition (melody, lyrics) and are usually collected by performance rights organisations such as BUMA/STEMRA, ASCAP, or BMI — not by us. You still record publishing splits here so the rights are documented, but payouts on Collabhouse cover recording royalties only.
Common problems
Totals don't add up to 100% — adjust shares until each side hits exactly 100%. The page shows the current total in red until it's correct.
A collaborator isn't responding — resend the invite from the splits page, or revoke and re-add them with a corrected email.
You need to remove someone who already accepted — that counts as an edit, so it moves the split into proposing. The change takes effect once the remaining members accept.