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What would you actually keep?

Put in a deal's terms: the advance, your share, what it is paid on, and what they spend on you. See, month by month for five years, when it is earned back, what reaches you and what the label keeps. Then the same music on a distribution deal, and on your own. Nothing you type here is saved or sent anywhere.

Put in a deal Three ways, side by side

The deal

Type in the terms from an offer you have, or start from an invented one. Every figure further down moves as you type.

Start from an invented offer

What they offer

Advance

Paid to you up front. It is earned back out of your share before you are paid anything more.

Your share

Distribution fee

The fee is what a distributor keeps before the label is paid: 0 if the label distributes its own music.

Your share is of What the label is paid, after the fee Your percent of what reaches the label once the distributor has its fee. Everything the label is paid Your percent before the distribution fee, so the fee comes out of the label's part. The profit, once everything spent is back A profit split: everything spent, your advance too, comes back first, and what is left is shared.

What they spend on you, and take back first

Only what the contract calls recoupable. If half the video is, put half.

Recording

Video

Marketing

Tour support

In a royalty deal all of it comes back out of your share alone, while the label keeps its own share from the first stream. That is why the label is paid back first.

Your music

Streams a month, every service

From your distributor's statements or your streaming dashboards. Typing 10k or 1.5m works too.

Growth a year+20% a year

About 1.5% more each month.

What a stream pays the recording's owner Estimate

Nobody pays per stream, so this is an estimate: about $0.003 to $0.004 a stream reaches whoever owns the recording, before anybody else's cut. We start at $0.0035; some services pay more, and the handbook has each one's range. Use your own figure if your statements give one.

The same music, two other ways

Without the label, you would pay for

What the label would Only the recording Nothing more

Up front, from you: in a deal the label pays for it, then takes it back.

A distribution deal: you keep85%

No advance, and the masters stay yours. A distributor that keeps more than a fifth is taking more than most do. On your own, with a flat-fee distributor, you keep it all.

What it leaves you

At your numbers, month by month for five years.

This deal, month by month

YouThe label, after what it spent

Move across the chart, tap it, or use the arrow keys, for any month.

Every month, as a table

Three ways, the same music

The same streams signed to this deal, on a distribution deal, and on your own: what would be in your pocket, after paying for whatever you chose above.

What you would have, month by month

Signed to this dealA distribution dealOn your own

Below zero is money you have put in and not yet had back.

Every month, as a table

How the sums work

A simulation with your numbers, not legal or financial advice. A music lawyer reading an offer costs far less than signing the wrong one.

Each month the services pay for your streams at the figure you put in. Nobody pays per stream: the services share out what they take, so the real figure moves with who is listening and where. The handbook has each service's range.
Your streams start where you put them and grow, or fade, by the yearly figure, a little each month.
Your share is counted every month. Labels usually pay twice a year, a few months after, so the money reaches you later than it shows here.
In a royalty deal, the advance and everything recoupable come back out of your share alone. In a profit split, everything spent, the advance too, comes off the top first, and only what is left is shared.
The distribution fee comes off what the services pay before your share is worked out, unless your share is of everything the label is paid.
Only the recordings' streaming money is here. Your songwriting money comes separately, through your PRO and the MLC, and a 360 deal would also take a share of your shows and merch, which this leaves out.
On your own or on a distribution deal you pay up front for what you chose, and keep what the services pay, less any distributor's cut. A flat yearly distribution fee is left out.
Past five years, "earned back" holds your streams where year five leaves them, for up to twenty years.
An advance is normally paid back only out of your share, never out of your pocket. Check that the contract in front of you says so.

More, free

Learn

The other free tools

What streams pay, the codes your money travels on, who pays you for each kind of play, and the red flags in a contract.

Open Learn

Read

Before you sign anything

The handbook's chapter on contracts: the clauses to find first, then deal by deal.

Read the chapter

Your own deals

The Deals tool

What you signed, what it gives away, when it ends and what you owe under it, with offers side by side.

See the Deals tool on example deals (free account)