RevRule by Payload, for music labels
Royalty splits your artists
can recompute for themselves.
RevRule computes the contractual splits in your own deals from defined rules and recorded revenue events, and keeps a hash-chained ledger of every computation. It is the accounting layer for money your distributor or administrator already paid you, downstream of collection.
The label problem
Quarter-end should not depend on one spreadsheet
Independent labels and publishers run royalty accounting on spreadsheets long after the deals outgrow them. The failure modes are familiar:
Multi-party splits on every track
Recording artist, featured artist, producer points, writer shares, and the label remainder, different on every release and sometimes on every track.
Recoupment tracked by hand
Advances and recoupable costs sit in a side tab. Whether a balance has cleared, and what rate applies after it clears, depends on someone remembering to update it.
Renegotiated splits break the sheet
A split renegotiated mid-period gets applied late, early, or to the whole period. The artists who were underpaid rarely find out from the label.
Statements nobody can check
An artist receives a total. There is no way to trace one line back to the deal term and the revenue event that produced it, short of asking the label to explain its own spreadsheet.
How RevRule addresses it
Versioned rules in, verifiable ledger out
You define each deal once as a Revenue Graph: the participants and the rule for each share, including producer points, featured artist shares, writer shares, and recoupment balances with the rate that applies after an advance clears. Revenue events are recorded against the graph. From there:
Rules are versioned
A renegotiated split takes effect from its effective date. Events before the change compute under the old rule, events after it under the new one, and the ledger records which rule version produced each line.
Recoupment is state, not a side tab
The engine remembers each recoupment balance across events and periods. Post-recoupment rates apply automatically once a balance clears.
Simulate before you run
Simulation is a zero side-effect dry run. Preview exactly what a statement period will compute, check it, and only then run it live.
Every line traces
Each computation lands in a hash-chained ledger, queryable by event, participant, or entry type. The full ledger is returned as JSON, so your own systems can build the payout files in whatever format your payment process needs.
In a synthetic fixture run on a local copy of the engine (fictional 12-artist label, 40 tracks, 5,000 synthetic distributor statement lines, one split renegotiated mid-period), the full ingest and computation completed in about 72 seconds, every sampled ledger line traced to its rule and event, and applying the renegotiated split one period late, the way a spreadsheet update slips, would have misdirected $414.11 on those tracks in a single half-month window. Synthetic data, published so the method can be inspected, not as a customer result.
Scope, stated plainly
What RevRule is and is not
RevRule computes contractual royalty and entitlement splits from the rules and events you give it. It does not collect royalties, license rights, or administer statutory or collective royalties: performance, mechanical, and neighbouring rights administration stays with your PRO, The MLC, SoundExchange, and your distributor, exactly as today. RevRule never holds funds and never executes payments; your existing payment process pays your artists. Tax reporting, including 1099 and W-8BEN handling, remains your obligation. You define the rules in the console, the API, or MCP; RevRule does not read or ingest your agreements, and it does not generate participant statements or settlement-ready payout files. It returns the complete ledger as JSON for your own systems to work from.
Pricing
Buy once for $99, or choose a managed plan
Try the free sandbox first. It runs in your browser on synthetic data, nothing is stored, and there is no trial clock.
| One-Time | Starter | Professional | Business | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $99 once | $29/month | $79/month | $199/month |
| Operations per month | No monthly cap | 10,000 | 100,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Revenue Graphs | Unlimited | 10 | 50 | Unlimited |
| API keys | 1 | 1 | 3 | 10 |
| Term | Perpetual license, never expires | Monthly, while subscribed | Monthly, while subscribed | Monthly, while subscribed |
The one-time license and the managed plans can combine: choosing or cancelling a managed plan never reduces a one-time license. Support is by email on a best-effort basis; no response time is guaranteed. Purchases on Payload controlled surfaces carry a 7 day refund window; on marketplaces, the marketplace's own refund rules govern. Questions: kyler.simmons.partners@gmail.com
Problem guides
Written for the person who runs the numbers
Verified explanations with synthetic, labeled demonstrations: royalty recoupment calculation, a renegotiated split applied late, revenue-share reconciliation spreadsheet risks, contractual waterfall calculation, creator commission splits.