How to split money in a band, fairly.

Every band gets there eventually. A gig pays out, someone fronted the petrol, the guitarist bought strings for everyone, and now there’s a group chat argument nobody wanted. Money is where the fun quietly leaks out of a band. Here’s how to split it fairly, and how to stop it from becoming your second job.

Agree before the gig, not after

The single biggest source of band money fights is deciding how to split once the cash is already in. Everyone remembers the deal differently, and everyone remembers it in their own favour. Agree the split once, write it down somewhere the whole band can see, and you kill most of the arguments before they start.

The common ways bands split

Equal split. Everyone gets the same. Simple, and fair for most bands where everyone puts in roughly the same. It’s the default for a reason.
By role. The people on stage take a share, the sound engineer or the driver gets a set fee or a smaller cut. Fair when some people carry more of the night than others.
Costs first, then split. Take the shared costs off the top, the petrol, the backline hire, the person who mixed, then divide what’s left. This is the one most bands actually need, because there are almost always costs.

Pick one. Say it out loud. Done.

The part everyone forgets: who fronted what

The split is the easy bit. The mess is the money that moved before payday. Someone always fronts something: the van, a set of strings, the round of drinks that somehow became “band expenses”. If nobody tracks it, one person quietly subsidises the band and resents it by month three. Keep a running list of who paid for what, and settle it when the gig money lands. A photo of the receipt in the moment beats a memory three weeks later.

A simple method that works

Agree the split: equal, by role, or costs-first.
Every expense gets a photo of the receipt and a name: who paid.
When a gig pays out, take the shared costs off the top and pay back whoever fronted them.
Split what’s left by the deal you agreed.
Everyone can see the numbers. No spreadsheet that nobody updates.

Or let Kurtt do the counting

This is exactly the boring part Kurtt takes off your plate. Snap a receipt and it reads the amount, the supplier and the date. Income and expenses sit in one place your whole act can see, so the split is just maths, not a fight. See what Kurtt does, or what it costs.

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