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Getting paid

The 90-Minute Royalty Registration Checklist for Independent Artists

By Boboy Watson·Last verified September 1, 2026·Getting paid

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Most people never do this because it exists in their head as a vague, indefinite obligation rather than a task with an end.

So here it is as a task with an end. One sitting, roughly ninety minutes, and afterwards every song you release is connected to every organisation in the United States that collects money for it. I did mine years later than I should have, and the only thing that made it hard was not knowing it was finite.

What do you need before you start?

Having these to hand is the difference between ninety minutes and an abandoned attempt halfway through:

• Legal name, address and date of birth
• Bank account and routing numbers for ACH direct deposit
• A list of your released songs with their ISRCs — DistroKid, TuneCore and CD Baby all show these in your release dashboard
• Two or three possible publisher names, because the first is quite likely to be rejected for conflicting with an existing entity
• Your existing PRO member number, if you already have a writer account somewhere
• A note of any publishing administration add-on you have already bought, such as DistroKid Publishing or Songtrust

What does each organisation actually collect?

Before you start clicking, know what each account is for. These are four different systems and none of them is a backup for another.

Step 1 — ASCAP or BMI, both halves (30 minutes)

Do this first. It has the longest lead time before your account is usable, it is the only step in the sitting where a fee can still appear, and the member numbers it produces are asked for by every registration that follows.

1. Pick ASCAP or BMI. SESAC is invitation only and is not an option you have. A writer account is free at both, so cost only enters on the publisher side: at ASCAP, applying as writer and publisher at the same time is free, while at BMI the publisher half carries a one-time fee.
2. Register as a writer. This is the account tied to you personally as the author of the composition.
3. Register a publisher entity if you are self-releasing and want the publisher share credited to something you control. Register as an individual publisher, not a corporation, unless you have a business reason to incorporate. At ASCAP, do it inside the same application as the writer account — that is the whole difference between paying nothing and paying $50.
4. Record both member numbers somewhere you will find them again. You will need them at The MLC in the next step.
5. Register your existing works with both shares listed. Creating a publisher account does not retroactively attach it to works you registered before it existed.

Current fees, as listed by ASCAP and BMI and checked on 1 September 2026:

ASCAP's own banner is the source for the first three rows: joining ASCAP is free for writers, or if you join as a writer and publisher at the same time. On the BMI side, the join page asks a publisher applicant for a credit card issued by a US bank for payment of a one-time processing fee and never states the amount, and BMI's publisher agreement PDFs contain no figure either. The BMI pages that used to list $175 for an individual publisher, $250 for a corporation or LLC and $500 for a partnership now return 404; they were last retrieved in August 2026 and cannot be re-verified, so treat them as history rather than as a number to bring to the sitting. If you have read elsewhere that BMI charges $75 for a songwriter, that much is definitely wrong — songwriter affiliation is free.

Do you need a publishing company to collect the publisher share?

No — you need a publisher account, and those are different things.

BMI states on its own FAQ that a new songwriter "will not need to set up a publishing company" and that "Creating a publishing company will not mean that you receive more royalties." That is BMI addressing the idea of incorporating a business, not the publisher account itself. You do not need to form an LLC, register a business name with your state, or pay an accountant to hold the publisher side of your own songs.

What you do need is to know which entity is claiming the publisher share on each work, and to be deliberate about it. If you are with ASCAP, that means asking for the publisher account in the same application as the writer account, where it costs nothing — the $50 is the price of coming back for it separately later. If you are with BMI and starting out, BMI's own advice is that a writer affiliation is enough. Take them at their word, and revisit it when your catalog earns enough to justify a fee you will only see at the point of applying.

Step 2 — The MLC (20 minutes)

Free, and it collects United States mechanical royalties that no other organisation collects for you.

1. Create a member account at themlc.com and register as both a writer and a publisher, matching the setup you just created at ASCAP or BMI. If you are self-administered, you hold both roles.
2. Set payment to ACH direct deposit. The United States minimum is $5 by ACH against $100 by physical check and $250 by wire. This is the single most consequential setting in the account and it takes two minutes.
3. Register your works, matching titles, writers and shares to what you filed with your PRO. Mismatched share splits between The MLC and your PRO are the most common cause of a work sitting unmatched.
4. Search the public database for your own titles before you register them, in case a distributor or administrator already registered them on your behalf.

The MLC pays about 75 days after the end of each monthly usage period, so January usage reaches you in mid-April. Non-US members face a $100 minimum on local bank transfer and check, and $250 by wire.

Step 3 — SoundExchange (10 minutes)

Free — SoundExchange's own wording is "Registering is free, simple, and fast" — and it covers the recording side of non-interactive digital radio, meaning Pandora, SiriusXM and internet radio stations.

1. Register as a featured artist.
2. If you self-release, register as a rights owner as well. Both shares are yours and they are paid separately.
3. Add your recordings with their ISRCs.

SoundExchange publishes its minimums on its FAQ rather than its registration page: direct deposit monthly at $100 accrued or quarterly at $10, and a quarterly paper check at $100.

Step 4 — Confirm what your distributor already covers (10 minutes)

This is the step people skip, and skipping it is how works end up with two claimants and no payment.

Read your actual plan rather than assuming:

• Standard distribution covers the recording side only. DistroKid, TuneCore and CD Baby collect streaming and download royalties on the master.
• A publishing administration add-on changes the picture. DistroKid Publishing collects global digital mechanicals, United States offline mechanicals, global digital public performance, United States offline public performance and worldwide sync. If you bought it, it is registering works on the composition side for you and you should not duplicate those registrations directly at The MLC.
• DistroKid also states that if you are PRO-affiliated, it collects both the publisher and songwriter shares; if you are not affiliated, it collects the publisher share only. Which means your PRO affiliation status changes what the add-on does.
• Songtrust and similar administrators operate the same way — they register on your behalf and take a cut, and their registrations conflict with your own if you file both.

Ten minutes reading the help pages for what you already pay for is the highest-return ten minutes in this whole sitting.

Step 5 — Split sheets for existing songs (20 minutes)

For every song with a collaborator, write down and get signed:

• Every contributor's legal name and contact details
• Each person's role — writer, producer, featured performer, session player
• Composition percentages totalling exactly 100%
• Master ownership, recorded separately from the composition split
• Each contributor's PRO and member number, and their publisher entity if they have one
• Date and signatures from everyone

Do these while everyone is still on good terms. A split sheet is a five-minute document before a song does anything and a negotiation after it does. Registrations at ASCAP, BMI and The MLC will not reconcile without agreed shares, and a work with conflicting claims does not pay anyone.

The running checklist

What commonly goes wrong during the sitting?

Five failure modes account for almost every abandoned attempt, and all five are avoidable in advance:

1. The publisher name is rejected. Names conflict with existing registered entities constantly, and the databases are large. Bring three alternates and treat rejection as routine rather than as a problem to solve on the spot.
2. The ISRCs are not to hand. Half of SoundExchange and a good part of The MLC ask for them. Pull the full list out of your DistroKid, TuneCore or CD Baby dashboard into a text file before you open a single signup page.
3. Share splits do not match between systems. If your PRO registration says 50/50 and The MLC registration says 60/40, the work sits unmatched at both. Decide the split once, write it down, and use the same numbers everywhere.
4. Payment is left on physical check. A member who never changes this setting needs a $100 balance at The MLC instead of $5. It is a default, not a decision, and it quietly costs small catalogs everything.
5. Works are registered twice. Registering directly with The MLC after buying DistroKid Publishing or signing with Songtrust produces two claimants on one composition. Step 4 exists specifically to prevent this.

When does the money actually start arriving?

Registering does not produce a payment that week, and expecting one is how people conclude the whole exercise did nothing. These are the shapes of the delays.

The practical read: register now, and expect the first meaningful deposits from the composition side a couple of quarters out. Judging a release's earnings inside its first three months is judging an incomplete picture.

What is deliberately not on this list?

US Copyright Office registration. It is a real and useful step, and it is not part of the ninety minutes, because it does something different: registration with the US Copyright Office is about enforcing ownership, not about collecting royalties. It costs $45 for a Single Application, $65 for a Standard Application and $65 to register a whole album under Group Registration of Works on an Album of Music.

Do the four collection accounts first. They govern money your catalog is generating right now. Copyright registration governs a dispute that may never happen.

What do you do after the sitting?

Two habits keep this working, and they are both small.

Register each new work before release, not after. Performance royalties accrue from the first public performance and claiming backwards is materially harder than being registered in advance. Registering a new song at your PRO and The MLC is about ten minutes once the accounts exist.

Work through your back catalog over the following weeks, newest and best-performing first, because that is where recoverable money actually is. A song from six years ago with two hundred lifetime streams is not worth the same twenty minutes as last year's most-played release.

The accounts are the hard part, and after ninety minutes you have done them. Everything after this is a ten-minute step per song, forever.

I am an artist who has been through every one of these signups, not a lawyer or an accountant — fees, thresholds and timelines change, so verify at each organisation's own page before relying on a number here.