Answers/Royalties
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Royalties
The four separate pots of money one stream creates, who holds each one, and how to get your name attached to all four.
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- Does DistroKid Collect All of Your Music Royalties?No. DistroKid collects one of the four royalty streams your song generates — the recording (master) side from streaming platforms.
- Where Does the Money From One Stream Actually Go?One stream of one song generates money in four separate places at once: the recording royalty (collected by your distributor), the performance royalty on the composition (collected by ASCAP or BMI), the…
- Is Registering With the MLC Worth It for a Small Artist?Yes, and the calculation is not close, because registration with The MLC is free and takes about twenty minutes. The MLC collects mechanical royalties on US on-demand streams — money DistroKid and your PRO do…
- ASCAP or BMI — Which PRO Should a Beginner Join?BMI is free for songwriters and ASCAP charges a $50 one-time processing fee, so BMI is the cheaper door for a beginner.
- Why Am I Only Getting Half My Performance Royalties?Because performance royalties are split into a songwriter share and a publisher share, roughly half each, and ASCAP and BMI pay each half to whoever is registered for it.
- What Is SoundExchange and Do Independent Artists Need It?SoundExchange collects the digital performance royalty on the sound recording from non-interactive services — Pandora radio, SiriusXM and internet radio, where the listener cannot pick the exact track.
- Should You Register a Song Before or After You Release It?Before. Performance and mechanical royalties accrue from the moment a song is publicly played, so a song released unregistered starts generating money with no claimant attached.
- What Is a Mechanical Royalty, and Who Pays It?A mechanical royalty is the money owed for reproducing a musical composition — copying the song, not the recording. In the United States, mechanicals from on-demand streaming and downloads are paid by Spotify…
- What Is a Performance Royalty, and Who Collects It?A performance royalty is money owed when a musical composition is performed publicly — on streaming, radio, television, in a bar, gym or stadium.
- How Streaming Royalties Are Actually Calculated (There Is No Per-Stream Rate)Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music do not pay a fixed price per stream. Each service pools its subscription and advertising revenue for a market and a month, pays out a contracted share of that pool to…
- ISRC vs ISWC: The Two Codes Your Song NeedsAn ISRC identifies a specific sound recording and is issued when you distribute — DistroKid, TuneCore and CD Baby assign one automatically to every track.
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