How Are Music Royalties Generated?
Basically if you have music anywhere on the internet, royalties have been generated regardless. Websites must legally acquire a license from you before they are allowed to use your music on their platforms. And for that license, royalties are generated and must be paid to you as the songwriter or rights holder.
Royalty Flow Chart
So what royalties could be I be missing?
* Check dropdowns for the type of music royalties and where they can be collected.
Distribution Royalties
We distribute your music on over 100+ streaming platforms including social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok as well as YouTube. Your music will be distributed with all the necessary codes and identifiers and live within 24 hours ready to monetize and generate royalties.
Get connected directly to your Artist profile page on most streaming platforms such as Spotify for Artist or Sign Up for Distribution..
Performance Royalties are generated every time your song is being performed. These royalties can come from multiple sources such as radio airplays, online streaming, live performances, used at a business eg. retail stores, etc..
Mechanical Royalties
Performance Royalties
To ensure your a receiving these royalties, for the use of your music songwriters must affiliate with there local PRO. We can help musicians register and sign up with a PRO.
If you are not self administering your own copyrights, mechanical royalties can only be collected by a publisher. If you have a co-publishing deal, your publisher will claim and collect royalties through your PRO, which are only royalties generated within your country or your PRO's controlled territory. This doesn't account for internationally royalties generated outside of your country.
To collect royalties generated in another country you will need a sub-publisher, but again they only collect royalties within the country of the the PRO they are affiliated with. You would need a sub-publisher for every country or a publishing administrator which collects for the entire world. An administrator provides the same service as a publisher but without negotiating ownership terms to your copyrights. You can find out more here.
Neighbouring Royalties
In the U.S., terrestrial AM/FM radio stations are not required to pay performance royalties to recording artists or record labels for broadcasting sound recordings, making it one of the only countries with this exemption.
Digital Lyrics Rights
Neighbouring royalties are payments earned by master rights owners (record label) and recording artists when airplays of your sound recordings are broadcasted on radio (outside the US), Television or publicly performed on satellite radio.
Public display licenses are issued to music platforms for the right to use your lyrics online. Royalties are then paid to songwriters for the use of your music lyrics. Simply by distributing your lyrics alongside your music automatically generates these additional royalties.
We work with Musixmatch and LyricFind to distribute your lyrics to hundreds of licensed platforms worldwide.
YouTube Royalties (Micro-Sync)
Stills
Vlogs
Lyric videos
YouTube Music
Official music videos
User Generated Content
Live Performance videos
Cover Songs using your music
Corporate videos using your music on the soundtrack
We also help artists create an Official Artist Channel (OAC) which will centralize all your channels/videos into one channel for easy monetization and additional studio functions.
Music creators can earn income from YouTube through multiple revenue streams, including subscription fees, advertising revenue, and Content ID claims. Each of these revenue streams is divided into specific royalty types, which are then distributed to the appropriate copyright holders based on their rights and ownership.
Social media royalties are earned when your music is used by creators on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok in user-generated content (UGC), including reels and stories. Royalties are generated based on the views and monetization of that content. On YouTube, this type of usage and royalty collection is primarily handled through Content ID.
Social Media (UGC)
Retroactive royalties are royalties that are unclaimed, unmatched or earnings from past music usage that hasn't been registered and are often held in a "black box" by collection societies. These royalties sit unallocated and are usually held for 2 - 3 years before they are permanently lost. Societies like PPL can hold these royalties for up to 6 years.
So-called “lost royalties” occur when your music is not properly registered internationally or when metadata is missing or incorrect. Accurate music metadata is essential for both songwriters and artists which allows rights societies and platforms to properly identify the correct rights holders and ensure your royalties are properly matched and paid.
Retroactive Royalties
