Everything nobody
tells you.
Where music money actually comes from, every registration and what it costs, what to look for before you sign anything, what things really cost, and which of the services sold to artists are free somewhere else. This is the part a course charges for. It is here because we would rather you knew it than paid somebody for it.
There is no secret. There is a list of specific, boring, free things, and almost nobody is ever told it.
Written by people who run a studio and a label, which means we have an interest. We have tried to be useful anyway, and the parts we make no money from are deliberately first.Where the money actually comes from
One song can generate eight separate kinds of income, collected by organisations that do not talk to each other and mostly will not contact you. Signing up with a distributor covers exactly one of them. That single fact explains most of what goes wrong for independent artists.
Every song is two pieces of property. The composition is the melody and the lyrics, owned by whoever wrote it. The master is the specific recording, owned by whoever paid for or made it. They pay through completely different channels, and a producer can own half of one and none of the other. If you remember nothing else from this page, remember that these are two different things with two different owners and two separate hundred percents.
1. Recording royalties
your distributorThe master side of streaming and downloads. Spotify, Apple, Amazon and the rest pay this to whoever delivered the recording, which means your distributor, who passes it to you minus their fee or percentage. This is the cheque everybody knows about, and for most independent artists it is the only one arriving.
2. Mechanical royalties
The MLCfree to claimThe composition side of the same stream. In the United States these are collected by The Mechanical Licensing Collective, which is a different organisation from your distributor and a different cheque for the same play. Registration is free.
Because it is separate, because it is newer than most artists' careers, and because no distributor is obliged to mention it, a very large pool of this money sits unmatched. The MLC took in roughly $424 million in accrued historical royalties covering streaming between 2007 and 2020, and a meaningful share of that has still not been matched to the people who wrote the songs. Registering a work is what lets it be matched to you.
3. Performance royalties
your PROfree or near-freeAlso the composition, but for public performance rather than reproduction: radio, a bar, a shop, a gym, a venue, a television broadcast, and a share of streaming too. Collected in the United States by ASCAP, BMI or SESAC, and abroad by that country's equivalent society.
It is only ever paid to writers who are registered, and a PRO generally pays from the date a work is registered rather than the date it was played. The plays that happened before you signed up are mostly gone. That is the real reason this is urgent, and the same reason it stops mattering the day you join.
The two big US societies differ on this and it is worth knowing which you are dealing with. BMI's rules require you to be affiliated before the performance happens, so a late affiliation simply loses that money. ASCAP is a little more forgiving and can research and credit surveyed performances going back up to about one survey year, but you have to ask them: it is a performance claim submitted through your member account, not something that happens on its own. Either way there is also a nine-month limit on disputing a distribution once it has been made, so none of this stays fixable for long.
4. Neighbouring rights
SoundExchangefree to claimThe fourth organisation, and the only one of the four that pays the performer and the master owner rather than the writer. It covers non-interactive digital radio in the United States: SiriusXM, Pandora's radio mode, internet radio stations.
The statutory split sends about half to the owner of the recording and about forty-five percent to the featured artist, with the remainder going to funds for session musicians and backing vocalists. If you both performed and own your master, those are two separate claims and most people register only one of them.
5. User-generated content
via your distributorusually a cutWhen somebody else puts your song in their video, that view can pay you, but only if the recording has been fingerprinted into YouTube's Content ID and the equivalent systems now covering TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. Most distributors offer this as a switch and take a percentage of what it collects.
It is worth switching on for most people, with one honest caveat: it also claims your own uploads, and it can misfire on anything containing a sample or any music you do not fully own, which creates claims against other people unfairly. Read what you are enabling.
6. Sync
negotiated directlyMusic licensed to picture: television, film, advertising, games, trailers, corporate video. It pays far better per use than streaming and it is the one income on this list where a single placement can change a year. Covered properly in section six.
7. Live performance royalties
your PROfree to claimSeparate from what the venue pays you to show up. Venues above a certain size pay licence fees to the performing rights organisations, and if you played your own songs you can claim a share by reporting your setlists. BMI and ASCAP both run programmes for this.
It is small money per show and almost nobody files it, which is exactly why it is worth the ten minutes after a run of dates.
8. International
foreign societiesYour home PRO has reciprocal arrangements with societies abroad, but collection across borders is imperfect and some territories require local representation to pay out at all. If a meaningful share of your listeners is outside your own country, there is very likely money sitting in another territory with your name not quite attached to it.
This is the one area where a publishing administrator genuinely earns their percentage. Everything else on this list you can do yourself in an evening.
What a stream is actually worth
Almost every figure you have read about this is wrong in the same way: it is quoted as a rate, and there is no rate.
The major services pay pro-rata. All subscription and advertising money for a territory goes into one pool, the platform keeps its share, and what is left is divided between rights holders according to their portion of total streams in that territory. Your per-stream figure is therefore an outcome you can only calculate afterwards, and it moves depending on how much everybody else got played that month. This is why every honest estimate on this site is a range.
Roughly where a dollar of streaming revenue goes
Approximate and deliberately rounded, but anchored to two real numbers rather than a feel. The services pay out roughly 70% of revenue, and of what reaches rights holders the split runs about 80% to the recording and 20% to the composition. On the publishing side that lines up with the statutory rate: under the Copyright Royalty Board's Phonorecords IV determination, the all-in songwriter rate for US interactive streaming is 15.3% of service revenue in 2026, rising to 15.35% in 2027. That 20% is then split roughly half and half between mechanical and performance in the US, UK and Canada, though some territories divide it 65/35 instead.
Two things follow from that picture, and they are the whole reason this handbook exists.
- About a fifth of the money paid out on your song is on the publishing side, and it does not reach you through your distributor. It reaches you through The MLC and your PRO, or it does not reach you at all.
- Your distributor's cut comes out of the master share only. A distributor taking a percentage is not touching your publishing, which means nobody is collecting it unless you registered.
It depends far more on where than on how many. On the recording side Spotify has tended to land around three to five tenths of a cent per stream, Apple Music around seven tenths to a cent, Tidal higher still at over a cent, and YouTube lower — as little as a tenth of a cent on advertising-supported plays. The publishing side then adds roughly another one to three tenths of a cent for the writer, on top and from elsewhere.
The single biggest variable is not the platform, it is the listener: a play from a paying subscriber is worth somewhere around two and a half to three times a play on a free tier. Two artists with identical stream counts can be paid very differently. Use the bottom of any range you are given, and never plan around the top of one.
If two artists each get 10,000 streams, do they get paid the same?
Not necessarily, and often not. Payment depends on the territory those streams came from, whether the listeners were paying subscribers or on the free tier, and what deal sits between you and the service. Ten thousand streams from subscribers in one country can be worth several times ten thousand streams from the advertising tier somewhere else. It is another reason the honest answer is always a range.
Every registration, and what it costs
This is the entire list. It is short, it is mostly free, and doing all of it takes about an evening for a back catalogue. The reason it is worth a course's price to somebody is that it is never written down in one place.
| Register with | So you get paid for | Cost | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| A PRO ASCAP, BMI or SESAC |
Public performance of the composition: radio, venues, shops, broadcast, and a share of streaming | Free at BMI, $50 one-time at ASCAP a publisher entity costs more, see below |
An evening |
| The MLC | US mechanical royalties on interactive streaming, for the composition | Free | An evening |
| SoundExchange | US non-interactive digital radio, paid to the performer and the master owner | Free | Half an hour |
| Content ID through your distributor |
Other people's videos using your recording | Usually a percentage | A switch |
| A distributor | Getting the recording onto the services at all, and the master royalty back | $0–$50 a year, or a cut | Per release |
You can only be registered as a writer with one performing rights organisation at a time, and each song must be registered with the society its writers belong to. Co-writers can be at different PROs; that is normal and handled between the societies. What you should not do is try to join two yourself.
A few practical notes that save people months.
- Register the back catalogue, not just the next one. Registration generally works forward from the date you file, but works already released can still be filed and will collect from then on. The MLC in particular holds unmatched historical royalties that can be claimed once a work is matched to you.
- Register as both writer and publisher where the PRO allows it. The composition's income is conventionally split into a writer's share and a publisher's share. If you have no publisher, the publisher's share is yours, but it is frequently only paid to a registered publishing entity. This is the single most commonly missed step on this page, and it is also the only one that costs real money: joining BMI as a writer is free, but registering a publisher entity with them runs about $175 if you own it individually and around $250 for an LLC or corporation. ASCAP's $50 covers both. Worth doing once your catalogue is earning enough to notice, rather than on day one.
- At SoundExchange, claim both roles. Featured artist and rights owner are two separate payments from the same play.
- Your distributor is not your publisher. Some offer publishing administration as a paid add-on. That is a real service, but it is optional, and the registrations above are free whether or not you buy it.
You released a song three years ago and never registered it. Is that money gone?
Partly, and it depends which pool. Performance royalties through a PRO generally pay from the date you register a work rather than from when it was played, so most of that is unrecoverable. Mechanical royalties are more forgiving: The MLC holds historical royalties that were collected but never matched to anybody, and claiming a work can release what is sitting against it. So register the back catalogue rather than only the next release — and register today rather than next month, because the forward-only pools are still losing money while you decide.
You are already with a PRO. Do you still need The MLC?
Yes. They collect different things. Your PRO collects performance royalties, which are generated when the song is played publicly. The MLC collects mechanical royalties, which are generated when the song is reproduced, including on every interactive stream. The same play on Spotify generates both, and neither organisation collects the other's share. Being registered with one does nothing for the other.
The boring details that decide whether you get paid
Royalties are matched by machines comparing text and numbers. When the text does not match, the money does not fail loudly. It simply goes somewhere else, or nowhere, and nothing tells you. This section is unglamorous and it is worth more than most of the rest.
| Identifier | What it identifies | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| ISRC | One specific recording | Your distributor, free. A remix or a new version needs its own |
| UPC or EAN | One release: a single, EP or album | Your distributor, free |
| ISWC | One composition, regardless of recording | Assigned by your PRO after you register the work |
| IPI or CAE | You, as a writer or publisher | Your PRO, on joining. This is the number a split sheet needs |
The mistakes that actually cost money
- Reusing an ISRC across different recordings. A radio edit, a remix and the album version are three recordings and need three codes. Reused codes merge their income and their analytics, and separating them afterwards is painful.
- Spelling your own name differently. "DJ Smith", "Dj Smith" and "DJ Smith" are three artists to a matching system. Pick one exact spelling, including capitalisation and punctuation, and use it everywhere forever.
- Writer credits that do not match the PRO registration. The name on the registration must be the legal name the PRO has for that writer, not their stage name. This is the single most common reason a correctly registered song still does not pay.
- Splits that do not total 100%. Composition and master are two separate hundreds. Each must add up on its own, and each needs to be agreed in writing before anyone has a reason to argue.
- Missing the release date on the registration. Some matching depends on it, and an absent date can leave a work unmatched indefinitely.
A split only exists if it is documented. Every undocumented one is an argument waiting for the song to be worth arguing about, and by then everybody sincerely remembers the version that favours them. It takes five minutes on the day and it is unrecoverable later if somebody stops replying.
You wrote the lyrics. A friend made the beat. A singer improvised the hook that made the song work. Who owns what?
There is no correct answer, and that is why it is worth asking. All three contributed to the composition, so all three have a reasonable claim to a writer's share, and the beat-maker may have a claim on the master as well depending on what was agreed. An even third each is defensible. So is a larger share to whoever wrote the part people actually remember. What is not defensible is deciding afterwards.
The only thing that really matters is that you agree a number while everybody still likes each other, and that somebody writes it down. Two separate percentages: one for the composition, one for the recording.
Before you sign anything
None of this is legal advice and none of it replaces a lawyer. It is the read-through an hour of a lawyer's time would give you, which is roughly three to five hundred dollars, and which most people skip because they cannot afford it and sign anyway.
The clauses to find first, in any agreement
By the deal you are most likely to be handed
A beat licence
most common trapA lease is not a purchase. Read the play and sale caps, whether the producer can keep selling the same beat to other people, what happens when the licence expires on a song that is still live, and whether an exclusive upgrade is available and at what price.
The one to check hardest: what publishing share the producer keeps, and whether you can license the song for sync without needing them to countersign. A cheap beat with an unreachable producer attached is a song you can never place.
A producer agreement
Separate the fee from the points. A flat fee for the work with no ongoing share is clean. A reduced fee in exchange for master points and a publishing share is a real and common trade, but it should be written down before the session, not negotiated after the song turns out well.
Check whether the producer's share is of gross receipts or of your net after distribution, and whether they are credited as a writer on the composition or only paid on the master.
Distribution
Flat annual fee or a percentage, and whether there is a percentage on top of the fee. Then the part almost nobody checks: can you leave, and what comes with you? Look for how long takedowns take, whether you keep your ISRCs and UPCs, whether your existing streaming numbers and playlist positions survive a move, and what happens to royalties accrued but not yet paid when you go.
Management
Commission percentage and, more importantly, the sunset clause: after the deal ends, how long do they keep commissioning, on what, and at what declining rate? An agreement with no sunset means paying somebody a percentage of work they are no longer doing, indefinitely.
Also define what income is commissionable. Management commission on recording income is standard; commission on income from deals signed before they arrived is not.
A 360 deal
The label takes a share of income beyond recordings: touring, merchandise, brand deals, sometimes publishing. This is not automatically a bad deal, but the share should be matched by real work in those areas. A label taking a percentage of your merchandise while doing nothing about your merchandise is simply a larger commission with a longer name.
If somebody will not let you take the agreement away to read it, that by itself is the answer. No legitimate deal in this business expires this afternoon.
Sync, honestly
Sync is the best-paying thing on the list and the most misrepresented. A placement in television, film, advertising or a game can pay more than a year of streaming, which is exactly why an entire industry exists to charge artists for access to it.
How it actually works
A placement needs two separate licences: one for the master, from whoever owns the recording, and one for the composition, from whoever wrote it. A music supervisor who has to chase four people for permissions on a deadline will simply use a different song. This is the real reason clean paperwork matters more here than anywhere else.
- You must be able to clear it fast. Undocumented splits, an unreachable producer, or an unclear master owner will lose you placements you never hear about.
- Instrumentals and stems are not optional. Supervisors frequently need a version without vocals, or a shorter edit. Not having one loses the placement.
- Metadata has to be in the file. Contact details and ownership tagged into the audio itself, because the file gets separated from the email within a day.
What to watch in a sync or library agreement
Libraries and supervisors make money from placements, which means they make money when you do. A submission fee, a "guaranteed review" fee, or a paid pitch to a named show is a business model that profits whether or not you are ever placed. That is the tell.
What things actually cost
Most artists have no reference point, get quoted a number, and have no idea whether it is normal. These are broad independent-market ranges in United States dollars. Region, experience and reputation move all of them, and the top of each range keeps going well past where this table stops.
| Thing | Common independent range | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Studio time | $40–$150 an hour | Day rates are usually cheaper per hour. Ask what is included: engineer, gear, session files |
| Mixing | $150–$800 a song | That is the experienced-freelancer band. Name engineers start around $1,000 and go up with no ceiling. Ask how many revisions are included before it becomes billable |
| Mastering | $50–$200 a song | Automated online services run $5–$25 and are genuinely fine for some material. Most engineers discount per song across an EP or album |
| Cover artwork | $50–$1,000 | Premade and template covers sit at the bottom, commissioned custom work around $200–$500. Get the layered source file and written permission for commercial use |
| Photography | $200–$1,000 | Licensing is separate from the shoot fee. Confirm you can use the images in ads |
| Music video | $500–$10,000+ | The range is genuinely this wide and the top has no ceiling |
| Distribution | $0–$50 a year | Or a percentage. Both models are normal; paying both is not |
| PR campaign | $1,500–$8,000 a month | Independent publicists at the bottom, established firms at the top, and a single-release campaign commonly runs six to eight weeks. Ask for the last three campaigns and what they actually produced. Nobody can promise coverage |
Every registration in section three is free or nearly free. Everything in this table is production quality and promotion, which is optional and scales with ambition. It is entirely possible to have spent five thousand dollars on a record and nothing on the registrations that let it pay you, and it is a very common way round to get it.
A mixing engineer quotes you $900 for one song. Is that a rip-off?
On its own, that number tells you almost nothing. It sits at the upper-middle of the independent range, which could be exactly right for an experienced engineer with credits you recognise, and steep for somebody starting out. What decides it is what comes with it: how many revisions before it becomes billable, whether you get stems, whether mastering is included, and how long it takes.
Ask to hear three mixes they have done in your genre. That answers the question far better than the price does, and a good engineer will expect to be asked.
What you are sold that is free somewhere else
None of this names companies, because the pattern matters more than the brand and the brands change every year. Judge the offer in front of you against the shape of the thing.
Paid playlist placement
against platform rulesPaying for placement is prohibited by the major services, and placements sold this way are frequently driven by artificial streams. The penalty lands on the artist, not the seller. Flagged streams earn nothing, do not count toward your public numbers or the charts, and do not feed the recommendation systems. Since 2024 Spotify has also charged distributors a fee of around ten euros per track where flagrant artificial streaming is detected, and distributors pass that on to you. Tracks with a high proportion of fraudulent streams get removed across every platform, and you cannot re-upload them afterwards.
The free version: editorial consideration through the Spotify for Artists dashboard, pitched before the song comes out. It costs nothing and it is the only kind that carries any weight. Curators worth reaching also take submissions directly and for free.
"We will collect your royalties" for a permanent share
sometimes worth itPublishing administration is a real service and genuinely earns its keep on international collection, which is difficult to do alone. What is being charged for domestically, though, is largely the registrations in section three, and those are free.
Before you sign one: check whether the term is limited or permanent, whether it covers your entire back catalogue automatically, and whether rights revert when you leave. A percentage is a fair trade for ongoing work. A percentage forever, for a one-time filing you could have done in an evening, is not.
Submission and review fees
profits either wayPaying to submit to a label, a sync library, a supervisor, a blog or a curator. The business model earns whether or not anything happens to you, which means volume of submissions is the product and your success is incidental.
The test: does this person make money when you do? A library that takes a share of placements is aligned with you. One that charges to look at your song is not.
Pay-to-play shows
you are the customerBuying tickets up front to resell, or paying a fee for a slot on a bill. Framed as exposure, structured so the promoter is paid by the artists rather than by an audience.
The free version: local venues, open mics, opening slots and house shows, which pay little or nothing but also cost nothing and put you in front of people who chose to be there. Collect email addresses while you are in the room.
Follower and stream growth services
actively harmfulBought engagement is detectable, it distorts the recommendation systems you actually need working in your favour, and on the streaming services it can trigger withheld payments and takedowns. It also makes your own data useless, so you can no longer tell which songs are working.
Radio and press campaigns promising results
real, but ask harderPublicity is a legitimate business and good publicists are worth their fee. Nobody can promise coverage, however, because they do not control the outlets.
Ask for: the last three campaigns they ran for artists at your level and what specifically came out of them. A publicist who cannot or will not answer that is selling activity rather than results.
If you only do five things
In this order. Every one of them is free, none of them needs us, and together they are most of the difference between a career that collects and one that does not.
1. Join a PRO and register everything
freeIncluding the back catalogue. It pays forward from the date you file, so every day this waits is money that stops being recoverable.
2. Register with The MLC
freeDifferent organisation, different cheque, same songs. An evening for a whole catalogue.
3. Register with SoundExchange, as both roles
freeFeatured artist and rights owner are two separate claims on the same play.
4. Write down every split, including the old ones
freeWho wrote what, and who owns the recording. Two separate percentages. Start with anything already released, then never leave a session without one.
5. Find out exactly what you own
freeRead every agreement you have ever signed, including the ones that were a text message. Write down, per song, who holds the master. Not knowing is functionally the same as not owning, and it becomes urgent the moment something works.
That is the whole list, and none of it is ours to sell.
Everything above this line is free, and you can do all of it alone with an evening and a strong coffee. If a company offers to do it for a permanent cut, that list is what they are charging you for. We would genuinely rather you did it yourself tonight than paid anybody, including us.
What is actually hard is not the knowing. It is the doing it every single time, for every release, forever, while also making the music. That is where people fall down, and it is not a knowledge problem, so no handbook fixes it.
That part is what ARIA is. A studio in Ormond Beach, a room of people making records who will tell you the truth about a mix, and thirteen pieces of software we built for exactly this: a planner that emails you before a deadline instead of after, a catalogue that counts your gaps, split sheets you can hand somebody, and a tool that prices what you are not collecting from your own statements. Members get all of it. It is not for sale separately and it never will be.
Each figure was verified against at least five independent sources, and where those sources disagreed we have said so and given the wider range rather than picking the flattering end. Where a hard statutory anchor exists — the Copyright Royalty Board's Phonorecords IV rate, the SoundExchange distribution formula, the published PRO fees — we have used it in preference to any industry estimate. Rates move every year. If you are reading this long after that date, treat the percentages as sound and the dollar figures as indicative.
Nothing here is legal, tax or financial advice, and none of it creates a professional relationship. Rates, statutory splits, platform rules and organisation fees all move, and everything above was accurate to the best of our knowledge when written. Laws differ by country and this is written from a United States starting point. For anything with real money attached, pay a lawyer for an hour: it is the cheapest thing in section seven. If something here is wrong, tell us on the forum and it gets fixed.