Managing a roster means auditing what nobody sent you.
A manager's royalty problem is not reading statements — it is the money that never generated a statement at all. Unregistered works, unclaimed recordings and missing society memberships produce no line item, no notification and no error message. They surface only as an amount that should be there and is not, across every artist on the roster at once.
What you are accountable for
- Every royalty type, per artist, per territory
- A roster does not have one royalty problem; it has one per artist per territory per royalty type. A songwriter who owns no masters and an artist who owns all of theirs have almost nothing in common here, and running the same checklist over both will miss most of what matters.
- Claim windows
- Most societies limit how far back a member can claim. The windows commonly run somewhere between three and six years, vary by society, and differ again depending on whether the money was matched to a work when it was collected. An unregistered work is not an asset quietly waiting to be collected — the money can expire.
- Split disputes
- Two collaborators filing conflicting splits on one work will freeze payment for everybody on it, not only the two in disagreement. Split sheets signed at the session are the cheapest insurance available anywhere in this process.
- Reconciliation across sources
- Distributor income, PRO income, mechanical income and neighbouring rights arrive on different schedules, in different currencies, from organisations that do not talk to each other. Nothing reconciles them by default, and nobody else on the artist's team is going to.
The gap that generates no paperwork
Every other problem in a manager's inbox announces itself. A missing registration does not: the society has no work on file, so it produces no statement, no shortfall notice, and no zero line to notice. The only way to find it is to check the registration side directly — artist by artist, society by society — against what the catalogue should be generating. That is precisely the check that stops happening when a roster grows faster than the admin behind it.
What to do about it
- Build a registration matrix per artist: PRO, mechanical body, neighbouring rights society, per territory. The gaps become obvious the moment it exists and stay invisible until it does.
- Audit ISRCs and metadata before release rather than after. A recording with a missing or incorrect ISRC cannot be matched to money later.
- Collect signed split sheets at the session for every co-write on the roster.
- When you inherit a catalogue, check claim windows first — the oldest unregistered works have the least time left.
- Reconcile each artist's income against what their catalogue should generate, not against what they were paid last quarter.
Questions managers ask
How do I find royalties an artist is not collecting?
Work backwards from the catalogue rather than forwards from the statements. List what the artist has released, then check whether each work is registered with a PRO, with a mechanical rights body, and — if they performed on it — with a neighbouring rights society, in every territory where it gets played. Anything unregistered generates no statement at all, so it can never be found by reading the statements you already have.
Can a manager register works on an artist's behalf?
Usually yes, with written authorisation — most societies have a defined process for an authorised representative. What you cannot do is register a work into your own name on their behalf, because that changes who is owed. Requirements differ between societies, so check each one rather than generalising from the first.
How far back can unclaimed royalties be recovered?
It varies by society, and by whether the money was matched to a work at the time it was collected. The windows commonly sit in the three-to-six-year range, and unmatched money is often redistributed rather than held indefinitely. Treat any unregistered back catalogue as time-limited rather than permanent.
The royalty types this covers
Where to register
Last reviewed 2026-08-28. Registration rules, royalty splits and claim windows vary by society and by territory — this is a starting point for your own checks, not legal or financial advice.
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