Mechanical Royalties
Every stream pays twice. Most artists only collect once.
Mechanical royalties are payments owed to the owner of a musical composition — the underlying song, not the recording — every time it is reproduced, including streams and downloads. They are separate from the master royalty your distributor already pays you, and they require their own registration with a mechanical rights organisation or publisher. Without it, you leave the entire publishing half of every stream on the table, permanently.
Your streaming distributor only administers your master recording rights. The publishing side requires a separate publisher registration or sub-publisher deal. Most artists skip this step entirely, and their mechanical royalties accumulate in collection society bank accounts, often redistributed to other rights holders after 3 years.
The other five royalty types
Find out if you're actually collecting mechanical royalties.
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