Music royalties | Jeff McNeill

Updated 25-Jun-2026

The many royalties

Besides royalties from streamers (see music distribution), there are a lot of royalty parts out there. This is clearly a legal minefield. Note that there are no royalties if there are no plays, so getting plays is pretty much required. That said, it pays to understand how this works and set things up (lots of metadata). Here are the various groups:

Distributors (mainly to streamers, also digital downloads) - Distrokid
PROs (BMI, ASCAP), note that one needs to be a distributor and an artist to get both parts of what is owed.
- PRO -> CISAC -> ISWC
Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC)
- Also offers micro-courses on licensing for educational purposes
SoundExchange (Digital performance royalties)
- Pandora, SiriusXM, other non-interactive webcaster, my guess is SomaFM is one of these

Publishing management

Managing and royalties are deeply entwined. For a small label or single artist, the efficient approach is:

Register with a PRO (BMI) (personal is free, business is $150 one-time fee)
Create finalize songs and split sheets
Register with Distrokid (They generate ISRC and UPC codes), $90/year)
Register with SoundExchange (free)
- Register tracks and albums with SoundExchange
Use templates to bulk upload to PRO (BMI) and The MLC
- MusicMark for templates to BMI, and The MLC has templates
Don't use Songtrust
See where other streams/sales are and register with those PROs in those countries.

Other issues

profiles, video syncs

Still have to futz around with Spotify and YouTube music (and possibly Apple Music / iTunes) profiles, and this doesn't do anything for Video. Actually Songtrust does sync licensing on the publishing side, but not the master recording syncs, which would probably be either uniquely negotiated. For the publisher side, Songtrust doesn't make deals or any kind of marketing but can negotiate the sync deal if and when it is already something desired by all parties. Again, need separate agreement for the actual recording sync.

Physical media

Vinyl, cassettes, CDs, etc., are not included in any of the above and require separate agreements or self-production.

Free distribution

Distrokid itself has no ability to do free distribution, though Bandcamp and others do have such codes. The best approach is doing so on one's own storefront or through one own's website and apps.