Royalties

Question 1

Here are some of the income streams associated with the master sound recording and how you obtain the royalties:

Sales Income - This is pretty straightforward. You earn income when your recording is sold in physical format or permanent digital downloads. Sales are generally passed on to you through your distributor.

Interactive Streaming Royalties - When your recording is streamed on interactive platforms (e.g. Spotify), the service pays a streaming master use royalty to the distributor, who then pays you for the streams. The royalty rate is based on a formula that takes into account the type of use, the number of total streams, your share of streams, and territory.

Non-Interactive Streaming Royalties - Webcasters and digital services that broadcast recordings over the Internet (e.g. Pandora, iHeart Radio), cable (e.g. Music Choice), and satellite (e.g. SiriusXM) in radio-style programming where the end users/listeners have limited to no control over the selection of music pay a royalty for the digital performance of sound recordings to SoundExchange. SoundExchange then pays out 45% of the royalties to the featured performers on the recording, 50% to the copyright owner of the master recording, and 5% to a fund for background vocalists and session musicians maintained by AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund. It is important that you register your track title, the performers, copyright owner (which will be you if you’re independent and not signed to a label), and ISRC to SoundExchange. This helps them to identify you and match incoming usage reports and royalties from digital services to you as the income participant. After joining SoundExchange, you can easily keep on top of registering all of your tracks directly through your TuneRegistry account. This way, you’ll never forget to make sure that you’re raising your hand to capture your non-interactive streaming royalties.

Master Use for Sync Fees - If your cover song gets licensed to a TV show, a movie, a commercial, or any other audiovisual media, you would need to obtain a synchronization license from the publisher of the composition. While you own the recording of your cover song, the copyright owner owns the composition and still give permission for the composition to be used in audiovisual media (this is a separate license from the compulsory mechanical license). The producer of the content will need to pay the synch fee for the composition and pay a master use fee for the master use license of the sound recording. These negotiations take place directly between the producer of the content (or their representatives) and the owners of the copyrights (you for the master sound recording and the songwriter or publisher for the composition that you’ve covered).

Answer 1

https://www.tuneregistry.com/blog/how-to-legally-record-and-sell-a-cover-song-in-3-steps

Question 2

https://blog.songtrust.com/royalties-you-are-missing-even-with-a-pro

Answer 2

https://blog.songtrust.com/royalties-you-are-missing-even-with-a-pro

Question 3

https://blog.songtrust.com/things-you-had-wrong-about-youtube-royalties

Answer 3

https://blog.songtrust.com/things-you-had-wrong-about-youtube-royalties

Question 4

https://www.songtrust.com/global-music-royalty-collection-checklist

Answer 4

https://www.songtrust.com/global-music-royalty-collection-checklist

Question 5

https://www.songtrust.com/the-mechanical-licensing-collective

Answer 5

https://www.songtrust.com/the-mechanical-licensing-collective

Question 6

https://blog.songtrust.com/songtrust-vs-soundexchange

Answer 6

https://blog.songtrust.com/songtrust-vs-soundexchange

Question 7

https://blog.songtrust.com/four-steps-to-collect-all-your-royalties

Answer 7

https://blog.songtrust.com/four-steps-to-collect-all-your-royalties