Answers/Glossary/Mechanical royalty
Glossary · Royalties
Mechanical royalty
A mechanical royalty is the money owed for reproducing a musical composition — copying the song itself, not the recording of it. In the United States it is generated by on-demand streams, downloads, CDs and vinyl, and digital mechanicals are collected by The MLC under the Section 115 blanket licence.
A mechanical royalty attaches to the composition — the melody and the lyrics — and is triggered by an act of copying. The name is a leftover from piano rolls and mechanical reproduction, and it has confused people ever since, because nothing about a Spotify stream feels mechanical. It still counts as a reproduction, and it still generates the royalty.
In the United States, mechanical royalties on interactive streams and permanent downloads are paid by the digital service provider — Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music — into the blanket licence created by the Music Modernization Act of 2018. The Mechanical Licensing Collective, known as The MLC, receives that money along with the usage data, matches it to registered compositions, and pays the songwriters and publishers. Joining The MLC is free. Mechanicals on physical formats sit outside the blanket licence and are still licensed directly or through the Harry Fox Agency.
The single most common misunderstanding is that your distributor collects this. It does not. DistroKid, TuneCore and CD Baby are paid on the sound recording side; the composition side is a separate pot, a separate registration and a separate organisation. I released for years assuming one login covered everything, and the mechanicals just sat there unmatched until I registered the works properly.
The second misunderstanding is that you do not owe yourself anything when you wrote and recorded the song alone. The royalty still exists, Spotify still pays it, and it still has to be claimed by a registered work — otherwise it sits in the unmatched pool with your name nowhere on it.
I make records and read the paperwork carefully — this is what I have learned doing it, not legal advice.
Related terms
- Performance royaltyA performance royalty is the money owed when a musical composition is performed publicly — on radio, on television, in a bar, at…
- The MLC (Mechanical Licensing Collective)The MLC is the non-profit organisation designated under the Music Modernization Act to administer the United States blanket…
- Section 115Section 115 of the United States Copyright Act creates the compulsory mechanical licence for musical compositions.
- Musical compositionA musical composition is the song itself — the melody, harmony, structure and lyrics — protected as its own copyright separate…
Answers that use this term
- Where Does the Money From One Stream Actually Go?One stream of one song generates money in four separate places at once: the recording royalty (collected by your distributor)…
- What Is a Mechanical Royalty, and Who Pays It?A mechanical royalty is the money owed for reproducing a musical composition — copying the song, not the recording.
Definitions on this site describe the United States system. I am an artist who has been through this, not a lawyer.
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