Answers/Glossary/Sound recording royalty
Glossary · Royalties
Sound recording royalty
A sound recording royalty is income earned by the specific recorded master of a song, as opposed to the underlying composition. On Spotify and Apple Music it is the money your distributor collects and pays to you, and it belongs to whoever owns the master.
A sound recording royalty is paid for the use of a particular fixed recording — the file, the take, the master. It is the more visible half of music income for an independent artist because it is the half that lands in your distributor dashboard.
When someone plays your track on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal or Deezer, the service pays a recording royalty out of its revenue pool. That money goes to the owner of the master. If you self-release through DistroKid, TuneCore or CD Baby, that owner is you, and the distributor passes the money to you after its own arrangement — DistroKid and TuneCore charge an annual subscription and pass on 100% of earnings, while CD Baby takes a one-time release fee and a permanent percentage of revenue.
The same recording also earns a digital performance royalty from non-interactive services — Pandora radio, SiriusXM, internet radio — and that stream of money does not come through your distributor at all. It comes through SoundExchange, which is free to register with and pays the featured artist's share directly.
The misunderstanding worth fixing: a sound recording royalty is not "all the money the song makes." It is one of the two copyrights. Every stream that pays your master also owes something to the composition, and the composition money reaches you through The MLC and through ASCAP or BMI, on registrations your distributor never touches.
Written from experience releasing my own records; for anything contractual, get a music attorney.
Related terms
- Mechanical royaltyA mechanical royalty is the money owed for reproducing a musical composition — copying the song itself, not the recording of it.
- Sound recordingA sound recording is the fixed capture of a performance — the master — protected as its own copyright separate from the…
- Music distributorA music distributor delivers recordings to streaming services and stores on an artist's behalf and collects the recording…
- Two copyrightsEvery released song contains two separate copyrights: the musical composition, owned by the songwriters and publishers, and the…
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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