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Performance royalties are payments you earn whenever your song is played publicly. This includes radio, TV, streaming, live venues, and everyday businesses like bars, gyms, coffee shops, and restaurants.
These royalties come from the composition, so they pay the songwriter, plus the publisher if the writer signed with one. Performers and labels earn nothing from performance royalties, unless the performer also contributed to writing the song.
Performing Rights Organizations (PROs) collect performance royalties on your behalf. Businesses that play music pay licensing fees to a PRO, and the PRO tracks the plays and pays the songwriters and publishers. If you're not registered with one, your songs are earning money you’re not collecting.
In this article, we break down how performance royalties work, how they're calculated, and how to make sure you're collecting all of them.
Performance Royalties Pay the Songwriter, Not the Performer
Performance royalties come from the composition, which is the song itself (the melody and lyrics). The composition belongs to the person who wrote it and their publisher if they signed with one. It's separate from the sound recording — the recorded version owned by the artist or label — which earns royalties through different channels.
Since the composition belongs to the writer, the performance royalty from every public play goes to them. An AM/FM spin counts as a performance of the song itself, not of any particular recording, so the artist who recorded it earns nothing from that play unless they also wrote the song.
The same is true for covers. If another artist records your song and their version plays on the radio, you earn the performance royalty, because the composition is yours no matter who recorded it. The cover artist doesn't receive performance royalties, but they do earn recording royalties when people stream or buy their version.
What Counts as a Public Performance
A public performance is when your song plays where the general public can hear it. The legal definition under US copyright law is any place where people "outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances" hear the song.
Although playing a song at home or for friends doesn't count, almost everything else does:
- Radio: AM, FM, satellite, and internet stations owe performance royalties for every spin.
- TV and film: Networks, cable channels, and streaming services owe performance royalties when their content includes your song.
- Streaming platforms: Every play on Spotify, Apple Music, and similar services earns a performance royalty, in addition to mechanical and sound recording royalties.
- Live venues: Concerts, festivals, clubs, and open mics all count, even when you're performing your own songs.
- Businesses: Bars, restaurants, gyms, and stores also owe performance royalties when they play your music for customers.
The same song can earn from several of these sources in the same month, and each one pays you separately. For example, say your song gets steady radio play for a year and then the stations move on. You stop earning the radio money but you keep earning every time someone streams it, a show reruns it, or a business plays it in their store.
How Digital Performance Royalties Work
Streaming and digital radio are the most complicated sources in the list above, because digital plays split into two categories that pay differently:
- Interactive services let you pick what you listen to. Spotify and Apple Music fall into this category, and their streams earn normal performance royalties through your PRO, the same as radio.
- Non-interactive services pick the music for you. SiriusXM, Pandora's radio mode, and internet radio fall into this category. These plays earn a separate royalty called a “digital performance royalty.”
A digital performance royalty pays the recording, not just the composition. AM/FM radio only pays songwriters, but Congress gave recordings a performance right on digital radio in 1995. This means a spin on SiriusXM or internet radio pays both the writer and the recording owner.
SoundExchange is the only organization that collects this recording-side money. If you own masters or perform on recordings, register with it directly, because PROs and distributors don’t collect it.
How PROs Collect and Pay Performance Royalties
You don't chase down radio stations and restaurants for your money. Your PRO does it for you. Businesses pay a fee for the right to play any song in the PRO's catalog, which is called a blanket license, and that money eventually becomes your royalty check.
Here's how it works:
- Music users buy a blanket license. Radio stations, TV networks, streaming platforms, venues, and businesses pay a PRO an annual fee for the right to play any song in its catalog.
- The PRO tracks what gets played. Broadcast monitoring, streaming platform reports, and venue surveys tell the PRO which songs earned what and how often.
- The PRO pays the songwriters and publishers. The license money gets divided based on how often each song is played. ASCAP distributed $1.759 billion in 2025 and BMI paid out $1.471 billion in 2022, its last publicly reported year.
Every payment splits into two parts, the writer's share and the publisher's share, and your PRO pays each one separately. Even if you're signed to a publisher, your writer's share comes directly from your PRO. If you're independent and haven’t registered as your own publisher, you're only collecting half of every payment.
In the US, you can choose between ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, though SESAC is invite-only, so most writers choose between the first two. You can only belong to one at a time.
How Performance Royalties Are Calculated
Businesses pay your PRO to play the songs in its catalog, including yours. When your song plays, you earn a share of that money. Your PRO tracks plays through broadcast monitoring, platform reports, and venue surveys, then divides the money depending on:
- How big the license fee was. The more a business paid for its license, the more each play is worth. For example, BMI pays as little as 6 cents for a spin on college radio, while a play on a network show earns more because the network paid more for its license.
- How many people heard it. PROs pay more for plays that reach more people. This is why songs that play on primetime TV earn more than they would late at night, because more people are watching.
- How the song was used. Two songs in the same episode can earn different amounts. For example, a song that's the focus of a scene earns more than one playing in the background because it gets more attention.
That's why two songs can play the same number of times and earn completely different amounts. Your PRO does all of this behind the scenes, and none of it is negotiable.
Just make sure you're registered with a PRO, and that every song you release is in its system, because you can only get paid for the songs it knows are yours.
How to Collect Your Performance Royalties
Collecting everything your songs earn comes down to a handful of registrations. Here's what to do:
- Join a PRO. You can choose between ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC in the US. But keep in mind that SESAC is invite-only and you can only belong to one at a time.
- Register as your own publisher too. PROs split every payment in half, one for the songwriter and one for the publisher. If you're independent with no publishing deal, that publisher half is yours, but only if you set up a publisher account with your PRO. Without one, you're only collecting 50 percent of every payment.
- Add every song you release. Register each song with its title, writers, and splits, and keep the details consistent everywhere your music lives. Bad metadata is the main reason royalties go unmatched.
- Log your live shows. PROs don't detect live performances on their own. Submit your setlists after you play, because venues already paid for a license, and reporting your set is how you claim your share of it.
- Register with the MLC for free. Streams earn a second royalty your PRO doesn't collect, because every stream also counts as a copy of your song. That copy earns a mechanical royalty, which you can only collect by registering with the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC).
- Register with SoundExchange if you own recordings. Digital radio pays the recording side separately. Your PRO and distributor don’t collect it.
Each registration is free or close to it, and you only have to sign up once. After that, the organizations handle the collecting; all you have to do is keep your song information accurate as your catalog grows.
Collecting International Performance Royalties
Your PRO only collects inside the US. When your song plays in another country, that country's collection society collects the royalty. You don't join these yourself, because every major market has its own society and each one works with your PRO:
- PRS for Music in the UK
- SOCAN in Canada
- GEMA in Germany
- SACEM in France
- APRA AMCOS in Australia and New Zealand
- JASRAC in Japan
Each of these has a reciprocal agreement with your PRO, so it collects in its territory and routes the money back to your PRO, which pays you.
The system runs on its own, but it's slow. Foreign royalties typically take one to two years to reach you, because the money passes through two societies before it gets to you. Songs can also go unmatched along the way, so keep your title, writer names, and splits the same everywhere your music is registered.
If your music only gets casual play overseas, the foreign societies collect those royalties and automatically send them to your PRO. If your music earns a lot of money overseas, a publishing administrator like Songtrust can register your songs directly with the foreign societies and collect what the system misses, for a one-time $100 fee and a 15 percent commission on performance royalties it collects.
The Bottom Line
Performance royalties are the payments you earn whenever your song plays in public, including radio, TV, streaming, live venues, and everyday businesses. These royalties belong to whoever owns the composition, meaning the songwriter and their publisher, and the only way to collect them is by registering with a PRO.
However, performance royalties typically come in slowly, and in small amounts. PROs pay quarterly, but local streams take six to nine months to hit your account. International streams can take years.
Instead of waiting, you can sell part of your future royalties on Royalty Exchange and get paid upfront, whether that's to fund your next album, pay off debt, or just get years of income now instead of later. You stay in control of how much you sell and keep full ownership of your songs.
