Songwriters get paid through several royalty streams, including mechanical, performance, streaming, print, and sync royalties. They can also earn money through publishing advances, collaborations with other artists, digital and physical sales of their music, and work-for-hire gigs like demo vocals and production.
Another lesser-known way for songwriters to get paid is by selling a portion of their future royalty income on marketplaces like Royalty Exchange. Writers who are already earning steady royalty income can sell a share of their catalog to qualified buyers and collect years of income at once, while keeping ownership of their songs.
So whether you're a songwriter looking to earn more or aspiring to become one, there are plenty of ways to get paid for your work, which we’ll cover in detail in this guide. You’ll also learn how to make sure you're collecting all the royalties your songs generate on their own.
How Much Do Songwriters Make?
How much a songwriter earns depends on a variety of factors, including but not limited to:
- How often their songs are streamed and performed
- Whether they write for artists with large audiences or smaller ones
- If they own the composition copyright, the sound recording copyright, or both
- How many songs they have in circulation and how popular they are
- What percentage of each song they own, if they're a co-writer
- Whether they've landed sync placements and how large the deals were
- Whether they're signed to a publishing deal, which means splitting royalties with a publisher
But according to salary websites like ZipRecruiter and Glassdoor, the average songwriter in the US earns between $40,000 and $100,000. However, top professional songwriters who have contributed to massive hits can earn millions of dollars or more a year, so it’s a wide range.
8 Common Ways Songwriters Get Paid
Songwriting income generally falls into two categories: passive income and active income.
Passive income comes from music royalties, which is the money your songs (or songs you contributed to) generate automatically every time they're played, streamed, performed, or reproduced. Active income is the money you earn by working directly in the music industry, such as recording vocals or writing demos for another artist.
Some options generate both. For example, say you pitch one of your songs to a music supervisor, and it lands a placement in a TV show. You'll receive a one-time payment upfront and then earn performance royalties every time the episode airs.
Keeping these income streams in mind, here are the most common ways songwriters get paid and tips for increasing your income:
1. Music Royalty Payments
Songwriters earn music royalties every time their songs are played on the radio, streamed on Spotify, performed in a live music venue, or played in public somewhere like a bar or store. They also earn royalties if another artist records and releases their own version of the song.
As a songwriter, you own the composition side of each song you create, which includes the lyrics, melody, and chords. This means you’re entitled to receive four different types of royalty payments, depending on how your songs get used:
Mechanical Royalties
Mechanical royalties are triggered when a copy of your song is made or distributed, which includes streams, downloads, CDs, and vinyl. To collect them, you must be registered with the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC). If you don't have a publishing deal, you can sign up with the MLC yourself for free; otherwise, your publisher or publishing administrator will handle registration and collection for you.
Digital streaming services transferred over $400 million in unmatched 'black box' mechanical royalties to the MLC in 2021. While the MLC has successfully matched and distributed about half of those funds, new unmatched royalties are generated every month because independent artists often forget to register their song details.
Fortunately, you can prevent your money from being lost by using the MLC’s free Claiming and Matching Tools inside their portal to search the database and ensure you get every dollar you're owed.
Performance Royalties
Another way songwriters get paid is through performance royalties. These are triggered whenever your song is played in public, including on the radio, in TV shows or movies, on streaming platforms like Spotify, at live venues, and in everyday businesses like bars, gyms, and restaurants.
To make sure you’re collecting all the performance royalties you’re owed, you have to sign up with a Performing Rights Organization (PRO), such as ASCAP or BMI. You can only belong to one at a time, and both are solid choices. SESAC is another option, though it’s invite-only.
Streaming Royalties
Every time your song is streamed on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, or a similar platform, it triggers both a performance royalty and a mechanical royalty, which means one stream pays you through two organizations: your PRO and the MLC.
You have to register each song individually with both organizations. This means entering every song twice, with the same title, writer names, and splits. Mismatched details are one of the most common reasons royalties go unmatched.
Print Royalties
Print royalties are typically the smallest income stream for songwriters. You earn them when your song is published as sheet music, printed in a songbook or hymnal, or licensed for choral and educational arrangements. If you have a publisher, they handle these; if not, print publishers pay the composition owners directly.
2. Sync Licensing/Placements
Songwriters get paid in two different ways when they land a sync placement. The first is the upfront payment they receive, called a sync fee, when their song is licensed for use in a movie, video game, or TV show.
This fee is either negotiated directly with a music supervisor or set as a standard rate if the song is licensed through a library or marketplace. After the content is released, the placement generates performance royalties every time it airs, which you must collect through your PRO.
Sync fees range from a few hundred dollars on the low end to six figures on the high end. This means one sync placement can pay a lot more than the other income streams on this list. But keep in mind that sync licensing is a competitive market that requires additional steps and industry connections to get in front of the right people.
3. Publishing Advances
Songwriters can also get paid through publishing advances, which are payments a publisher makes upfront based on what they expect a catalog to earn.
Seasoned songwriters with a track record of hits, placements, and consistent streaming income are more likely to receive publishing deals because publishers are betting on royalties that already exist rather than potential.
Here’s how they typically work:
- The publisher pays you upfront based on what they expect your catalog to earn. Deal terms are made privately, so there’s no standard industry figure. However, you can expect to receive more if a publisher can start monetizing your catalog immediately.
- They collect your royalties until the advance is recouped. If they paid you $25,000, they keep your publishing royalties until they've recouped that $25,000.
- After that, your royalties start flowing to you again, minus the publisher's ongoing share. This typically means 10 to 20 percent in an administration deal, or half of everything the song earns in a traditional publishing deal.
- It's not a loan, so you don't owe anything if the songs underperform. The publisher takes that risk, though an unrecouped writer is unlikely to get another advance.
4. Selling a Portion of Future Royalty Income
If your songs are already earning royalties, you can sell part of that future income and get paid a lump sum up front, instead of waiting for the payments to arrive in quarterly checks over the next decade or more.
You're not selling your songs. You keep the copyright and have full control over how your music is used. What you're selling is a slice of the royalty payments those songs will generate, and you choose how big that slice is and how long it lasts, typically for the life of the copyright.
Here’s how this can look in practice. On the Royalty Exchange Marketplace, publishing royalties from Khalid's "Location" sold for $275,000 on a 10-year deal, and Tate McRae's "You Broke Me First" sold for $1.25 million. However, deals don’t only happen for hit-makers. Smaller catalogs sell on our marketplace, too, with some listings starting around $10,000.
If your songs are currently generating royalties, you can get an estimate of what your catalog is worth using our free tool.
5. Digital and Physical Sales
If you’re a songwriter who also releases your own music, you own both copyrights: the composition copyright and the sound recording copyright. This means you’ll receive both the publishing royalties from the composition and the master royalties from the recording.
As we’ve mentioned already, the royalties you get every time your song is played in public, streamed, or performed live, as well as when it’s reproduced and released by another artist, come from the composition copyright.
Master royalties, on the other hand, flow from the sound recording copyright. They’re triggered when someone buys a physical copy of your song, such as a vinyl or CD, pays to download your music from a store like Bandcamp, or streams the recording on Spotify or Apple Music.
Digital and physical sales pay more per transaction than streaming. One album sale can be worth as much as a couple thousand streams, though streaming still accounts for the bulk of most artists' recording income because of sheer volume.
6. Songwriting Splits and Co-Writing
You don't have to be the sole songwriter on a song to get paid. If you’re a co-writer, you earn based on your ownership percentage, which is negotiated between you and the other writers.
Some teams split the song evenly, with three writers each taking a third of the composition, while others allocate shares based on contribution, meaning whoever wrote the melody or most of the lyrics earns more. The royalty income is then split accordingly.
When multiple writers are involved in a song, a “split sheet” is typically used to legally document each writer’s share of the song. Make sure you review and approve it, or have a lawyer do so, before the song is released.
7. Work-For-Hire Gigs
Work-for-hire gigs include writing custom music for ads and brand campaigns, producing tracks for production libraries, toplining for other artists, and writing for film, TV, or video game projects where the studio owns the music outright.
It’s the opposite of co-writing. You don’t own any copyrights or receive music royalties after the song is released. Instead, you are typically paid a flat fee for your contribution to the song, and it stops there.
Although you don’t receive royalty income, work-for-hire gigs can be lucrative for songwriters if they contribute to high-budget projects or work with major artists. In these cases, the payments often rival what a royalty share would earn.
Also, work-for-hire fees are typically paid upon delivery or under contract terms (net 30, half up front and half upon completion), whereas royalties trickle in over years. This means you’ll receive the money sooner, which can be helpful if your goal is to earn a steadier income up front.
8. Additional Opportunities
In addition to the income streams listed above, songwriters can earn money through other avenues such as:
- Songwriting workshops, private lessons, and online courses
- Gig fees for playing your own shows, which is different from the performance royalties your PRO collects
- Patreon, Bandcamp subscriptions, and other platforms where fans pay you directly
- Playing an instrument or singing backup on other people's recordings (if you have these skills)
- Advising brands, ad agencies, or other artists on music selection and licensing
- Creating and listing background music on high-volume subscription libraries for content creators to use
- Packaging your unique loops and melodies and selling them to music producers
- Lyric licensing, which pays a small royalty when your lyrics appear on licensed platforms like Genius or Musixmatch
The Bottom Line
There are so many ways for songwriters to make money, depending on their goals. You can focus on writing and/or producing your own music, co-write with other artists, stick strictly to work-for-hire gigs, or mix and match a few different income streams. You also don’t have to be a singer or know how to play an instrument to have a successful songwriting career.
At the end of the day, the opportunities are endless, and it comes down to deciding how you want to build your career and making sure you’re registered to collect all the royalties your songs are earning on their own.
