The 4 Types of Music Royalties (and How to Collect Each One)

There are four types of music royalties. Performance royalties pay you when your music is played publicly, mechanical royalties pay you when it's copied or streamed, sync royalties pay you when it's licensed for film and TV, and print royalties pay you when it sells as sheet music. 

Each type is collected by a different organization. Below, we break down how all four work and how to collect them.

Performance Royalties

You earn a performance royalty whenever your music is played in public. This includes:

• Radio airplay
• Streams on Spotify and other services
• Music played in bars, gyms, and stores
• TV and network broadcasts
• Live performances at venues
• On-hold and background music

Businesses pay licensing fees to play music publicly, and performance royalties are your share of that money. Who collects yours depends on which part of the song you own:

• The composition is the melody and lyrics, and it earns performance royalties whenever it's played publicly. Performance Rights Organizations (PROs) collect these royalties. They license radio stations, venues, streaming services, and businesses that play music, then pay songwriters and publishers based on how often their songs get played. ASCAP alone distributed $1.759 billion in 2025.
• The recording is the master itself. SoundExchange collects these royalties from non-interactive services like SiriusXM, Pandora, and internet radio. It pays featured artists their 45% share directly, even when a label owns the master.

The Terrestrial Radio Gap

In the US, AM/FM stations pay the songwriter but not the recording artist. The law only requires them to license the composition, not the recording. So if you perform on a track you didn't write, you earn nothing when it plays.

In Canada, the UK, Japan, and most of the world, radio stations pay both the songwriter and the recording artist. The US is one of the only countries in the world that doesn't work this way. A bill called the American Music Fairness Act, reintroduced in Congress in January 2025, would change this. However, lawmakers have tried and failed to pass it for nearly two decades.

How to Collect Performance Royalties

Your song earns performance royalties through a PRO, and your recording earns them from digital radio through SoundExchange. Here's how to register with both:

1. Join one PRO as a songwriter, such as ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC. You can only belong to one at a time. Performance royalties are split into a writer's share and a publisher's share, so if you're independent, register as your own publisher to collect both.
2. Register with SoundExchange if you own your masters or perform on recordings. It's free and takes about 15 minutes to sign up.

Mechanical Royalties

A mechanical royalty is what you're owed every time your song gets copied. The name comes from the player piano days, when copying a song meant punching holes in a paper roll. The technology changed, but the rule didn't. If someone copies your composition, they pay you.

Today, almost every copy is digital. You earn a mechanical when someone streams your song on demand, downloads it, or buys it on vinyl or CD. Radio-style streaming is the only exception, since the service picks the songs and nothing gets copied on demand.

Who collects your mechanical depends on the format. Streaming and downloads go through the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), which has paid out nearly $4 billion since 2021, while physical copies go through the Harry Fox Agency or your publishing administrator.

You don't set the rate either way. The Copyright Royalty Board sets it by law. In 2026, physical copies and downloads pay 13.1 cents per song, and streaming pays 15.3% of a platform's revenue. The streaming rate will rise to 15.35% in 2027.

How to Collect Mechanical Royalties

Here's how to make sure every mechanical you’re owed reaches you:

1. Register with the MLC for free. Your PRO and distributor don't collect mechanical royalties, so until you register, this money will go unclaimed.
2. If your music earns overseas or you sell vinyl and CDs, hire a publishing administrator like Songtrust. It collects from the societies around the world that hold your money and takes a 20 percent commission.
3. If you hire an administrator, ask whether it registers you with the MLC before doing it yourself. Most do as part of their service, and registering the same song twice will freeze your payments.

Also, remember to keep your metadata clean. If your song titles, writer names, and splits are inconsistent or missing, your mechanicals can go unmatched and might not reach you.

Sync Royalties

A sync royalty is what you get paid when your music is used with video. The name is short for "synchronization" because the song gets synced to picture. Before that can happen, the production has to buy a sync license, which is permission to pair your song with their footage. Film scenes, TV episodes, commercials, and video games all require one.

Sync works differently than the other royalty types:

• There's no set rate. The fee is whatever you and the production agree on, so an indie film might pay a few hundred dollars while a national commercial pays $10,000 to $250,000.
• A placement requires both copyrights. The production licenses the composition and the recording separately, and the total fee usually splits 50/50 between them. If you own both, you collect both halves.
• The placement keeps earning after the fee. Every time the show or ad airs, the composition earns performance royalties through your PRO, and a placement that syndicates for years can out-earn the original fee.

How to Collect Sync Royalties

Sync has no registration system, so collecting these royalties works differently than the other types:

1. Get your music in front of music supervisors (the people who choose songs for shows, films, and ads). You can pitch them yourself, but most placements go through a publisher, publishing administrator, or sync agent, who pitch for you and take a cut of the fee.
2. Register your songs with your PRO. When a show or ad airs, the production files a cue sheet with the PROs listing every song used, and the PRO matches each song to its database to pay the writers. If your songs aren't in that database, you don't get paid.

Print Royalties

A print royalty is what you're owed when your composition sells as printed music, like sheet music, a songbook, or a piano arrangement. It's the oldest royalty type, from the days when sheet music was the music business. The format is mostly digital now, so a downloaded arrangement from Musicnotes or Sheet Music Plus pays the same royalty as a printed songbook does.

Most artists earn little to nothing from print. It matters if you write classical, choral, or band music, or if other musicians want to learn your songs. If nobody's buying your sheet music, there's nothing to collect.

How to Collect Print Royalties

If you have a publisher or administrator, sheet music of your songs can sell without you knowing it. Here's how to collect what you might be owed:

1. Ask your publisher or administrator whether your songs are registered with print platforms like Musicnotes and Sheet Music Plus. These platforms only license songs through publishers, not from writers directly.
2. Check your royalty statements for a "print" or "sheet music" line. If that line has money on it, your sheet music is selling.

How Streaming Triggers Multiple Royalty Types at Once

A single interactive stream generates two royalties for a songwriter. Under US law, the stream counts as a public performance of your song, and as a reproduction of it, so every play owes you a performance royalty and a mechanical royalty at the same time.

The problem is that the two travel separately. A performance royalty flows through your PRO, while a mechanical royalty flows through the MLC, which are separate organizations with separate registrations. If you register with one and not the other, you miss one of the two royalties on every stream, indefinitely.

Are You Collecting All 4 Types of Music Royalties You're Owed?

Not every songwriter earns all four types of music royalties. It comes down to how your music gets used, so you only need to register for the ones that apply to you.

Here's how it breaks down:

• Your songs get played in public, including streaming. That earns performance royalties, so register with a PRO. If you own your masters, register with SoundExchange too, since it collects the recording side.
• Your songs get streamed, downloaded, or sold on vinyl or CD. Each of those earns a mechanical royalty, so register with the MLC. If you earn overseas or sell physical copies, sign up with a publishing administrator as well, since the MLC doesn't cover those.
• Your music gets placed in film, TV, ads, or games. A placement earns a sync fee upfront. Every time it airs after that, it also earns performance royalties through your PRO.
• Your songs sell as sheet music. Those sales earn print royalties. Your publisher or administrator collects them for you.

If you joined a PRO years ago and never registered with the MLC, you're collecting performance royalties but missing mechanicals on every stream. The MLC is currently holding hundreds of millions in royalties that writers never registered to receive, and unclaimed funds can eventually be redistributed to other rightsholders.

What to Do Once Your Royalties Are Flowing

Once you're registered everywhere your music earns, the money arrives in pieces on different schedules. PROs pay quarterly, the MLC and SoundExchange pay monthly, foreign royalties can take a year or more to reach you, and sync fees only land when a deal closes. Your catalog earns steadily, but you collect it slowly.

Royalty Exchange works the other way. You sell all or part of your royalty income to investors on terms you choose, from a few years to life of rights, and get paid upfront instead of waiting on those checks. 

Musicians have raised more than $200 million on our platform. Get a free estimate of what your catalog is worth.