What is the difference between legal music rights and loyalties? A copyright ensures your music is registered and belongs to you. It does not guarantee payment for plays or streaming. In order to get paid, you must make sure it’s licensed correctly.

Copyrights and Legalities regarding your music are complicated. There’s more to it than just registering with the copyright office. Simple registration doesn’t guarantee payment for your hard work. As a matter of fact, big companies can make money off your music without giving you a cent if you don’t go through other steps to ensure you’re getting deserved royalties. They do it all the time. 

As a DIY artist, you inherently own the copyright to your music as soon as you publish it in tangible form, but properly registering and managing licenses, registrations, and agreements will allow you to retain control of your rights and get paid for various uses of your music. Even if you have managers who are in charge of this aspect of your career, it’s always a good idea to get personally involved and check up on them. Human nature isn’t so gracious when it pertains to business. And behaviors don’t change until situations become unbearable—so if someone can get away with something, they will. 

First, let’s look at the details of how this all works. 

Copyright

• Your original songs and recordings are automatically copyrighted as soon as they are fixed in tangible form (written down or recorded)
• Copyright provides exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform and display your work
• You can formally register your copyright quite easily and inexpensively under the right government and/or business agency. 

Does this guarantee you’ll get paid for your music? Absolutely not. It just gives you the right to sue someone using it under their name, or commercially. The next step is learning about licensing. Master use, sync, and mechanical licenses to permit various usages of your music by other companies and people. 

Master use licensing permits someone to use your copyrighted sound recording in a new project, usually something like a film. Common licenses allow use in broadcasting, film/TV, advertising, video games, and streaming. Sync licenses are specific to use in videos (weddings, YouTube, etc.) Mechanical licenses are for audio only formats, in case someone wants to use your song in a podcast, audio interview, digital downloads, or part of a vinyl release. So you see—you could be missing out on money if you don’t make sure all of these things are taken care of. 

Copyrighting only takes care of ownership; no one can claim your song. But they can still use it in their own work without paying for it unless you make sure it’s licensed. 

Specifically, you need to make sure you receive your due royalties for all the following situations:

• Digital Sales (Streaming Royalties & Download Royalties)
• Physical Sales
• Mechanical Royalties
• (Public) Performance Royalties
• Neighboring Rights Royalties
• Digital Performance Royalties
• Sync Licensing Fees

All you have to do is claim these royalties. Let’s explore how we do this. 

First, the easiest thing you’ll do is to sign up with a distribution company in order to release your music. Distrokid, for example, is a distribution company. This automatically takes care of your royalties for some streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple. 

Next, you have to understand that there are interactive radio streaming services that do NOT pay your royalties unless you go through a different company. These are places like iHeart, Pandora, Sirius XM, etc. Interactive radio is different than Spotify. In order to collect this money, you need to be signed up with SoundExchange. 

The third thing to do is to sign up with a PRO. These are Performance Rights Organizations. The big ones in the US are SESAC, ASCAP, and BMI. Every country has their own performance rights organization(s). If your music is performed in any kind of commercial environment, you are due your royalties for it. They’ll get them for you. 

Last, make sure you are signed up with SongTrust. If you are a US music artist, just as an example, then you need to understand all these companies mentioned do not operate outside of the US. If your music is streaming in other countries, you’ll not get those royalties unless you go through SongTrust. They make sure you get your streaming royalties from outside your country.

What happens if you never claim the money you could be getting?

There is a certain time period you have to claim your royalties. It doesn’t lay around forever, unclaimed. Eventually, it hits a deadline and becomes what’s called “Unallocated”, or “Black Box” royalties, and are not available for distribution to you anymore. What happens to that money depends on the society. It is a common practice to reallocate this money to society’s top earners in the music business, like Taylor Swift or Kanye West. Do you want your money going to a millionaire?

Take action and get what you are entitled to. You put the work in. You should get the money. Even if you don’t think you’ll make that much, you should put some effort into claiming it anyway. Every bit helps a DIY musician!