Reading your royalty statement: a line-by-line walkthrough of distributor, PRO and MLC reports

Most independent artists get at least three kinds of royalty statement, and they look nothing alike. A distributor spreadsheet runs to thousands of rows. A PRO statement lists works and distributions. The MLC sends a tab-separated file. The same Spotify play can sit on all three, and if you read them separately you can't tell normal lag from missing money.

This guide walks through each statement and then shows how to check them against each other. Not financial, tax or legal advice; your contracts decide what you are owed.

Why does one stream show up three times?

A recorded song is two copyrights: the recording and the composition. The MLC puts it plainly: copyright law creates separate rights for musical works and sound recordings, and each can produce its own royalty stream.

Spotify says it doesn't pay artists or songwriters directly. It pays the rights holders you chose, such as a label, distributor, publisher, performance rights organisation (PRO) or collecting society. On the song side, an MLC executive told Spotify for Artists in 2022 that "with every interactive stream on a digital service, there are two royalties that are generated for a songwriter": a mechanical royalty and a performance royalty.

So one US stream can turn into three lines:

1. Recording royalty goes to your label or distributor and appears on the distributor statement.
2. Performance royalty for the song goes to a PRO, such as ASCAP, BMI or SESAC in the US, and appears on the PRO statement.
3. Mechanical royalty for the song goes to the MLC, which handles mechanical royalties from US streaming services, and appears on the MLC statement. If a publisher or administrator manages your songs, it reaches you through them.

The same interview says songwriters generally need to join both a PRO and the MLC to collect all their US streaming royalties.

The mock statement

Everything in these tables is invented for illustration. The song, the numbers and the rates are made up and are not real royalty rates. The distributor column names follow TuneCore's documented sales report. Other distributors use similar fields under different names.

A. Distributor statement (recording), mock

B. PRO statement (song, performance), mock

C. MLC statement (song, US mechanical), mock

How do you read the distributor statement, column by column?

1. Sales period vs posted date. TuneCore defines the sales period as when your music was sold and the posted date as when the report reached your account. DistroKid says services report every one to two months for streams or sales from a few months earlier, and some report only once or twice a year. Always reconcile by sales period.
2. Store and country. Spotify calculates streamshare monthly in each country, against that market's royalty pool. That is why 6,000 Indian streams can earn less than 4,000 US ones in the mock.
3. Units. The store's own count. DistroKid warns that its Daily Stats come from "trend reports" that often differ from earnings reports, and that earnings reports take about two to three months to arrive.
4. Net sales, currency, exchange rate, earned. TuneCore's net sales is what the store paid after its percentage. The figure is in local currency, then converted at a stated rate into US dollars, which is the only currency TuneCore pays out in. If your distributor takes a commission, look for a separate gross column and a fee column before the net.
5. Negative rows. TuneCore says a negative Spotify net sales figure reflects Discovery Mode commission. That's the third mock row. If you used it, our promotion options comparison explains the trade.
6. Zero rows. DistroKid says streams can show zero earnings because some services don't pay for free trials or promotions, and because streams from smaller markets can earn less than a penny.

To get the raw file, DistroKid's route is Bank, then "See Excruciating Detail", then Download. Generated reports stay available for only 7 days, so save a copy each time.

How do you read the PRO and MLC statements?

PRO. These statements are organised by work and distribution, not by store and day. PRS for Music, for example, puts statements online after each distribution, as PDF or CSV, with history back to 2015. It sends a statement with each payment and asks you to raise a query if you expected a payment and got no statement. The same page says each work must be registered before PRS can collect on it. A song with no PRO line is often an unregistered song.

MLC. Statements come in two layouts, both as .tsv files. Royalty Detail shows lines for the individual recordings in services' usage reports. Work Summary rolls them up by song. The MLC's FAQ says payments go out monthly, about 75 days after the end of each month. Each statement has a Payee Summary with opening balance, earnings, amount payable and closing balance. Download links expire after 15 minutes. Minimums apply: $5 by ACH for US members, and $100 by bank transfer for members outside the US. Below that, you may get no payment that month.

How do you spot errors?

• Line up all three statements by usage month, not payment date.
• Recording earning but no MLC line for the same month and service? Open the Songwriter Hub, download your song list and check it. Search unmatched recordings with the Matching Tool, and merge stray versions of your writer name or IPI.
• Recording earning but no PRO line? Check the work is registered, with the right writer splits.
• On Spotify, a track under 1,000 streams in the past year earns no recording royalties. Expect a zero there, not an error.
• Negative Spotify rows: are they Discovery Mode?
• Check the exchange-rate column. If you're outside the US, check withholding too; our W-8BEN guide covers it.
• Save every raw file. Download links expire.

What we think

The three statements aren't a bug. They reflect two copyrights and several collecting bodies, but the burden of reconciling them falls entirely on the artist. A distributor statement keys on recordings and stores. PRO and MLC statements key on works and writer IDs. Nothing on the page links the two, so a mismatch rarely looks like an error. It looks like nothing, and in our view that is where independent songwriters most often lose money.

Spotify calls your distributor's royalty report "the most accurate source of truth" for royalties from its streams. For the recording, that's fair. But it covers only one of the three payments, and a self-releasing artist who reads only that spreadsheet is likely to miss the song money. We'd like distributors to show the composition side next to each recording, with registration status for the PRO and the MLC. That's a feature request, not a claim that anyone offers it today.

Until then, spend an hour each quarter reconciling the three statements against one usage month. It's tedious, and it's the only check most artists have.