Who pays you for what: PROs, the MLC, SoundExchange and your distributor, on one page

Most artists picture royalties as one payment from Spotify. They aren't. Every recording carries two copyrights, the song and the recording, and each use of it (a stream, a radio play, a gig, a copy) can be owed to a different organisation. None of them will find you. You have to register with each one, and the money you don't claim usually ends up with someone else.

This is our one-page map, followed by a checklist for artists in India, the UK and the US.

Who pays what?

Start with the streaming services. Spotify's own support page says it doesn't pay artists for recordings directly. Recording royalties go through the "licensor that delivered the music", which means your label or distributor. Song royalties are paid separately, to publishers, collecting societies and mechanical agencies depending on the territory, and US mechanicals can be claimed through the MLC.

Performing rights organisations (PROs) pay for the song, not the recording. BMI's introductory guide says public performance covers radio, TV, venues, bars and both interactive and non-interactive streaming, and that it is "the only royalty that BMI pays". BMI says it represents more than 22.4 million works and pays quarterly. ASCAP makes 12 distributions a year, four of them to writers for US performances, and usually pays US royalties about six to nine months after the performance. It can credit missed royalties back by only one survey year. It also has reciprocal agreements with foreign societies, so a writer in London or Mumbai collects US performance money through their home PRO.

The MLC collects US streaming and download mechanicals under the blanket licence. Its membership page says membership is free and that anyone entitled to US digital audio mechanical royalties should join, including self-administered songwriters. Writers with a publisher can still use its Songwriter Hub to check their data. The MLC's June 2026 one-sheet reports more than $4 billion processed and an average match rate of nearly 92%. It plans to start paying out unclaimed royalties by market share in 2027, beginning with January 2021 usage. We covered what that deadline means earlier this month.

SoundExchange pays for US non-interactive digital plays. Its FAQ names satellite radio, webcasters and digital cable music services. It doesn't pay songwriters and doesn't cover YouTube. Registration is free and open to non-US artists, who need a W-8BEN tax form, but it collects only three years back, and after that unclaimed royalties expire. The law sets the split: 50% to the recording's owner, 45% to the featured artist and 5% to funds for session players and singers. Our SoundExchange explainer explains how to register.

The UK and India

In the UK, PRS for Music collects the performing right for live, radio, TV, film, ads, streaming and downloads. Writers pay a one-off £100 to join, and MCPS, which handles mechanicals, costs another £100. PRS itself suggests joining once you're likely to earn more than £100 a year. Its minimum payment is £30 in the UK or £60 internationally. PPL is the recording side: free to join, for performers and recording owners, with UK royalties paid once a year in June and collections abroad through partner societies.

India's set-up is in flux. The Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS) is a copyright society under the Copyright Act, 1957, representing composers, lyricists and publishers. It had to re-register after a 2012 amendment. In an interim order reported in May 2023, the Bombay High Court held in IPRS's cases against two radio operators, that authors are owed royalties when sound recordings containing their work are communicated to the public. The order is interim and isn't binding precedent. On the recording side, PPL India was registered again as a copyright society on 11 June 2026, licensing public performance of sound recordings for the roughly 500 labels it represents.

The checklist

If you write your own songs and release them yourself, these are the five to check:

• India: IPRS for your songs. PPL India for your recordings, which means asking whether you can join as a label or whether your distributor's label entity is already a member. The MLC and SoundExchange for US money. Your distributor for masters.
• UK: PRS, plus MCPS if mechanicals matter to you. PPL. SoundExchange. The MLC, unless your publisher or society already collects there (the MLC lists connected societies). Your distributor.
• US: ASCAP or BMI. The MLC. SoundExchange, as both featured artist and owner of the recording. Your distributor.

Wherever you are, put the full songwriter credits and ISRCs on every release. Matching runs on that data: ASCAP, for one, says it uses performer names, alternate titles and ISRCs to match performances to songs.

What we think

The map's real lesson is that your distributor covers one line of five. A self-releasing writer-artist whose song streams in the US is owed money on at least three lines (master, performance, mechanical), plus a fourth if it plays on digital radio. Uploading covers only the first.

The defaults punish whoever isn't registered. On our reading of the statute, an artist who owns their recording and registers with SoundExchange as both artist and owner is entitled to 95% of each recording's share before SoundExchange's costs. Registering only as an artist forfeits more than half of that, and not registering for three years forfeits all of it. A 92% match rate at the MLC is good engineering, but it still leaves about 8% unmatched on average. Unclaimed MLC money is eventually shared out by market share, so most of it goes to whoever already earns the most. That is rarely the self-administered writer.

The costs aren't evenly spread either. The US collectives and PPL are free, but a UK writer who wants both PRS and MCPS pays £200 up front. PRS's own advice to wait until you're likely to earn £100 a year makes sense for the cash, but it's a hurdle the US bodies don't impose. And the payment schedules (quarterly, monthly, once a year in June, six to nine months after a play) mean a song released today can take most of a year to produce its first statement. We'd like each society to show members what it holds for them, unclaimed, in real time. Until then, use the checklist above and redo it every time you release something.