Comments on: Music Royalties Simplified: An Income Source All Musicians Need to Know

By: D4 Nguyen

D4 Nguyen — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 02:18:35 +0000

In reply to Liz Berlin. Hi Liz, after looking into it, you are right that you have to register a publisher to collect the other 50% on ASCAP also. Thanks for pointing that out!

By: Liz Berlin

Liz Berlin — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 16:17:43 +0000

Hello,

Thank you for this very informative article. I have a question about this section:

“BMI splits its performance royalties 50/50 between the writer and the publisher. This means you can only get 50% of it as the songwriter. You will have to register as a publishing company to collect the full share or go through a publishing administrator. If you’re just starting out, don’t worry creating a publishing company.

On the other hand, ASCAP allows you to collect 100% of the royalty as the songwriter.”

In my experience as an ASCAP artist, I have registered as an artist and as a publisher, getting 50% of my royalties to each account. So I don’t know if that changed since you wrote this article but I wanted to point it out and see if you may have different information that I do?

Thanks,
Liz

By: D4 Nguyen

D4 Nguyen — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 00:32:55 +0000

In reply to Cal. Generally speaking, yes. The master recording generates royalties for the recording artist and record label (if there is one) and the musical composition used in the master recording generates royalties for the songwriter/music publisher.

By: Cal

Cal — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 22:52:45 +0000

Excellent article–the best I’ve read yet on understanding the different types of royalties!

I have one question: are master generated royalties only paid to the record label and artist (not the songwriter/music publisher)?

Thanks!

By: D-4 Nguyen

D-4 Nguyen — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 17:47:12 +0000

In reply to Amy. Whoops thank you for catching that Amy! That makes a lot more sense. ?

By: Amy

Amy — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 14:38:18 +0000

Great article! You might want to correct the math application under the Mechanical Licensing/ Royalty heading. This statement needs to be fixed:
If they decide to put that cover song on their album, they will need to pay you 9.1 cents for every copy of that cover being produced. If they press 500 CDs with one of your compositions on it, then you are owed $455 (500 x .91), even if they don’t sell all the copies.

The amount owed should be $45.50 (500 x $.091).

Moving that decimal point one place makes a BIG difference 🙂

By: Thabiso

Thabiso — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 04:24:31 +0000

This has been a very informative article, especially how royalties are collected. I would like to discuss this some more with you if possible. I’m based in South Africa and I’ve got a project that I would like to start and I’d like to hear your views on some of the things about the collection of music royalties. Thank you a lot.