How to make more money as a music creator

It can be tough as an artist in the digital era to make ends meet financially, and yet a great number of creators today are not optimizing their revenue ! Royalties stemming from streams of your songs on platforms such as Spotify or Apple Music account only for a fraction of the income you are entitled to and you can follow some simple steps to achieve financial stability more rapidly.

Master Royalties

When you think of income for your creative project in the recorded music industry, the first thing that comes to mind is royalties issued from streams and online downloads. These royalties pertain to your master rights, being the rights you own to your recording (the audio file that has been distributed).

You can collect these royalties from your own distributor or your label’s distributor, which typically pay you every month or quarterly depending on the service used.

Performance Royalties

Performance royalties are another source of income for artists, relative to the composition of a song. When a song is performed publicly (may it be on the radio or during a live show), the radio station or promoter pays PROs (Performance Rights Organizations) a license to use the music played. This license will then be used to compensate songwriters for their work.

You can collect these royalties by registering with your country’s PRO : BMI or ASCAP in the USA, SACEM in France or PRS in the United Kingdom.

Neighboring Rights

Neighboring royalties function in the same manner as performance royalties but compensate the master rights holder rather than the songwriter. While in the USA these rights are not recognized and royalties are not paid out, this additional income is valid for any artist residing and creating outside of the USA.

You can collect these royalties by registering with organizations such as SoundExchange or Songtrust, who can collect this revenue for you internationally.

Mechanical Royalties

Mechanical Royalties pertain to the reproduction of your work in physical and digital formats. Every time your song is sold, downloaded or streamed via a service such as Spotify or Apple Music, a complementary royalty is paid out to the songwriter.

An organization such as SoundExchange in the USA will also be able to collect these royalties for you internationally.

Synchronization Royalties

Synchronization royalties are generated by the use of your music in movies, advertisements, games, or any other type of content in which your music has been used. When an advertisement is aired, a rate will be distributed to the songwriter of the concerned piece of work.

These royalties can also be collected by a PRO, so don’t forget to register with your society now !

Easy solution to collect everything in one place

Now that you know that you are entitled to a number of revenue streams, it’s time to start registering for the various organizations that will allow you to optimize your finances ! If you’d rather opt for an easier and more centralized solution though, we at Releese can collect master royalties, neighboring rights, but also all royalties related to your compositions (Performance, Mechanical and Synchronization Royalties) throughout the world.

Sign up for a free one-month trial and scale your career to the next level !