Mechanical Royalties
Mechanical Royalties
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Mechanical Royalties -
It’s February 2010, iTunes is the largest music vendor in the world. You download hundreds upon thousands of songs that you immediately download into your iPod Nano.
Life is looking great.
Mechanical royalties are paid to songwriters every time one of their songs is sold, downloaded, or streamed on an interactive streaming services.
Commonly confused for distribution royalties, mechanical royalties are based on a statutory rate that is established by the Copyright Royalty Board (only for the US). There are respective royalty boards in every country that apply different payouts based on a numbers of factors like minimum song length and rate per minute.
For the US, the statutory rate is $0.091 per song under five minutes.
In order to collect these royalties, you will need, at minimum, a distributor like DistroKid and a PRO like ASCAP or BMI. For foreign territories, it’s best to sign up with an administrative publisher like CD Baby Pro or SongTrust (save 10% with this link) to guarantee the collection process is seamless.
If you choose to not use SongTrust, make sure to sign up with the MRO or Mechanical Rights Organization.
