Streaming sites are a great way for your fans to listen to your latest songs, but also a way for you to monetize your music. In many cases artists only look at the streaming sites for their revenue. With this thinking they miss out on multiple ways that they could be generating additional revenue from people who are listening and using their music without them even knowing it.
2 Major Ways You Are Losing Out On Money That Is Yours
1. Publishing rights
Publishing is different than your usual Spotify, SoundCloud, and Apple Music royalties. Publishing organizations collect money from thousands of venues, radio stations, department stores, bars, live events, and more. They have complex software that analyzes the landscape for you so that you can get paid when someone uses your music.
How To Register
The main two organizations for collecting publishing royalties are BMI and ASCAP. These two places are non-profit organizations. These two organizations are where the top artists in the industry collect their publishing royalties. Anyone is free to register with these organizations and collect their publishing royalties. A note to consider is that you will need to register an LLC that acts as your own publishing company in order to receive 100% of your publishing royalties. If you do not do this they will only give you 50% of what you are owed.
2. Non-Interactive Streaming Royalties
Your non-interactive streaming royalties are sites like Pandora, Sirius XM, and Spotify Radio. This means you are unable to choose what you listen to. These sites have playlists that you can listen to, but you are unable to interact and change to specific songs. The major site to collect these royalties is through TuneCore. They handle all of these platforms that may be including your music in some of their playlists. We heard a story about a person who made kids songs that wasn't collecting these royalties. He was told this information and within the first month he received a check for $10,000 because Pandora radio was including his songs in one of its kid friendly radio stations.
Conclusion
If you are only collecting your digital streaming royalties, you are leaving potential money on the table from your music. You have no idea who is using your music on which sites or where. Which is why registering your publishing and non-interactive royalties can at the very least give peace of mind that you have your major bases covered.
If this was helpful please leave a comment and we can explore more ways for you to collect more money! This is just the beginning!