Reporting, explainers, and reading lists on the business side of being an independent artist — royalties, performance rights organizations, streaming economics, and the industry news worth paying attention to. Outbound links go to the original publishers.
Where the money actually comes from, who collects it, and how to make sure you're registered to receive your share.
A pro-rata pool, fractions of a cent per stream, and a tangle of rights holders sitting between the listener and the artist. We break down where every dollar of a Spotify subscription actually lands — from the major label cut to the publisher's share to the songwriter's mechanical.
Read at Water & Music →If you wrote the song, three different royalty streams should be flowing to you. Most independent songwriters are only collecting one. Here's the difference between mechanicals (handled by the MLC in the U.S.), performance royalties (your PRO), and sync fees — and how to register so none of it leaks.
Read at Soundcharts →The Mechanical Licensing Collective was created by the Music Modernization Act to pay songwriters for streaming mechanicals in the U.S. Unclaimed royalties keep piling up. We walk through how to register your catalog with the MLC for free and claim what's yours.
Read at Billboard →When your recording plays on terrestrial radio overseas or in a public venue in most of the world, a neighboring-rights royalty is generated for the performer and the master owner. U.S. labels and artists routinely leave this money on the table because the U.S. doesn't pay it domestically.
Read at DIY Musician (CD Baby) →ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR, SoundExchange, and the global CMO network — what they do, what they don't, and why every songwriter needs one.
All four U.S. performing rights organizations collect public performance royalties for songwriters and publishers, but they differ on fees, payout schedules, transparency, and who they'll even let in the door. A plain-language comparison for songwriters trying to pick one.
Read at Hypebot →Performance royalties accrue from the moment your song is played publicly — on radio, in a coffee shop, in a TV cue, on a stream — but only if you've registered the work with a PRO and a publishing administrator first. Miss the window and the money is gone.
Read at Songtrust →SoundExchange isn't a PRO, but it's the only entity that collects non-interactive digital performance royalties (think Pandora, SiriusXM, webcasters) in the United States — paid to recording artists and master owners, not songwriters. If you've ever been on Pandora, you probably have money waiting.
Read at MusicBusinessWorldwide →Your ASCAP or BMI registration won't capture everything you're owed when a song hits playlists in Brazil, Japan, or the UK. We look at sub-publishing, CMOs abroad, and the publishing administrators (Songtrust, Kobalt, Sentric) closing the gap for indie writers.
Read at Music Ally →The deals, lawsuits, platform changes, and policy fights shaping the next year for independent musicians.
Spotify's threshold model — tracks need 1,000 streams in 12 months to earn anything — was pitched as a way to redirect money from 'noise' to working artists. A year of data is in. We look at who actually benefited and which independent artists got squeezed.
Read at Pitchfork →Major labels, distributors, and PROs are scrambling to define how AI-generated tracks get treated on streaming platforms — who gets credit, who gets paid, and whether training a model on copyrighted recordings is itself a licensable act. Legislation is finally catching up.
Read at The Verge →The DOJ's case against Live Nation is reshaping how independent venues and promoters book national tours. Indie artists are watching closely: a forced unwinding could change the economics of mid-level touring for the first time in two decades.
Read at Rolling Stone →Layoffs, ownership changes, and a slow drift away from the artist-first ethos have sent indie musicians looking at alternatives — Faircamp, Mirlo, Subvert, even hand-rolled Shopify stores. A look at what's actually working for direct-to-fan sales right now.
Read at MusicBusinessWorldwide →