Get yourself a crown – explaining royalties for our RouteNote royals 👑

RouteNote collects the earnings for streams and downloads of the releases that you have distributed with us. These are known as the ‘master recording royalty’ or sometimes the ‘main artist royalty’.

We can now also collect your YouTube Sync royalties for you! Every time your composition is put to a moving image (video) on YouTube, you are entitled to a synchronization royalty. Please read on to find out more.

There are other types of royalties associated with music called ‘publishing royalties’ and collection agencies such as PRS, ASCAP and PPL can assist you with collecting them.

Here are a few examples of royalty collection agencies and the type of royalties they collect:

PRS/ASCAP/SOCAN – the performance royalty: These come from a live performance of a composition at a venue, a radio play or simply a track being played in the background of your favorite coffee shop. Any time you hear music out in public, it is generating this royalty for the composition rights holder.

MCPS/GEMA/SACEM – the mechanical royalty: These come from a duplication or reproduction of a composition, cover tracks and digital downloads both count as reproductions and generate a mechanical royalty.

PPL/Sound Exchange – neighboring rights: These come from the public performance of the sound recording, they are different from the main sound recording royalty, and are not the same as performance royalties which are based on the plays of the composition.

RouteNote can help you collect a type of royalty from YouTube known as a ‘Sync’ or ‘ Micro Synchronization’ royalty, as mentioned above. Whenever a video containing one of your compositions is viewed from the US, you are entitled to a synchronization royalty which, unless claimed, is held by YouTube. If you own your compositions and have Content ID enabled you will be eligible to claim this royalty. If this sounds like you, then please fill out this form!

Sometimes a track generates multiple royalties from one play – using one of our major partner stores as an example, Spotify will generate three types of royalty with every ‘on demand’ stream; the ‘main artist’ royalty or ‘master recording royalty’ (which RouteNote collects), plus a performance royalty and a mechanical royalty. You must be signed up with your nation’s relevant PRO/MRO in order to receive the performance and mechanical royalties.

If you have any further queries, feel free to get in touch with us!

See also:
Can I use third party services that guarantee streams?
How much do I get paid per stream?
When will I see my statistics for each store?