#DO ARTISTS MAKE MONEY THROUGH LICENCES DOWNLOAD#
#DO ARTISTS MAKE MONEY THROUGH LICENCES FREE#

#DO ARTISTS MAKE MONEY THROUGH LICENCES FREE#

To earn $1,000 in mechanical royalties here, you would need approximately 11,000 downloads or physical albums sold.Īlthough mechanical royalty rates were supposed to be regularly updated to reflect things like inflation and other realities over the years, the rates remained at 9.1 cents for over 12 years and are not expected to rise in the era of streaming.Īs mentioned, the mechanical royalty is not free market.

#DO ARTISTS MAKE MONEY THROUGH LICENCES DOWNLOAD#

When the artist/record company records a songwriter/music publisher’s song, and makes it available for sale as a download or part of a physical album, a mechanical royalty of 9.1 cents per song is due. Physical and permanent downloads fall under the traditional mechanical royalty payment structure. Physical and Download Mechanical Royalties The mechanical streaming rate is about $0.06 per 100 streams, or $0.0006 per stream. Using this figure, it would require approximately 1.6 million on-demand streams to earn $1,000 in streaming mechanical royalties. That leaves $0.0012 to the composition, which is then split 50/50 between performance and mechanical royalties. The sound recording average is about $0.0038 per stream. To understand this figure: The average per-stream royalty for both the composition and recording on Spotify is around half a penny. Depending on how you do the math (there are several options) the payments for streaming mechanicals land in the ballpark of about $0.06 per 100 on-demand streams. These interactive streams pay fractions of a penny per stream to the songwriters and music publishers for two different royalties: public performance and mechanical. On-demand (or interactive) streaming is unique because it is primarily licensed and paid by the streaming services. And the result has dramatically altered how mechanical royalties are paid and distributed (not to mention their earning potential for songwriters). Today, the mechanical royalty comes in new flavors: streaming and digital downloads.

Think of the countless recordings and versions of classic holiday songs like “White Christmas” or “Let It Snow.” That’s big money for the songwriter and music publisher.įor most of the 20th century, this mechanical royalty applied to physical formats like vinyl, cassettes, and CD’s. Traditionally, the artist/record company pays this royalty to the songwriter and music publisher for any audio reproduction and distribution of their song that they make. Congress stepped in to regulate them via the 1909 Copyright Act and created the government regulation of a “mechanical” royalty owed to songwriters and music publishers for the reproduction and distribution of their songs.

Copyright Act.īack in 1909 when mechanical royalties were first created, music publishers controlled the music industry. Instead mechanical royalty rates are set by government regulation through various updates to the U.S. Unlike sound recording royalties, most composition royalties rates are not set by the free market. The purchase of a player piano roll would require a mechanical royalty be paid to the owner of the composition copyright.

Do artists make money through licences