Royalties & Bundles: How “All-in-One” Plans Cut Payouts — and When Clarity Might Arrive When a streaming service adds audiobooks (or other media) to a music plan and calls it a bundle, U.S. mechanical royalties for songwriters can be calculated at a discounted...
Taylor Swift’s Fight for Her Masters & What It Means for Creator Rights In the high-stakes intersection of creativity and commerce, few stories illustrate the power dynamics of ownership better than Taylor Swift’s years-long battle over her master recordings....
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2025 Tax Overhaul Impacts Royalty Earnings The tax landscape for music creators is changing rapidly. Effective January 2025, new IRS and regulatory provisions introduce tailored treatments for royalty income—from cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) on mechanical...
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The State of Artist Royalties in 2025: What Every Music Creator Needs to Know The music industry is generating more revenue than ever, yet the question of who benefits remains front and center for creators. With streaming payouts reaching historic highs, AI disrupting...
The Royalty Audit Process Your Royalties. Your Right to Know. What exactly is a royalty audit? A royalty audit is a professional review of your royalty statements and underlying financial records to confirm you’ve been paid what you’re owed. It checks whether all...
Every year, more than $3.2 billion in songwriter and publishing royalties vanish into what the industry calls the Black Box. After 36 months, unclaimed royalties are redistributed to major publishers — money that often should have gone to the artists who earned it.
If your music is streaming but your statements show nothing, it’s not bad luck. It’s a registration or reporting gap — and it’s costing creators billions.
Even established entertainers who receive royalties often fail to verify whether they’ve actually recouped all that’s due from every source. Royalty statements reflect only what’s been matched and reported — not necessarily everything earned.
At Studio Budgets, we help artists, producers, and songwriters identify where revenue leaks occur, recover missing income, and protect future earnings.
When a song streams, performance and mechanical royalties flow through ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC).
If key metadata — like your CAE/IPI, ISWC, or publisher info — is missing or mismatched, the system can’t link payments to your account.
Those unmatched funds go into a temporary holding pool known as the Black Box. After 36 months, they’re redistributed — typically to major publishers such as UMPG, Sony Music Publishing, or Warner Chappell.
2025 Insight: 21.4% of U.S. digital mechanical royalties went unmatched in Q1 (MLC Report).
Streaming Boom: Global markets like China (+28.4%) and India (+31%) are adding millions of unregistered works.
Indie Oversight: Only 13,500 of India’s 60,000 musicians are fully registered with a PRO.
Self-Publishing Gaps: Artists retain their rights on paper but never complete metadata filings.
Label Accounting Delays: Royalty departments can take quarters — even years — to report adjustments or retroactive earnings.
A professional royalty audit reviews every source of income tied to your recordings.
Here are the key revenue streams every recording artist should track:
1. Performance Royalties — Collected by ASCAP, BMI, SESAC for public plays (radio, TV, live, streaming).
2. Mechanical Royalties — Paid by digital services via the MLC for reproductions (Spotify, Apple Music, etc.).
3. Neighboring Rights — Payments for the sound recording itself when broadcast or performed publicly (SoundExchange, PPL).
4. Sync Licensing — Fees for film, TV, games, or commercials using your song.
5. Publishing Splits — Composer and publisher shares through admin services like Songtrust or TuneCore Publishing.
6. Producer Points — Backend percentages owed to producers or engineers from master sales.
7. Digital Sales & Downloads — iTunes, Bandcamp, Beatport, etc.
8. Live & Performance Recordings — Royalties from concert films or recorded shows.
9. International Collections — Foreign performance and mechanicals handled by sub-publishers or sister societies.
Join ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC (for performance).
Submit to the MLC (for mechanicals) within 30 days of release.
Use admin services like Songtrust or TuneCore Publishing for global filings.
Confirm ISRC, ISWC, and CAE/IPI for each release.
Cross-check entries in your DistroKid or CD Baby dashboard.
Match songwriter, composer, and split data across all platforms.
Studio Budgets offers professional Royalty Audits to trace missing payments, outdated splits, or unclaimed international earnings.
Start with our Free Royalty Calculator to estimate potential losses before booking a full audit.
Don’t assume the checks you’re getting tell the whole story.
Use the Studio Budgets Royalty Calculator to estimate what your catalog should be earning — then schedule a Royalty Audit to uncover the rest.
Your music made it. Now make sure your money does too.
Royalties & Bundles: How “All-in-One” Plans Cut Payouts — and When Clarity Might Arrive When a streaming service adds audiobooks (or other media) to a music plan and calls it a bundle, U.S. mechanical royalties for songwriters can be calculated at a discounted...