rights9 min read
Music royalties explained: who pays you, for what, and when
One track generates money from at least two legally separate things, collected by different companies, on different schedules. Most producers only ever get paid for one of them.
Every track is two separate copyrights
The recording — the actual audio file, the master — is one right. The underlying composition — the melody, the chords, the topline, whether or not anyone wrote it down — is a different right. They can be owned by different people, they are paid by different companies, and confusing them is how producers end up leaving half their income uncollected for years.
The master side
This is the stream most producers know about. Spotify, Apple Music, Beatport and the rest pay the owner of the recording. That money goes to the distributor, the distributor pays the label, and the label pays you according to your split. At Epical Tune that split is 70% to the artist and 30% to the label, calculated on the net revenue actually received from the distributor — not on a headline per-stream rate that nobody ever sees.
The publishing side
Composition royalties are collected by performing rights organisations — SAYCO in Colombia, BMI or ASCAP in the United States, PRS in the UK — and paid directly to the registered writers. A label does not sit in the middle of this and does not take a cut of it unless it is also your publisher, which is a separate agreement. If you have never registered as a writer with a PRO, this money is accruing somewhere and it is not accruing to you.
Why the money takes three months
- A stream happens in January.
- The store closes its accounting period and reports it to the distributor, typically 30 to 60 days later.
- The distributor consolidates, converts currency and pays the label.
- The label reconciles the statement per track and per split, and pays out — at Epical Tune, within 30 days of receiving the funds.
None of those steps is the label stalling; each one is a reporting cycle that belongs to somebody else. What you should expect is transparency about where in the chain your money is — statements per release, a visible balance and a clear recoupment status on any advance — not a lump sum that arrives without explanation.