Welcome: Why Most Artists Don't Get Paid

The point: Every song you release can earn money through five separate pipes, and each pipe only pays if you've hooked it up yourself. Most independent artists have one connected. This course connects the rest, and shows you how to release like a label while you do it.

Who I am

I'm Jay Uncut. I'm a Grammy-nominated producer, I'm published by Sony, and I run a label, Perfkt Music.

What I see over and over is artists who are talented, releasing real music, and getting paid on only part of it. Not because anybody stole from them. Because nobody told them the money comes out of more than one place, and most of those places don't find you. You have to go register.

What this course fixes

Uploading to your distributor is step one, not the whole job. By the end you'll know:

• how to run a release like a label does (Module 1);
• how to set up distribution and splits so the right people get paid (Module 2);
• every registration your song needs, in order (Module 3);
• how YouTube money actually works (Module 4);
• how to build the artist that all this is for (Module 5).

The five money pipes

Here's the map. Keep coming back to it. Every song has two copyrights: the composition (the song as written: melody, lyrics) and the master (the actual recording). They're separate works, and they get paid through separate pipes.

A few things about each pipe that trip people up:

Pipe 1: Master royalties. This is the money most artists already know about. Spotify pays recording royalties to whoever delivered the music, which for you is your distributor. There's no fixed per-stream rate. And since April 2024, a track needs at least 1,000 streams in the past 12 months (plus a minimum number of unique listeners Spotify doesn't disclose) before it earns recording royalties at all. Distributor splits only divide this pipe. They don't touch pipes 2 through 4.

Pipe 2: Performance royalties. Your PRO collects these for the composition. ASCAP and BMI are free to join as a writer. SESAC and GMR are invitation-only. There's a writer share and a publisher share, and the way you collect the publisher share depends on which PRO you're with. That's a whole lesson in Module 3, because it's the 50% most indie writers miss.

Pipe 3: Mechanicals. PROs don't collect these. In the US, mechanicals from streaming and download services go through the MLC. Membership is free, you don't need a PRO membership or an LLC, and if nobody administers your publishing, you need to join yourself. One date to circle: the MLC plans to start distributing unclaimed royalties by market share in April 2027, starting with January 2021 usage. Once a month goes through that process, late claimers can't get that month back.

Pipe 4: SoundExchange. This is not Spotify or Apple Music. SoundExchange collects when your recording plays on non-interactive digital services: satellite radio like SiriusXM, webcasters like non-interactive Pandora and iHeartRadio, and digital cable music channels. It pays the featured artist and the owner of the recording. If you perform on your songs and own your masters, register as both. It's free, and you can do both in one registration.

Pipe 5: YouTube. SoundExchange doesn't collect for YouTube or any video, so YouTube is its own pipe, with two parts. Content ID finds your recording inside other people's videos and claims it; most independent artists get it through their distributor. Your own channel can earn too: once you're in the YouTube Partner Program, YouTube pays you 55% of the net ad revenue on your long-form videos and 45% of your share of the Shorts revenue pool. The Official Artist Channel isn't a separate pipe. It's the one home where your channel and your auto-generated "Topic" channel come together. The songwriting side of YouTube money runs separately. Your PRO collects performance royalties from YouTube. The publisher's share of Content ID money goes to whoever delivers your compositions to YouTube, and if you administer your own publishing, that usually means signing with a publishing administrator (Module 3, Lesson 4).

One warning, and Module 4 goes deep on it: Content ID requires exclusive rights. If your song is built on a non-exclusive beat lease, you generally can't put it in Content ID.

How to use this course and the workbook

• Go in order the first time. Module 1 gets your next release moving. Modules 2 and 3 make sure it gets paid.
• Do the "Do this today" list before the next lesson. That's where the money is. Watching doesn't connect a pipe. Registering does.
• Use the workbook alongside the lessons. Every module has exercises in it. Write your answers down, with dates, so you've got a record of what's registered where.
• Come back to the five pipes map every release. By the end, checking all five should be as automatic as uploading the song.

Everything in this course is US-focused. If you're outside the US, the ideas carry over, but pipes 3 and 4 go through your local societies instead of the MLC and SoundExchange.

Do this today

• Open the workbook and fill in the five pipes page: for each pipe, write "connected," "not connected," or "not sure."
• Write down which distributor you use and log in to make sure you can still access it.
• Write down whether you're a member of ASCAP or BMI. If you're not sure, that's a "not connected."
• List your released songs and note which ones you wrote, which you co-wrote, and which you own the master on.
• Note any song built on a leased beat. You'll need that list in Module 4.

Common mistakes

• Thinking your distributor collects everything. It collects pipe 1. The other four are separate.
• Thinking your PRO covers mechanicals. It doesn't. That's the MLC.
• Thinking SoundExchange pays for Spotify streams. It covers non-interactive services, not on-demand streaming, and not YouTube.
• Waiting until a song "does numbers" to register it. Some of this money is time-sensitive. Register every song, every time.