One Song, Several Royalties: What Canadian Artists Need to Know

When I released my first recording, I expected some paperwork. What I did not expect was how much work went into doing it properly.

The frustrating part was never any single registration or organization. It was trying to find one definitive, current, Canadian explanation of how all of it fit together. The information existed, but it was scattered across different organizations, written for different corners of the industry, and rarely assembled in a way that showed the whole picture at once.

Once I had worked through it for myself, I started asking other musicians how they handled it. Some of them were seasoned players who had been writing, recording and performing for years, and even so, a surprising number had only the faintest understanding of royalties, performing-rights organizations, publishing, licensing, ISRC codes, UPC codes, or where their music was supposed to be registered. Most of them simply wanted to write, record, play, and repeat.

I understand that completely. That is the part most of us got into music to do in the first place. But releasing a song and building all the paths through which that song can earn money are two very different things. Your distributor does not collect everything. Joining one royalty organization does not register you everywhere. And a single song does not generate only one kind of royalty.

One Song Is Really Two Copyrights

The first thing that makes music royalties so confusing is that a released song almost always involves two separate pieces of intellectual property, owned and administered independently of each other.

The first is the composition: the melody, the lyrics, and the underlying musical work. The second is the sound recording, sometimes called the master: the specific recorded performance that listeners actually hear.

Those two rights can belong to entirely different people. A songwriter might own the composition while a recording artist or a record company owns the master. An independent artist who writes, records and releases their own music may control both sides at once. That distinction is the key to almost everything that follows, because a single use of a song can create income on the composition side, on the recording side, or on both, and the organizations that collect those payments are not the same.

The Royalty Your Distributor Collects

The payment most independent artists recognize first is the money their distributor reports for streams and downloads. That is primarily master-side income. The distributor delivers the recording to services such as Spotify and Apple Music, receives the recording-owner revenue those services report, and pays it out according to the artist's distribution agreement.

This matters, but it is only one lane. A distributor acting purely as a distributor does not automatically administer the songwriting and publishing rights in the composition. SOCAN draws exactly this line, separating the recording royalties handled by distributors from the composition royalties handled through reproduction-rights administration.

This is where many artists stop too soon. They see money arriving through the distributor and reasonably assume the system is working. Part of it is working. Other royalties may still be going uncollected because no one has set up the path for them.

Performance Royalties: SOCAN

When an original composition is performed or communicated in public, it can generate performance royalties. That can include radio play, live performances, television use, certain streaming activity, and other public uses of the composition itself.

For Canadian songwriters and composers, the main organization to look into is SOCAN, which licenses performing rights in Canada and works with sister organizations overseas to collect eligible foreign royalties on behalf of its members.

Joining SOCAN is not the end of the job, though. The songs still have to be registered accurately, with the correct writers, ownership shares and publishing information, and SOCAN asks members to keep their catalogues current as new works and new publishing arrangements come along. The system cannot match a performance to the right people if it does not yet know who the right people are.

Live Shows and the Setlists Nobody Submits

One of the biggest gaps I see is among musicians who perform live. Many of them do not realize that submitting setlists can be part of getting songwriters and publishers paid. It is not that they have weighed it and decided against it. Nobody ever told them it could, or should, be done.

SOCAN members can submit a Notification of Live Music Performance, along with the setlist and supporting proof of the show. SOCAN even keeps a record of concerts for which it has received licensing information but does not yet have a setlist to match the money to the works that were played. That is potentially both income and useful performance data being left on the table.

The practical problem is that somebody has to remember to do it. Somebody has to gather the details, submit the setlist, and follow up when necessary, and that takes time that someone has to pay for. It can easily become one of those tasks that everyone agrees should happen and nobody consistently does. The answer is not to turn musicians into full-time administrators. It is to build a routine simple enough that submitting the information becomes part of finishing the show, like packing up the gear.

Mechanical and Reproduction Royalties

A composition can also earn money whenever it is reproduced, and that covers streams, downloads, CDs, vinyl, and other copies of the musical work. These are usually called mechanical royalties, or reproduction-rights royalties.

Canadian self-published songwriters should look into organizations such as CMRRA and SOCAN Reproduction Rights, depending on how they want those rights administered. CMRRA represents music publishers and self-published songwriters for reproduction-rights licensing and collection. SOCAN offers reproduction-rights administration as well, but signing up with SOCAN for performing rights does not automatically enrol you for reproduction rights. That takes a separate authorization.

US digital mechanicals add another wrinkle. The Mechanical Licensing Collective, known as The MLC, administers the US blanket digital mechanical licence for eligible streaming and download services. A Canadian rightsholder can register directly where appropriate, or use an authorized Canadian or international administrator such as CMRRA to handle that collection. The important rule is not to create overlapping claims for the same works, rights, uses and territories. Depending on the agreements involved, different administrators may handle different parts of a catalogue, but the same royalty lane should not be assigned twice. And, once again, all of this is separate from the money your distributor pays you for the recording.

Neighbouring Rights: The Recording Has Another Life

Canada also recognizes a royalty stream attached to the public performance and communication of a released sound recording. These are commonly called neighbouring rights, or equitable-remuneration royalties.

Under Canada's Copyright Act, eligible royalties for this use of a published recording are divided equally between the performers and the maker of the recording. The maker is the person or company responsible for the contractual, financial and technical arrangements required to create the original recording. For a self-produced independent release, that may be the artist or the artist's business. For an independent artist who both performed on the recording and owns the master, that means there can be two separate interests to register: the performer side, and the maker or master-owner side.

Re:Sound collects and distributes these royalties in Canada. On the performer side, artists can currently look into ACTRA RACS, Artisti, or registration through Re:Sound directly. On the maker side, the artists or companies that own their masters can look into a collective such as Panorama, or again register with Re:Sound. Registering only as a performer, while also owning the master, can leave half of your relationship to the recording unaddressed.

SoundExchange and US Digital Radio

The United States does not treat terrestrial radio the way Canada treats neighbouring rights, but it does have a master-side royalty for certain non-interactive digital services, including SiriusXM, Pandora, and eligible webcasters.

The organization to look into there is SoundExchange, which collects US statutory digital-performance royalties and distributes them among sound-recording owners, featured artists, and a fund for non-featured performers. The statutory split is 50 percent to the sound-recording owner, 45 percent to the featured artist, and 5 percent to non-featured performers. A Canadian independent artist who is both the featured performer and the owner of the master may, once more, have more than one interest to register.

The Codes Do Not Pay You, but They Matter

Somewhere in the release process, artists also run into identifiers like ISRCs and UPCs or GTINs. An ISRC identifies a specific sound recording and stays with that recording as it moves across services, territories and releases, helping systems tell one recording from another and connect usage back to the right master. A UPC, or GTIN, identifies the release or product rather than the individual recording, so a single or an album carries a product identifier while each track has its own ISRC.

The codes do not collect royalties on their own. They are part of the metadata that lets distributors, collection organizations and reporting systems identify what was used, and they only work when the registration behind them is connected to the correct artist, writers, publishers, performers and master owner. A code attached to incomplete or inconsistent information does not fix the underlying problem. It just labels it.

What About Cover Songs?

A cover song is a good illustration of why the two-copyright distinction matters so much. When you record a cover, you may own the new sound recording you created, and you may therefore be entitled to the master-side income that comes with being its performer and owner. What you do not own is the underlying composition. The original songwriters and publishers keep the composition-side rights, and the appropriate mechanical or reproduction licence is required when you release a protected cover. CMRRA provides a licensing route for Canadian releases where it represents the publisher in question.

In other words, you can own your recording without owning the song. A fuller discussion of cover licensing, arrangement changes, samples, video use and synchronization deserves its own article. For royalty purposes, the point to remember is that owning the master does not hand you the composition royalties.

And Public-Domain Songs?

A public-domain song is a different situation. Once the copyright term on the underlying composition has expired, the work can be used without permission and without paying royalties to the former owner of the composition, and your new recording of that song can still be protected as its own sound recording.

The caution is to confirm exactly what is in the public domain. The original composition might be free to use while a newer translation, adaptation or arrangement remains protected, and you still cannot copy someone else's protected recording just because the underlying song is old. Public-domain status can also differ from one country to the next, so it is worth verifying for every territory in which the recording will be released or used.

Private Copying: A Small Canadian Oddity

Canada has one more wrinkle: a private-copying royalty administered through the Canadian Private Copying Collective, or CPCC. It exists to compensate songwriters, publishers, performers and record companies for certain private copies of music, and rights holders receive their share through the CPCC's member collectives rather than by registering with CPCC directly.

At present the levy applies only to blank CDs, so it is not the revenue stream it once was. It is still a good example, though, of just how many separate rights and collection paths can surround a single piece of music.

Should an Independent Artist Start a Publishing Company?

Not every artist needs one. Being self-published simply means you control your own publishing rights instead of assigning them to an outside publisher, and Canadian self-published songwriters can work directly with reproduction-rights administrators without first setting up a separate corporation.

I chose to create Coulee View Music. It is a sole proprietorship and a publishing name, not a separate incorporated company, and I set it up because I wanted the publishing side of my catalogue to have a clean identity apart from me as the recording artist. I had three reasons. I wanted the publishing catalogue organized in a way that could one day be packaged, transferred, sold, or left as part of a legacy. It felt like a legitimate part of the music business I was trying to build. And I wanted to learn every part of this business, not just the recording side.

Creating a publishing name does not manufacture new royalties. It does not replace any registrations, and it does not make sense for everyone. What it can do is give you a structure for catalogue ownership, administration, agreements and long-term planning. Whether it is worth doing comes down to what you own, the size and direction of your catalogue, whether there are co-writers involved, how the rights will be administered, and what you eventually want to do with the music.

Even the Tiny Payments Matter

Some of these royalty payments are very small. Others can be more meaningful. They arrive from different organizations, for different rights, covering different territories and accounting periods, and the small ones add up over time, especially as a catalogue grows and the music is streamed, broadcast, performed and used in more places.

None of this is meant to suggest that registering everywhere turns independent music into a windfall. It does not. The point is simpler than that. Whether a payment is large or small, it should have a working path back to the person who earned it. The artist should be the one who decides an income stream is too small to bother with. That decision should not be made by accident, because the song was never registered in the first place.

The Goal Is to Put It on Autopilot

My own royalty administration now runs largely on its own. Payments are deposited automatically. When I release new music, I add the songs and recordings to the relevant services, and every couple of months I review the setup to make sure the registrations and collection paths are still intact. The hard part was building the system and understanding how the pieces fit together. Once that is in place, keeping it running does not have to take over the creative side of the work.

That is also how I approach it when I help other artists through The Rock Quarry. I have no interest in managing anyone's band. The needs vary from one artist to the next, so the help might be setting up a workable process, or, when it is needed, staying on top of one specific part of the administration. But that is a footnote, not the reason for this article.

The reason is that independent artists should know these royalty streams exist, and understand that releasing music is only the beginning of collecting on it. For listeners, I hope it offers a clearer view of how much happens after a song leaves the studio. Writing, performing and recording the music is only part of bringing it to you. Behind every release are identifiers, ownership records, registrations, licences, distribution agreements, setlists, reporting systems, and years of quiet catalogue maintenance that almost no one ever sees. Being a musician, and continuing to bring people new music, is a great deal of work.

Collection organizations, eligibility rules and administrative arrangements can change. Confirm current requirements directly with the organizations involved before relying on them.