Music royalties: definition and how they work
The word royalties generally refers to payments made to a person or company in exchange for the exploitation of a right.
In music, several rights can coexist around the same track. In particular, it is important to distinguish the recording, often called the master, from the musical composition, meaning the music and lyrics.
Imagine an artist who writes a song and then records their own version: they may be both the songwriter or composer of the work and the holder of rights associated with the recording.
If another artist later records that same composition, it is still the same work, but a new recording.
This is why simply talking about the “royalties from a song” is not always enough; you need to know which right and which use generated the revenue.
Streaming revenue for an artist
When a track is streamed on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, or another platform, part of the service's revenue contributes to payments to rights holders.
For an independent artist who distributes their own master, revenue associated with the recording generally passes through their distributor. The distributor delivers the track to the platforms, then receives the corresponding data and revenue according to their schedules, and makes them available to the artist under the terms of its plan.
This is notably one of the roles of a music distributor: not only to send the track to platforms, but also to track what happens after its release.
Music streaming payments: why does the amount per stream vary?
You can often find tables showing how much Spotify, Deezer, or Apple Music “pay per stream.” These tables can provide an approximate indication in certain contexts, but it would be misleading to conclude that a stream systematically has a fixed value.
Payment can vary depending on the platform, the market concerned, the revenue generated by the service, the type of stream, and the distribution rules used.
Two artists who receive the same number of streams should therefore not necessarily expect to receive exactly the same amount.
The number of streams remains an important indicator, but the royalties actually reported by the platforms are the financial data that matter.
Spotify payments and royalties: don't confuse estimates with actual revenue
Artists often want to know how much a certain number of Spotify streams earns. It is indeed tempting to multiply your streams by an average amount found online, but the reality is more nuanced.
Spotify does not simply pay a fixed amount for each stream directly to the artist; revenue is distributed among different rights holders and intermediaries according to how the music industry chain operates.
For an independent artist who controls their master, the revenue associated with the recording then flows through the distributor used to release the track.
It is therefore more relevant to track the royalties actually reported for your releases than to estimate your revenue solely from a theoretical amount per stream.
Master royalties and songwriter royalties: two different types of revenue
This is one of the most important distinctions to understand. Royalties generated from the exploitation of the master relate to the sound recording. Rights associated with the composition relate to the work: music, lyrics, and the associated songwriters or composers. One person may hold both, only one of the two, or share these rights with other people.
Take a track written by two songwriters, produced by an artist, and exploited by a label. The distribution of revenue may be completely different from that of an independent artist who writes, composes, produces, and owns their own master.
This is also why a music distributor does not automatically replace all the organizations involved in managing other music rights.
The distributor's role in royalty payments
Once the track has been distributed, the distributor's work continues. Platforms gradually provide information related to uses and the corresponding royalties, and this data is then linked to the relevant releases and artists.
The distributor then allows the artist to access the royalties generated by their catalog without having to deal individually with each platform.
With Dibsteur's music distribution plans, distributed projects can be tracked from the same environment along with their statistics, revenue, and royalties.
Keep your net royalties with Dibsteur
A distributor's business model can have a direct impact on what the artist keeps. Some services take a share of the revenue, while others operate primarily through a subscription or other fees.
This concept of net royalties is important: it refers to the revenue actually reported through distribution, not a promise of a fixed amount per stream.
With Dibsteur, the Sérénité and Label plans currently allow you to keep 100% of net royalties generated through distribution. The Sérénité plan is intended for independent artists, while the music distribution plan for labels notably allows you to manage multiple artists and use the label/artist split.
For an artist, this becomes increasingly important as their catalog revenue grows: a few percentage points of commission may represent very little on a first release, then much more once several tracks begin generating revenue regularly.
Splitting royalties between multiple artists
A track does not always financially belong to a single person, and a collaboration may, for example, provide for a split between two artists. A label may also need to pay a share of the revenue to the artist under their agreement.
A royalty split makes it possible to organize this distribution. If two artists are each supposed to receive a share of a track's revenue, it is much simpler to define this arrangement properly than to receive all the royalties in a single account and then manually recalculate each payment.
It is therefore useful to check whether the distributor allows revenue to be split automatically between multiple people. With Dibsteur, the royalty split with other artists is included in the Sérénité and Label plans, while the label/artist split is available with the Label plan.
Royalties, statistics, and release performance
Statistics and royalties answer two different questions. Statistics show how the music is consumed: streams, changes in track performance, platforms, and other available indicators; royalties show the financial side of this exploitation.
Looking at both together makes it possible to understand your catalog more precisely. A track may, for example, receive more streams than another without the difference in revenue being perfectly proportional. Conversely, changes in royalties can help identify the releases that are actually beginning to contribute to the project's revenue.
Distributors such as Dibsteur offer detailed daily statistics and financial reports in their distribution plans.
YouTube can also generate revenue from your music
Audio streaming is not the only situation in which a recording can be exploited online. Music can also appear in videos published on YouTube.
For eligible content, YouTube Content ID makes it possible to identify certain uses of a track and apply the policies provided for the content concerned.
This should not be confused with royalties generated directly by Spotify or Apple Music: the context of use and the platform are different.
For an artist, however, the objective remains the same: correctly identify their recordings and avoid leaving certain uses of their catalog completely outside their tracking.
ISRC codes and tracking catalog revenue
Royalty tracking also relies on clean metadata because each distributed recording notably has an identifier that makes it possible to distinguish it from other versions of a track.
The ISRC code specifically accompanies the recording concerned and helps identify it within the music ecosystem.
This is particularly important when an artist changes distributors: if they transfer exactly the same master, keeping the correct ISRC helps maintain continuity for the recording rather than presenting it as a new version.
Proper catalog management therefore also makes it easier to track its uses over time.
Using your music revenue to estimate an advance
When a catalog begins generating regular revenue, this data can also become useful for preparing the next stages of the project. The history of performance, revenue, and changes across releases notably provides a more accurate view of a catalog's financial potential.
For an artist, this can be useful when they want to fund a new release, invest in promotion, produce a music video, or develop a more ambitious project without relying solely on future revenue.
Artists who already have a revenue history can also use an artist advance estimation tool such as Lyra, offered by Dibsteur. The objective is to use the available catalog data to estimate whether an advance may be considered and under what conditions.
This approach does not replace standard royalty tracking: it simply uses the catalog's history as an additional indicator to support the development of the music project.
