Mechanical royalties are the money a songwriter earns when their song is copied: pressed on a CD, sold as a download or played on demand on a streaming service. If you write your own songs, part of that money is yours, and it travels by a completely different road from your streaming income. Many independent artists never collect it simply because nobody told them the road exists.
What a mechanical royalty is
Every released track contains two things: the recording (the master) and the song itself (the composition: melody and lyrics). The recording earns money for whoever owns the master. The song earns money for the people who wrote it and their publishers.
The song earns in two main ways. When it is played in public, on radio or in a café, that is a performance. When it is reproduced, that is a mechanical. The word goes back to the days when songs were copied by machines onto piano rolls and records. The machines changed, the name stayed.
Where mechanicals come from today
- Physical copies. Each CD or vinyl pressed with your song.
- Downloads. Each paid download from a download store.
- On-demand streams. When a listener picks your song on a streaming service, that stream is treated in many countries as a reproduction as well as a performance, so it generates both kinds of song royalties.
- Other uses such as some services that let people use music in their content, depending on the country and the agreement.
Rates are usually set by law or by agreements between services and rights organisations, and they differ by country. You do not need the formulas. You need to make sure your songs are registered in the places that collect.
Who collects them
Streaming services and record labels do not send mechanicals to a writer they have never heard of. They pay organisations that represent songs, and those organisations pay the writers and publishers they know about.
- Collecting societies. In some countries the same society that handles performance royalties also handles mechanicals. In others a separate organisation does it. Check how it works where you live.
- Dedicated mechanical bodies. In the United States, for example, streaming and download mechanicals go through a dedicated organisation, and self-published songwriters can register with it directly.
- Publishers and publishing administrators. A publisher registers your songs with societies around the world and collects what is owed. If you do not want to give up rights, an administrator does the paperwork for a share of what it collects, without owning your songs.
The key link is identification. Your recording has an ISRC code. Your song gets its own code, called ISWC, when it is registered. When the two are connected, money from streams of the recording can find the song and its writers.
Why your distribution report does not show them
Your distributor delivers the recording and pays you the master side of the income. Mechanicals for the song are not part of that money in most cases. They are paid to the song side, through the organisations above.
Picture Theo Marsh, who writes, records and releases everything himself. His distribution reports show streams in Germany and the United States, and he is paid for the recording. But he never registered his songs anywhere, so the mechanicals generated by those same streams are sitting with organisations that cannot match them to anyone. In many systems, money that stays unclaimed long enough is eventually shared out by other rules. Registering late can still recover some periods, but not always all of them.
What to do if you write your own songs
- Agree the splits. Write down who wrote what share of each song before the release. Mechanicals are divided according to these splits.
- Join a collecting society as a writer, in your country or the one that serves it.
- Register every song with its title, writers, splits and, where possible, the ISRC of each recording.
- Decide about publishing. Without a publisher, the publisher share may go uncollected in some places. Look into an administrator or registering as your own publisher where that is possible.
- Read your statements. Compare the countries in your distribution report with the countries in your society statements. Big gaps point to missing registrations.
Quick answers
I only sing, I did not write the song. Do I get mechanicals?
No. Mechanicals belong to writers and publishers. As a performer you earn from the recording, and in some countries from neighbouring rights.
I released a cover. Who gets the mechanicals?
The original writers. That is why a cover can need a licence in some countries. Check the rules for every territory where you release.
Is this the same as a sync fee?
No. A sync fee is a one-off payment for pairing your music with a film, ad or video. Mechanicals come from copies and streams, again and again, for as long as people listen.