Somebody posts a chart: this song made $26 million, the artist kept four. The comments split into two camps within an hour. Half are furious at labels. The other half point out that the numbers are invented, which they usually are — nobody publishes what a specific song earned or what a specific contract pays.
But the shape of the chart isn't wrong. Even artists at the very top of the chart rarely see more than a fifth of what their recording generates, and the reason isn't a single villainous percentage. It's that a stream pays two different copyrights, and each of those copyrights passes through several hands before anything reaches a person.
So here's the version with no invented figures. One dollar of US subscription revenue attributable to one track in 2026, walked down to the artist's bank account — once under a traditional label deal, once with the master in the artist's own name.
Where a number is set by law, it's marked. Where it's a range from standard industry practice, it's marked as that too. Nothing here is anyone's actual contract.
Two copyrights, not one
This is where most of the confusion starts, and it's worth being pedantic about.
Every piece of recorded music contains two separate copyrighted works:
The musical work — the song itself. Melody, chords, lyrics. Created by the songwriters. Usually controlled, administered or co-owned by a publisher.
The sound recording — one specific captured performance of that song. Created in a studio or on a laptop. Owned by whoever paid for it or whoever the contract says, which are not always the same party.
They have different owners, different royalty systems, different collection societies and different money. Cover a song and you've made a new sound recording of an existing musical work. Sample a record and you need permission from both sides separately.
When someone streams a track, the service pays for both. Those payments travel down two completely separate pipes and only meet again in the artist's accounting — if the artist is both the performer and the writer, which plenty are and plenty aren't.
What each side actually earns
On the recording side:
- Interactive streaming — Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music. Negotiated between services and rights holders. Terms are confidential.
- Digital performance — non-interactive radio-like services: SiriusXM, webcasting, Pandora's radio mode in the US. Statutory. Collected by SoundExchange.
- Sync, master side — the fee for using that specific recording in a film, ad or game.
- Neighbouring rights — public performance of the recording in broadcast and public spaces, collected in most countries outside the US. The US doesn't pay these for terrestrial radio, which is why a US artist with airplay in Germany has money sitting somewhere.
On the composition side:
- Mechanical royalties — for reproducing the song. In the US, streaming mechanicals go through The MLC.
- Public performance — through a PRO: ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR, or a foreign society.
- Sync, publishing side — a separate licence and a separate fee from the master side. Both are needed.
- Print and lyrics — small, and mostly forgotten until somebody notices the sheet music.
Different sides, different registrations, different reasons for money to go missing.
The dollar
Take $1.00 of US subscription revenue attributable to one track. 2026.
| Share of the dollar | Where it comes from | |
|---|---|---|
| The service keeps | ≈ $0.30 | widely reported; per-deal terms aren't published |
| The composition | $0.153 | set by the Copyright Royalty Board |
| The recording | ≈ $0.547 | what's left |
That 15.3% is not a negotiation or an estimate. Under the CRB's Phonorecords IV determination, the headline percentage-of-revenue rate for US interactive streaming rose from 15.1% in 2023 to 15.3% in 2026, reaching 15.35% in 2027. The actual calculation is a "greater of" test against other prongs, so treat the headline rate as the number to reason with, not the whole formula.
The 30% service share is a different kind of number. It's consistent across years of reporting and industry testimony, but no major service publishes its per-deal terms, so it's directional.
What's left — roughly 55 cents — is the recording side. This is the number the rest of the article is about, because this is the one that changes depending on whose name the master is in.
Scenario A: the label owns the master
Standard industry assumptions, drawn from established reference works on music business practice rather than from anyone's filed contract:
- Artist royalty: 20 points of net receipts (common range 15–20 for new deals, higher for leverage)
- Producer: 3 points, carved out of the artist's share
- Publishing: artist wrote 100%, works with an administrator charging 15%
- Manager: 20% of gross artist income
- Artist is fully recouped
| Per dollar | |
|---|---|
| Recording income to the label | $0.547 |
| Artist's 20 points | $0.109 |
| less producer's 3 points | $0.093 |
| Composition income | $0.153 |
| less 15% administration | $0.130 |
| Gross to the artist | $0.223 |
| less manager at 20% | –$0.045 |
| Artist keeps | ≈ $0.179 |
About eighteen cents. And that's the good version, because of the word "recouped" sitting in the assumptions.
The part that isn't a percentage
Under a traditional deal, the label advances money — an advance to live on, recording costs, often a share of video and marketing spend. That money is not a gift and not a fee. It's a loan against future royalties, and it's repaid out of the artist's 20 points, not out of the label's 55 cents.
Which means a $400,000 all-in advance isn't repaid by the track generating $400,000. At 17 effective points it's repaid when the recording generates somewhere near $2.4 million.
Until that point, the artist's royalty statement says zero. Not a small number — zero, with a running unrecouped balance at the bottom. This is the single biggest reason a successful-looking release produces no artist income, and it has nothing to do with the royalty rate being unfair. The rate is the mechanism by which the debt gets repaid, so a higher rate repays the advance faster and a lower one slower.
One line does pay anyway, and it's worth knowing about. See below.
Scenario B: the artist owns the master
Same track, same streams, same producer, same manager. The difference is that the recording was financed by the artist and the artist's name is on it. A distributor moves it to stores for a commission.
Distribution commissions in this market generally run 15–30%, and the real cost is often higher than the headline: many services add annual or per-release subscription fees, charge for individual add-ons, or sit behind an intermediary — a label-services company or a regional reseller — that takes its own cut before the artist sees anything. A "20%" deal reached through two layers isn't a 20% deal.
Using 20% as a midpoint:
| Per dollar | |
|---|---|
| Recording income | $0.547 |
| less distribution at 20% | $0.438 |
| less producer's 3 points | $0.421 |
| Composition income, after 15% admin | $0.130 |
| Gross to the artist | $0.551 |
| less manager at 20% | –$0.110 |
| Artist keeps | ≈ $0.441 |
At a 15% commission that figure is about 46 cents. At 30%, about 40 cents.
Eighteen cents against forty. Same song, same listeners, same month.
Before anyone quits their label
The comparison above is real but it isn't free money, and presenting it as free money is how artists end up in trouble.
In Scenario A somebody else paid for the record. Studio time, mixing, mastering, the video, the marketing, the radio push, the staff who chase playlists and press — all funded upfront, all at the label's risk. If the release fails, the label loses that money. Unrecouped balances are generally not personally repayable; the label eats it.
In Scenario B the artist funds all of it and carries all of it. The forty cents is the return on capital the artist put in, not a windfall. An artist who can't finance a release is not better off owning 100% of a record that doesn't get made.
What the percentage comparison also leaves out is the thing that matters most over ten years: in Scenario A the master belongs to the label, frequently for the life of copyright. Every future stream, sync placement, reissue and catalog sale flows to them. In Scenario B it's an asset the artist owns and can one day sell, license or borrow against. That asymmetry doesn't show up in any pie chart of a single dollar, and it's usually worth more than the dollar.
The one line the law protects
There's an exception to all of this, and it's the clearest example of what statutory rights do that contracts don't.
For non-interactive digital performance — satellite radio, webcasting, internet radio in the US — the split is set by law and SoundExchange distributes it:
- 50% to the owner of the sound recording
- 45% directly to the featured artist
- 5% to a fund for non-featured performers — session musicians and backing vocalists
That 45% goes to the artist. Not through the label. Not applied against an unrecouped balance. The featured performer registers with SoundExchange and gets paid, even while every other line on the statement reads zero.
It's also the money most commonly left uncollected, because nobody registered and nobody told them to.
What you can negotiate and what you can't
Fixed, whatever anyone's leverage looks like:
- The CRB headline rate on the composition side in the US
- The SoundExchange 50/45/5 split
- The service's share of subscription revenue
Negotiable, and where the actual outcome gets decided:
- Who owns the master, and for how long
- The royalty rate and what it's a percentage of — "net receipts" and "retail" are not the same base, and the difference is larger than most rate differences
- What counts as recoupable: recording costs, videos, marketing, independent promotion, tour support
- Whether there's a reversion after a set period
- Distribution commission, and everything bolted onto it in fees
- Producer terms: points, from which base, and whether from record one or after recoupment
- Publishing: administration fee, term, and whether the publisher's share is shared
Artists spend most of their negotiating energy on the rate. The base, the recoupment list and the reversion clause usually move more money.
The number you should actually track
The percentage of a hypothetical dollar is a useful teaching device and a poor management tool. What's worth tracking per release:
- Net income by right: recording, composition, performance, sync — separately
- Unrecouped balance and the rate at which it's moving
- Territories where income appears and where it's suspiciously absent
- Whether registrations exist on both sides: ISRC, UPC, MLC, PRO, SoundExchange
- Splits agreed in writing before release, not after a placement
The last one is the one that quietly destroys money. Income only arrives where it's registered, and registrations are made from the metadata someone typed at delivery. A missing writer, an unregistered ISRC or a mismatched artist identity doesn't produce an error — it produces silence, sometimes for years, and the money sits in a black box or a PRO's unmatched pool.
FAQ
Why does one stream pay twice?
Because it uses two copyrights. The sound recording and the musical work are separate property with separate owners, even when the same person owns both.
Is the 15.3% number per stream?
No. It's a percentage of the service's US revenue, calculated at the service level and then shared out among compositions. There's no fixed per-stream rate for mechanicals.
Does the artist get the whole composition share?
Only if they wrote the whole song and control the publishing. Co-writers divide it, and a traditional publishing deal takes a share of it in exchange for an advance and administration.
What's the difference between a point and a percent?
In practice, nothing — a "point" is one percentage point of the royalty base. What matters is the base. Twenty points of net receipts and twenty points of retail price produce very different money.
Will an advance have to be paid back if the record flops?
Generally not out of pocket. Recording advances are normally recoupable but not repayable — the label absorbs the loss, and the artist carries the unrecouped balance.
If I own my master, do I keep 100%?
No. You keep what's left after the distributor's commission and fees, the producer, the manager and anyone else with a contractual share. Ownership changes the size of the slice and who holds the asset afterwards. It doesn't remove the other hands.
Where does SoundExchange money fit in?
It's recording-side income from non-interactive US services only. It doesn't cover Spotify or Apple Music streams, and the featured artist's 45% is paid directly rather than through a label.
It isn't one number, it's a chain
A streaming dollar doesn't get divided. It gets passed along, and each hand it passes through is governed by a different document — a federal rate determination, a confidential platform deal, a record contract, a producer agreement, a management commission.
Eighteen cents and forty cents are both accurate answers to "what does the artist get." They describe the same song under different paperwork.
The percentage people argue about online is downstream of a question that gets settled much earlier, usually in a room with worse coffee: whose name is on the master, and what the rate is a percentage of.
CREWPORT keeps artist identity, ISRCs, UPCs, credits and splits consistent through delivery, so the registrations that income depends on are built on correct data. We're not a publisher, we don't collect SoundExchange royalties on your behalf, and nothing here is legal advice — a contract this consequential is worth a music lawyer's hour.
Note: the dollar walk above is an illustrative model built on published statutory rates and standard industry ranges. It is not drawn from any specific contract, artist or release, and it does not predict any particular outcome. Label royalty rates, producer terms, distribution commissions and management commissions vary widely and are not publicly disclosed. The service's revenue share is based on consistent industry reporting rather than published terms. Rates outside the US differ; the CRB rate applies to US interactive streaming only. Confirm current rates with the primary sources below and your own agreements before relying on any figure here.
Sources
- Copyright Royalty Board — Phonorecords IV determination (Federal Register)
- Music Business Worldwide — CRB accepts Phonorecords IV settlement rates
- SoundExchange — Digital performance royalties and the 50/45/5 split
- Spotify Loud & Clear — aggregate payout data
- Standard industry reference works on recording, producer and management agreements (rate ranges)