The three streams
A recording is two pieces of property at the same time. The master is this recording — this take, these musicians, this room. The composition is the song underneath it: the notes and the words, which stay the same when somebody else covers it.
They are owned separately, licensed separately and paid separately. That is why one play produces three payments instead of one, and why they do not arrive together.
Each card below answers the question twice, because the answer differs by service: what a collective does with the stream elsewhere, and what happens to it on SNR, where every right is licensed directly. Blanket and society routing is not wrong, and nobody here is calling it that. It is how it works elsewhere — it is simply not what SNR does at launch.
Master — the sound recording
The recording itself. The right used is reproduction and making available.
- Collected by
- SNR licenses this directly: a grant from the rightsholder or the recording does not play. A distributor or a label sits in the chain only where the artist uses one.
- Paid to
- — The artist
- — or the label, per the recording contract
- Arrives
- SNR’s own payout cycle — the accepted recording split is paid by name
- Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §2 (accepting the recording split is the master licence) + Appendix A (“Direct licences pay the writer by name, in SNR’s own payout cycle”)
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §1, §2
Mechanical — the composition, reproduced
The song. The right to reproduce it (streaming, downloads, physical).
- Collected by
- On SNR, directly from the writer or publisher who controls it — SNR takes no blanket. Elsewhere, the MLC under the statutory blanket.
- Paid to
- — The publisher’s linked cut
- — the writer, the rest of it
- Arrives
- The same cycle as the recording on SNR. Where a collective pays instead, its own cycle — months
- Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §2 (a publisher accepts its own cut per right) + Appendix A (“A society pays on its own cycle, typically months later”)
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §1, §2; the collective route in Appendix A
Performance — the composition, performed
The song. The right to perform it publicly.
- Collected by
- On SNR, directly from the writer and the publisher — a society member accepts the direct-licence waiver, because their membership is non-exclusive. Elsewhere, a PRO: ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR.
- Paid to
- — Writer share — the songwriter
- — Publisher share — the publisher
- Arrives
- The same cycle as the recording on SNR. Where a society pays instead, its own cycle — months, typically
- Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §3 (a society member licenses SNR directly) + Appendix A (“A society pays on its own cycle, typically months later”)
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §1, §3
Who gets what
A label touches the recording. It never touches the song.
This is the table that resolves most arguments about music money. It says nothing about how much anyone takes — only which streams they can reach at all.
| Role | Master | Mechanical | Performance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Artist | Yes | Yes | Writer share |
| Label | Yes | — | — |
| Publisher | — | Yes | Publisher share |
| MLC | — | Yes | — |
| PRO | — | — | Collects, then pays |
The MLC and the PROs are not paid by these streams — they collect and pass on, taking an administrative deduction on the way. Neither is in the chain on SNR at launch: SNR holds no blanket licence, so a writer’s and a publisher’s shares are paid by name instead. An artist who is also the writer therefore collects every stream here, without a collective in between.
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §3, §9, Appendix A
The half that gets through
One stream cannot be intercepted, and most people don't know they have it.
A performance royalty is distributed in two halves: a writer share and a publisher share. The writer share goes to the songwriter from the society.
It is the one stream that does not pass through a label or a publisher on its way to a person, which is why it survives a deal that swallows everything else.
It is also the reason an unregistered writer loses money silently rather than loudly: the society is holding a share with your name missing from it, and nothing will tell you.
Source: PRO distribution rules — the writer share is distributed to the writer — ASCAP and BMI published distribution rules (society rules, not statute); per ToS/licensing-policy.md Appendix A
Two numbers you'd expect here, and why they're missing
Label and publisher percentages.
You will see specific percentage ranges quoted for label and publisher splits. We do not print them: those deals are private, the ranges are folklore, and we cannot cite one.
What is not folklore is which stream each party can touch at all — and that is what this page shows.
The statutory penny rate.
Statutory rates move on a published schedule. This page names the mechanism and the source instead of printing a number that goes stale between rate periods.
Source: Statutory mechanical rates are set by the Copyright Royalty Board — CRB, Phonorecords IV determination (rates run on a published schedule)