Who’s in the chain
Signing a deal does not change which streams a play produces. It changes where each one stops on the way to you, and how long it waits there.
Every extra name in a chain is a party that has to receive the money, account for it, and pay it on — on their own schedule, net of their own terms.
Below is the same three-stream flow under five ownership structures — find the deal you actually have.
Every one of those five chains is the COLLECTIVE system’s route: the one most services use, with the MLC and a PRO standing between the service and the writer. It is not SNR’s. 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. The last figure is the other half of the question, and it is the one that applies here: which route that same situation resolves to on SNR.
- master
- service
- artist
- mechanical
- service
- MLC
- artist
- performance
- service
- PRO
- artist (writer share)
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md Appendix A — the collective route
- master
- service
- label
- artist, per the recording contract
- mechanical
- service
- MLC
- artist
- performance
- service
- PRO
- artist (writer share)
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §1, Appendix A
- master
- service
- artist
- mechanical
- service
- MLC
- publisher
- artist
- performance
- service
- PRO
- writer share to artist; publisher share to publisher
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §1, §4, Appendix A
- master
- service
- label
- artist
- mechanical
- service
- MLC
- publisher
- artist
- performance
- service
- PRO
- writer share to artist; publisher share to publisher
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §1, §4, Appendix A
- master
- service
- artist
- mechanical
- service
- MLC
- publishing admin
- artist
- performance
- service
- PRO
- writer share to artist; publisher share
- publishing admin
- artist
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §1, Appendix A
| Your situation | Mechanical | Performance | Who is paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-administered, no society | direct | direct | The writer, by name |
| ASCAP / BMI member | direct | direct | The writer, by name — the waiver; usage reported to their society |
| SESAC / GMR member | direct | blocked | The writer, if they accept their share; without that grant the recording cannot stream |
| Co-writer with a publisher on SNR | direct | direct | The publisher’s linked cut and the writer’s, each by name |
| Co-writer not on SNR yet | held | held | Held in composition_hold — the release waits until they join and accept |
| Foreign society (PRS, SACEM, GEMA…) | not at launch | not at launch | Not at launch — everyone who is paid has to be in the US |
| Cover — original writers not on SNR | not at launch | not at launch | Not at launch — covers are chosen from SNR works, so the originals come with them |
| Affiliation unknown or “not sure” | direct | blocked | The writer, if they accept their share or tell us their society; until then the recording cannot stream |
Derived per writer share, per right, per territory — never chosen in the product, and never negotiable. An affiliation the system does not recognise is a hard error, not a silent fallback. At launch no row resolves to a collective: SNR holds no blanket licence, so a share that is not licensed directly is blocked, held, or out of scope.
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §2, §3, §9, §12; COMP-14, COMP-15, COMP-16, COMP-19, COMP-42; src/snr/api/policy.py
Two rows worth reading off that table
A society member licenses SNR directly, and their society does not stand in the way.
The dues are not the problem — the route is. ASCAP and BMI are bound by consent decrees to license any service; SESAC and GMR are private, but US memberships are generally non-exclusive, so a member can grant a direct licence in either case. They accept their share and SNR’s licence, are paid by name, and SNR reports the usage to their society as directly licensed and paid.
Source: ToS/licensing-policy.md §3, §9
A writer who is not on SNR is never paid directly — the one-hop rule.
SNR pays only people it can identify and report. An external writer’s share waits in composition_hold, recoverable, until they join and accept — and at launch the release waits for them rather than publishing without them. The platform will not pay a stranger on the strength of a name typed into a form.
Source: COMP-19; ToS/licensing-policy.md §2, §14
What the five diagrams have in common
The writer share reaches a person in all five.
Read down the performance row of every diagram above and the writer share ends at the songwriter every time — including in the structure where both copyrights have been assigned away. It is the only hop that no contract in the chain can add itself to.
And read the first diagram against the last: the streams are identical, and so is the destination. What the deal changes is the number of parties that have to pay it on, which is the same thing as how long it takes. On SNR one of those hops — the collective — does not exist at all, and the table above says what each situation resolves to instead.