Everything You Need To Know About Getting Paid In The Music Industry | Music Think Tank

The music industry relies on royalties as a form of payment from licensed copyrighted songs and recordings. However, recording artists earn their royalties on the sale of their music while songwriters earn them mainly on public performances.

Licensing and their specific royalties fall into four categories:

1. Mechanical Licensing and Royalties is permission to reproduce music on some type of media
2. Performance Rights allows music to be performed live
3. Print Rights is the sale of printed sheet music
4. Synchronization rights is when you need a license to reproduce a song into television program, film, video, or commerical

We’ve put together all of the information you need to know about the different types of royalty categories here.

When do you get paid?

Symphonic Distribution pays on a quarterly basis and reports are loaded 35-45 days after it ends. In order to see reports you must be a symphonic distribution client and have access to SymphonicMS.com system. If you would like to know the estimated report loading dates click here. However keep in mind that we do not control when the partners will provide us the reports but we will do our best to report quickly as possible.

Here’s how you get paid…

Through SymphonicMS, you click request payment through the royalties section. Make sure your latest payment and tax details are entered to receive payment. As mentioned before, you must be a client of symphonic distribution and have a valid W9 and W8-BEN on file.

We send payment via Check, Pay Pal, Bank Transfer, Chase Quickpay, and Xoom. You are charged fees depending on your location and what you choose to receive your payment in. For more information on each of the payment options click here 

Royalites for Other Services

For the sake of this post, other services are considered: Publishing Administration, Neighboring Rights, Soundcloud Monetization, STEMS, Physical, Sample Packs, Music Video Distribution and more.

We report royalties for other services at the same time of our quarterly statement postings. We only report once we have received payment for the said service and of course, data.

Tax Information (USA and Internationally)

Whether you are in USA or abroad, you are responsible for reporting the royalties you receive through the sale or streaming of music. We send payments from every sale you report.

Tax forms should be completed because it is imposed by the government and every distribution company operating in the US should abide by regulations. Your tax forms should be updated through SymphonicMS but you can also deliver them through making a ticket.

As of January 1, 2017, some updates to the tax procedures for international clients of Symphonic Distribution have been launched.  Please click here to understand how this affects you and your payments from 2017 going forward.

For more information on royalties and payments, please visit our Help Desk.

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