Getting paid

Three publishing streams most artists never collect

PERFORMANCE ROYALTIES

public performance and broadcast, collected by a society such as Buma, ASCAP, BMI or SOCAN.If you are affiliated with nobody, this money is STILL COLLECTED — venues, broadcasters and streaming services pay blanket fees regardless of who you are. It is just not collected FOR YOU. It becomes black-box income and gets shared out to other rightsholders by market share. Somebody else ends up with your money.

MECHANICALS

paid per stream on Spotify and YouTube, and per download or sale. In the US this runs through the MLC. This is the one that quietly goes uncollected for years.

SYNC

TV, film, advertising, games, trailers. Negotiated per use, and it requires a clean, cleared, correctly tagged catalogue.

Who collects what

BUMA

performance and broadcast of the SONG, for writers, composers and publishers. Does not touch recordings.

STEMRA

reproduction of the SONG, including sync. Does not do performance, and does not do US streaming mechanicals.

MLC (US)

US streaming and download mechanicals, for anyone entitled to them. Free to join. Nothing outside the US.

SENA (NL)

broadcast and public play of RECORDINGS, split 50/50 between performers and producers. Not on-demand streaming, not live.

SOUNDEXCHANGE (US)

US non-interactive digital radio, for performers and master owners. Not Spotify on-demand, nothing non-US.

DUCAPRO

on paper, the Dutch Caribbean. In practice, verify what it can currently collect before relying on it.

Nobody is collecting here — and nobody is counting

No collecting society for Curaçao appears in CISAC's public member directory. Ducapro launched in 2018 for four islands, with a SOCAN back-office arrangement announced that year — whether that arrangement still stands has not been confirmed since. Its website currently shows only a holding page.

In June 2026 a court in ARUBA dismissed a Ducapro claim against a radio station, partly because Ducapro's contract with Buma/Stemra is non-exclusive, so paying Ducapro guaranteed the broadcaster nothing.That was an Aruban court applying Aruban law. It does not settle Curaçao's position, and it should not be quoted as though it does.

There is also no official Curaçao singles or album chart that we could find — a radio station countdown is not an industry chart — and no gold or platinum certification body — around eighty jurisdictions have one, and no Dutch Caribbean territory appears on any of those lists.

So a record can be the biggest thing on this island and be officially invisible. No collection, no chart, no certificate means no royalty, no data, no leverage, and nothing to show a foreign buyer who asks how big you really are.

The gap nobody tells you about: half of every US stream

A song doing well on Spotify in America is paying you only part of what it earns. The PERFORMANCE side reaches you — ASCAP or BMI collect it and pay it across to your society. The MECHANICAL side of every US stream is a substantial share and it is not being collected at all unless somebody registered your works with the MLC. It is not lost; it sits there unmatched. But nobody is claiming it for you.

(Anyone who tells you it is a neat 50/50 is guessing — the two sides are set by completely different processes, and the mechanical side is probably the larger of the two.)

1. Register with the MLC directly, yourself. It is free and you do not need a publishing company.
2. If you are a Stemra member, exclude US online mechanical rights with them — otherwise two parties claim the same right and the claim conflicts.
3. Do both, in that order. Registering without excluding creates a conflict; excluding without registering guarantees the money stays unmatched.

Four codes, four independent ways to lose money

ISRC identifies the RECORDING

each version separately, issued by your distributor or label. Missing, and recording money strands. A radio edit, an instrumental and a live version each need their own.

ISWC identifies the SONG.It is issued by CISAC, not by your society — your society is the intake channel that registers the work, and CISAC assigns the code. You cannot request one from CISAC directly. Missing, and song money cannot be tied back to the work across territories.

IPI identifies YOU as a writer, composer or publisher. Missing, and the money is collected but cannot be routed to a human being.

IPN identifies you as a PERFORMER on a record, administered by SCAPR. Missing, and neighbouring-rights money never finds the player who earned it.

They fail independently, which is exactly why writers who did register with a society still find money missing.

Split sheets: the cheapest insurance in music

Before anyone leaves the session. Not next week — people forget, people fall out, and people move away.

Everyone who contributed to the composition, including whoever wrote the topline on their phone in the corner. Full legal names, dates of birth, society affiliations, publisher if any, and percentages. Signed by everyone. A photo of a signed sheet on your phone is a valid record — perfect is not required, written is required.

And agree who can say yes. Assign administration to one person or entity so a licence can actually be granted. Sync moves in twenty-four hour windows, and one co-writer who does not answer their phone kills the placement for the whole room. A slow co-writer is not a personality problem, it is a business risk that costs everybody money.

Numbers worth knowing

$4,000–5,000

master-side revenue per million streams, before your distributor takes their share. Not a living wage on its own.

$80,000

uncollected mechanicals found for a single artist in one day of looking. Not a superstar. The money had been sitting there for years because he had a performing rights society and assumed that was the whole system.

33.33%

the Dutch publisher's share of performance royalties: one third to the publisher, two thirds to the writer, against a 50/50 writer-publisher split in the United States. Know which deal you are being offered.

50 years

copyright term here, against 70 in the Netherlands, the EU and the US.

What you control, and what only government can fix

Every video below was checked against the channel that published it.

• The MLC — register your works Free. This is the mechanical half of every US stream, and the one most people miss.
• Buma/Stemra Performance and reproduction of the SONG. Ask them directly about eligibility from here.
• Sena Neighbouring rights — broadcast and public play of RECORDINGS. Performers, this is you.
• SoundExchange US digital radio. Splits 50% master owner / 45% featured artist / 5% non-featured musicians — session players, that last slice is yours.
• ASCAP US performing rights society.
• BMI US performing rights society.
• SOCAN Canadian performing rights society.
• ISRC — how to get one The code that identifies each RECORDING. Every version needs its own.
• US ISRC agency Issues ISRC prefixes.
• Know your identifiers (The MLC) ISRC, ISWC, IPI and IPN explained in one place, by the people who use them. (iswc.org itself has been unreachable; CISAC is the issuer — see above.)
• CISAC Check whether a society is actually affiliated before you rely on it.