What is a performance royalty?

While a King breakdancing for people is technically a performance royalty, we will be talking about a different kind in this article.

A performance royalty is a type of publishing payment made to a songwriter, composer and music publisher whenever their musical composition is publicly performed, broadcast, or streamed.

How Performance Royalties Work:

• What Triggers Them: When a song is played on terrestrial or internet radio, broadcast on television, performed live at a venue, streamed on platforms like Spotify or Apple Music, or played as background music in public spaces like restaurants, bars, gyms, and retail stores.

• Who Gets Paid: They go strictly to the holders of the underlying composition (the songwriters, composers, and music publishers), not the featured recording artist or session musicians (unless those referenced examples of artists also wrote the song).

• Who Collects Them: Businesses and broadcasters pay licensing fees to Performing Rights Organizations (PROs)—such as ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC in the United States, PRS in the UK, or SOCAN in Canada. The PROs collect these fees and distribute the money to the songwriters and publishers provided they have registered their songs with one of the PROs.

• How the Money is Split: In the U.S., performance royalties are traditionally split 50/50 between the songwriter (the writer's share) and the music publisher (the publisher's share).